Further Profile Changes Announcement

Recently we updated you all on some changes we made in removing VM's and Albums on profile pages as part of our moderation work on The Student Room. We have continued to look at profile pages and have decided we need to take further action to keep our users safe.
We will be removing these further fields on profile pages:

We do not believe having fields for exact age and location on profiles aligns with our safeguarding principles on The Student Room, while we do not allow off-site communication in our Community Guidelines so it doesn't feel consistent to have 'email and vCard links' as an option in profiles.
We are also aware that personal rep allows for comment that isn't currently included in our many moderation and safeguarding protections we have for other on-site communication (threads, PM's). This combined with it's incredibly low usage by our community overall meant we felt it best to remove the feature.
We will also be looking to simplify how our users use pictures to represent themselves on The Student Room by removing seperate profile pictures and having one avatar that is the same across thread pages and profiles. We believe this will simplify users experience while supporting our ongoing safeguarding and moderation efforts in relation to image use on The Student Room.
I am happy to answer any questions any of you have on the above changes, and we will be looking to action the above removals on the 24th February 2025.

What is "V Card"?
PMs?

For users that currently have email links, will they still have them or will they be removed?

Recently we updated you all on some changes we made in removing VM's and Albums on profile pages as part of our moderation work on The Student Room. We have continued to look at profile pages and have decided we need to take further action to keep our users safe.
We will be removing these further fields on profile pages:

We do not believe having fields for exact age and location on profiles aligns with our safeguarding principles on The Student Room, while we do not allow off-site communication in our Community Guidelines so it doesn't feel consistent to have 'email and vCard links' as an option in profiles.
We are also aware that personal rep allows for comment that isn't currently included in our many moderation and safeguarding protections we have for other on-site communication (threads, PM's). This combined with it's incredibly low usage by our community overall meant we felt it best to remove the feature.
We will also be looking to simplify how our users use pictures to represent themselves on The Student Room by removing seperate profile pictures and having one avatar that is the same across thread pages and profiles. We believe this will simplify users experience while supporting our ongoing safeguarding and moderation efforts in relation to image use on The Student Room.
I am happy to answer any questions any of you have on the above changes, and we will be looking to action the above removals on the 24th February 2025.

@Evil Homer

Similar to above, I’d be disappointed to see the personal rep feature be entirely removed… I think about 20% of the rep I receive and give is personal rep so from my experience, it is used fairly intensely. That’s probably not consistent for all users across the site though.

Maybe the comments section of the personal rep could be removed, rather than the whole feature? Or as Toad said, there could be a report feature on personal rep?

For users that currently have email links, will they still have them or will they be removed?

@Evil Homer
Similar to above, I’d be disappointed to see the personal rep feature be entirely removed… I think about 20% of the rep I receive and give is personal rep so from my experience, it is used fairly intensely. That’s probably not consistent for all users across the site though.
Maybe the comments section of the personal rep could be removed, rather than the whole feature? Or as Toad said, there could be a report feature on personal rep?

I mean if you remove the comments section of personal rep then the difference between personal rep and regular rep becomes pretty much non-existent.
I think that scrapping it entirely or having the ability to report personal rep (similar to PMs) would be the solution. The latter suggestion has been suggested for years.

I mostly agree with the first bit - if the comments section is removed, then it’s mostly just a matter of convenience. It’s much easier to give personal rep to a user than fish out their individual posts in a lot of cases…

A reporting system for personal rep would probably be better but let’s see.

Disappointing to see personal rep removed, maybe there should be an option to report personal rep?

The amount of work involved in proportion to the number of users that utilise personal rep means this isn't really a feasible option, I'm afraid!

i like personal rep. and pfps/avatars.
oh well.
the app should definitely be improved, though. (ie, allowing a formatting feature, adding photos/gifs, allowing copy/paste, editing posts and quoting multiple users)

There'll still be the avatar (but no pfp by the looks of it)!
And prsom for the personal rep bit 😪

i like the little PFPs. have you seen mine?
and ofc ofc prsom likewise.

This change has now been released, thank you for your understanding, all!