PROBLEMS WITH THIS (NAS) FORUM - February 2018

I accept that this may be a "Bad" Topic, yet it needs to be highlighted, surely where "NAS" can *not* avoid seeing it, surely...

Current Problems with this Forum:
- Posts Disappear and Reappear at Random.
- Notifications are not always received (apparently).
- Editing Posts - *after* they have been replied to.
- Things such as "Groups" or "BlogPosts" or "Questions"... seem to have no meaning, and so they cannot be applied...?
(Anyone reading, you may currently check your own "Profile" to confirm this. Click upon your own "Achievements", and then upon "List of Possible Achievements".)
- ... There is a great list of "Achievements". Again, many of these have no defined meaning and so are un-achievable. (Linked to "Questions", "BlogPosts", "Ideas", "Status"...?)
- Assigning "Tags" to a New Thread seems to change constantly, and has neither Logical Order nor Meaning.

Here is the "Main" Thread, at which Comments directly to NAS are supposed to be Posted... yet much of it is completely ignored by NAS; It is only responded to by "WebPM", but for whom NAS would not have this "Forum" in the first place, I would wager...
community.autism.org.uk/.../online-community---comments-improvements-and-feedback

Parents
  • An update regarding missing images. For the problem of images being posted and then disappearing afterwards, we believe that we have identified a software bug. This is fixed by a patch available from the suppliers. We are planning to apply the patch. That is designed to prevent any more images from vanishing. I do not yet have a time-scale for this, but obviously we will do it as soon as possible.

    We are trying to recover the images that are already missing. This may or may not be possible. I'll post updates when we have them. Apologies for any inconvenience or confusion that this has caused.

    I'll look separately at the notifications issue, not least because there is a thread for that.

    Regards

    (Later edit: sorry, but we have been unable to recover the missing images. Our backups are designed to protect the messaging database in the first instance. This problem is rather untypical for a forum, and the affected images are also missing from our backups.)

  • We've looked into the view count issue as well. It should be fixed. Something "broke". Sorry to have several issues at once. We have a patch from the software suppliers to fix the image issue, but we'll have to test it before we can apply it here, so I can't guarantee no more lost images in the meantime. See a separate thread for email notifications.

    The number of registered users is difficult to state meaningfully. Because we use single sign-on, the total number of people with potential access is the number who have registered with the NAS for any reason, including for example our Web shop, membership, and making donations to help fund our work, as well as this Community - they are all people with sign-ons that could be used to participate here as well as on our www site. That's bigger than the number of users that we've logged here. On the other hand, some users who have been logged here have not been back for some time, i.e. years, so it's debatable whether they are still meaningful users. Forums are always like that - a large number of users may just mean that you've been around a long time, as has this forum.

    What we're all looking for, I think, is a wide range of current users.

    Oh, and we started the NAS12345 sequence at a randomly-chosen number Grinning We just wanted a way to protect anyone whose sign-in username was close to that person's real name, not having been chosen with forum privacy in mind. It's not intended to have any particular meaning for any reason.

  • Thank you WebPM for getting these things sorted, I know I get a bit well!!! Stressed and often come across as mean but I get stressed at things that don’t work as they should and the long wait and sometimes the members having to report faults is a tad frustrating. 

    I am aware this valuable resource is free for me and others and should be grateful it exhist at all but the modern life and instant everything available ways sometimes makes me forget everything has a cost and as this is funded partly by charity and managed in part by volunteers needs to be remembered by me,

    sorry.

     Thank you thus far for putting up with me,

    ()

    oh and the view count has jumped from 740 to 1309, 

    I now have had eleven email notifications, 

    just the picture vanishing and inability to post any kind of image of any size whilst in PM area?

  • I have spent some time working through that thread, trying to understand which messages had disappeared. There are a couple of general mentions of missing messages, but unfortunately those don't allow me to identify the messages involved. There are also some specific ones:

    • , in the message linked above, references this message which, as DC states, quotes a previous message (about a looong post), again from DC, that cannot now be found. I found that original post two messages higher in the thread than the one that quoted it.
    • Former Member posted about a previous message, reassuring  about an "argument", but not being able to find that message again. I found it two messages above Oktanol's second message. By chance these two sets of messages are clustered together:

    Could it be therefore that this is caused, not by actual disappearing messages, but by the problem that you have discussed in locating messages in threads? Alternatively, it's remotely possible that some word caused a message and its replies to go into moderation (so it was hidden for a day or two) - but that's very unlikely, because you're all recognised as established members, and the system uses this "reputation" to exempt you from most moderation.

    I'm afraid I haven't yet posted enough to see either this or the red dot with my own messages Relaxed

    May I make a couple of suggestions? First, I'd say that, with all forums, long threads get complex and hard to use. With "linear" forums, people tend to quote each other heavily, just to show to which messages they are replying. That's less an issue here because of the way that messages are indented to show replies, so threads are shorter without all the quotes. Nonetheless, this method has its problems too, as we're seeing. On both forum types, I'd consider starting a new thread if part of a discussion wanders onto a new topic - as I have alluded to for new forum issues.

    Secondly, as you may know, you can search within a thread to locate a known message. So, to find the references above to "looong messages", I expanded all the Load Nexts and then used Control-F (on a desktop) to search for "looong". You can see in the screenshot that I did the same for "argu" (i.e. argue, argument). On an Android device, Find in Page is on the browser's ellipsis/overflow menu (the three dots at top right).

    Sorry for another looong message.

  • http://community.autism.org.uk/user/notifications

    ...Reposting that and then quoting is *not* at all easy to do...

    I did the quote first in this message. Then I moved my cursor to the start of the message (i.e. the start of the quote), added a carriage return, and pasted in the link above the quote.

    I would always get the quote first (by highlighting it in the other contributor's message and using the Quote option that appears), then build my message around it.

    Does that help at all? If not, could you describe more what you're trying to do?

  • Did no-one heed the Link which I Posted before? 

    http://community.autism.org.uk/user/notifications

    ...Reposting that and then quoting is *not* at all easy to do...

  • To the very gracious WebPM... You interact with us differently from NAS, is what I always say....

    - Disappearing Posts. This is a direct link to an instance of "disappearing Posts", which I myself stated at the time. The link is to my own Post. (...FYI: - I never edit my own Posts after they have been answered to.):

    http://community.autism.org.uk/f/health-and-wellbeing/11904/a-shame-the-snow-has-gone/65837#65837

    - "The red dot" - If a User has begun a lot of Threads, or has subscibed to them, then the "Red Dot" will never disappear! Did no-one heed the Link which I Posted before? 

    - So many things to address, so few places to address them in... I may, here, have unintentionally begun another "NAS Improvements, comments", etc. Thread, and I did not entirely mean to do so...! NAS should have done that, not myself. And WEBPM has replied here, and not NAS (!)... WebPM, by now, you have contributed so much that you might even actually be able to see *your own* comments disappearing at times, which indicates just how much more helpful you are...! 

    (Yes, I keep flattering you. No, I still cannot EMail or PM.)

  • Yeah, same. I know it's completely irrational of me to be irritated by it but I can't seem to ignore it either - I've even called it names in my head then thought "What am I doing?", then realised I'm not only talking to myself but also answering myself! Then I remember this is a sign of true madness, so I laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Then I wonder if I really AM going mad!!!

    Then I remember that overthinking things is a very Aspie thing to do so I relax and remember to breathe   :)   

  • I’m the same with the red dot Endymion, I’m just learning to live with it but I’d like it better if it would go away because I can’t seem to stop trying to get rid of it, with the same results! Insanity! Lol! And it never seems to cease being irritating! Lol! I think I just laugh at myself now when I feel irritated. I see the funny side of being so p****d off with a little red dot! Lol! 

Reply
  • I’m the same with the red dot Endymion, I’m just learning to live with it but I’d like it better if it would go away because I can’t seem to stop trying to get rid of it, with the same results! Insanity! Lol! And it never seems to cease being irritating! Lol! I think I just laugh at myself now when I feel irritated. I see the funny side of being so p****d off with a little red dot! Lol! 

Children
  • Yeah, same. I know it's completely irrational of me to be irritated by it but I can't seem to ignore it either - I've even called it names in my head then thought "What am I doing?", then realised I'm not only talking to myself but also answering myself! Then I remember this is a sign of true madness, so I laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Then I wonder if I really AM going mad!!!

    Then I remember that overthinking things is a very Aspie thing to do so I relax and remember to breathe   :)