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Thoughts on the October 2024 upgrade

Sporadic Sparkly

I will start by saying that I'm hoping it won't take too long for the current technical issues to be resolved. To be fair to the moderation team, they had warned us beforehand that after the upgrade, we might find ourselves having to reset our passwords in order to access our accounts. It's just unfortunate that the technical issue meant that none of us had been receiving a password reset e-mail. I can only speak for myself, but as I had suspected the moderation team would be inundated with e-mails from members, I had felt bad for adding to their workload, whilst also feeling like I was having to jump through hoops.

Putting the technical issues aside, and having eventually succeeded in being able to sign into my account, I was almost in a state of shock when I discovered that I was able to receive e-mail notifications again. Previously, I had opted to only receive e-mail notifications for private messages, and on-screen notifications or no notifications for everything else.

Prior to the upgrade, I had felt that the timestamp on forum discussions needed to be more visible. I had lost count of how many times I had seen newer members commenting on discussions that had been created several years beforehand by members who haven't been active on the forums for years, or have had their accounts closed. Now, I'm not talking about the kind of discussions where any advice given may be considered relevant and useful for other members.

When perusing the list of discussions on the main Home page, or the individual topic boards (i.e. Miscellaneous and Chat), I have noticed that if I hover over the discussion title, a preview window appears. This enables me to see at a glance who created it, get a basic gist of the content, and also see when it had been created.

Before the upgrade, I'm aware that some members had found it confusing when the replies to discussions consisted of replies to replies - what some members refer to as sub-threads, I think. Based on my observations so far, no changes (improvements) seem to have been made to how those sub-threads appear.

Prior to the upgrade I had found that when I signed out, it felt like it took forever for me to actually be signed out. Well, not any more.

I seem to recall the moderation team saying that accounts that hadn't been accessed for something like 12+ months were going to be deleted. I dread to think how long that's going to take them! As I think it was around 15 years ago when this online community was created, I feel sure there must be hundreds of inactive accounts. In addition to that, I'm sure there will probably be a lot of other work that will be taking place behind the scenes, so to speak.

For those of you who were members here before the recent upgrade, I'd be interested to know whether you have any thoughts about it. Have you noticed any changes that you consider to be an improvement? Is there anything that you don't like and consider to be even worse?

  • in reply to SpikeyMark

    I have a profile page???? Where? I think all I've ever had on mine was my user name, I don't remember being asked about anything else.

    Maybe it's just me being crap again?

  • I'm disappointed with the same things most people here are, especially the fact that the layout has remained the same in threads ie this:

    Sporadic Sparkly said:
    Before the upgrade, I'm aware that some members had found it confusing when the replies to discussions consisted of replies to replies - what some members refer to as sub-threads, I think. Based on my observations so far, no changes (improvements) seem to have been made to how those sub-threads appear.

    However, NAS aren't under an obligation to provide a forum, as a charity.

    If they do though it should of course function well otherwise it just adds to the daily stresses of autists.

    The mods aren't in any way responsible for the problems here and they have clearly been trying to help (so thanks).

    I'd like for whoever has full paid responsibility for the forum upgrade to post here, personally.

  • There is a solution here for those still unable to log into their original accounts, posted recently by Sharon mod:

     Password problems 

  • My thoughts are that it’s causing a lot of upset - and I’m writing this mainly to see if my account is even functioning! 

  • Email notifications are working again. Sunglasses I haven't had an email from Nas since signing up. I received one suddenly from the 3 good things thread and then I remembered this place. Logging in has been near impossible, I used the password reset link and that allowed me access to my FJM account.

    On first glance the community is definitely faster. Emoji doesn't glitch through the whole wall of text so far. I'm able to edit my post without it going in to the spam quarantine. So far the only issue for me has been the singing in. I created a new temporary account initially but everything I typed the system thought was spam even editing my profile page then I decided to wait it out until I could access this one again. 

  • I was told that if you haven't got anything nice to say, then it is better to say nothing.

    According, I comment on the changeover process (and resultant "New" forum functionality) as follows;

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    I hope that explains my feelings..

  • in reply to Mummycat

    The one I put there that starts with "community.autism..."

  • in reply to Mummycat

    It's your profile page - no, it's not private.

    Remember how new users would have them as their username?

    There is no reason for it to be private - it is just the default username.

    Click on the link - you typed all that - definately not meant to be private.

  • in reply to SpikeyMark

    How did you finbd this information, shouldn't this be private and not accessible to other memembers?

  • in reply to Mummycat

    Now I'm having problems getting the whole conversation, I get the OP but not the body of the thread.

    The site also seems to have gone to dial up speed and I keep getting timed out, I know it's this site as others load instantly.

  • in reply to Mummycat

     - if it helps, your NAS number is at the end of your (original) profile page

    community.autism.org.uk/.../nas92378

    So, in your case it is NAS92378

    These aren't private info - it's just what you were given before renaming yourself to TheCatWoman

  • I think it's an utter shambles, I still can't access my original account, I'm not keen on the new lay out, it's taken ages or to turn of notification and for them stay switched off.

    Old threads are still being disintered and commented on, the one I noticed earlier was year and years old.

    Am I the only one who dosen't have my original account number? It never occured to me that it was something I would ever need, when I created my account my number was replaced by the name I'd chosen.

    There are things I'd like to do, but I daren't in case I start the whole sorry process of being accuse of abuse or of being a spam account.

  • in reply to SpikeyMark

    That’s great advice guys

    Thank you 

  • in reply to Eunice Mod

    Hi Eunice

    Thank you for your reply and I’m sorry that I have perhaps added to your heavy workload.

    Really appreciate your speedy response 

  • I have managed to get into mine for me. I was wondering if this might be helpful. 

    I didnt need to send them a Nas number all I needed to do was say I cant log in at the weekend then today they came back with a link to reset my password with my NAS number on the email  today.

     after doing that I  had an email saying i hope you got it after. I clicked reset password then it came up with bars with reset password password abouve.  you dont need to put your email adress in. just type your password in then you sign in and put your email and password after that then it signs you in. this is only in my case though. i dont know if people have tryed it this way or not aswell yet but thought it might be helpful

  • in reply to Take5

    Dear Take5, 

    We are very sorry that you are experiencing technical issues on our new online community platform. We understand why you are concerned.
    We would like to reassure you our technical support team is working hard behind the scenes to try to fix this as quickly as possible. We have published a thread with more information here:  Password problems and posts incorrectly marked as spam. 
    Please do contact CommunityManager@nas.org.uk if you have any questions. 
    We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. We would like to thank you for your understanding and continued patience during this time. 
    Kind Regards,
    Eunice Mod 
  • in reply to Sporadic Sparkly

    Yes - as Sporadic Sparkly says, make it clear to them which account you want re-activating by providing that NAS number. If you find an old post of yours, click on yourself to take you to the profile and your NAS number is at the end of the URL in your browser.

  • in reply to Take5

    Hello Take5,

    When you e-mailed the Community Manager, did you include the NAS number for your original account?

    Like you, I had resorted to creating a new account as I hadn't been receiving the password reset e-mail. After an exchange of e-mails, I was asked if I wanted the moderation team to e-mail me a password reset link. It didn't work, so they then e-mailed me to say they had set up a temporary password for my original account. Thankfully, I was then able to sign in to my original account.

    It does seem strange though that you're receiving e-mail notifications to your temporary account that relate to your original account. Unless you have been using your temporary account to comment on threads you had previously commented on with your original account, I can't see why that would be happening. 

  • in reply to Sporadic Sparkly

    Hello

    I am still experiencing issues. Firstly I had to use a different email address to re register if you like to be able to be part of the community still. I have contacted the moderator 3 times now as I never receive a password reset link to be able to reinstate my original account. I’m still unable to do this. On top of this I am getting email notifications of replies to threads I have been involved with (which I don’t want) but these get sent to my original email and not the temporary on I set up just to access. I’m really confused as I’m using my temporary account but receiving notifications on my original email…. Things like this absolutely scramble my brain. It feels like such a huge thing for me to manage. Guess I’m not a fan of change even if it will be a better experience eventually. Hoping I get a password reset link soon so I can feel less overwhelmed about it all.