Thoughts on the October 2024 upgrade

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?

Parents
  • I would just like to express my thanks to those of you who have expressed your thoughts, which I have found interesting to read. I had hoped to reply to you individually, but currently lack the spoons to do so. Perhaps this is something I may do at a later date. Slight smile

  • 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. 

Reply
  • 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. 

Children
  • That’s great advice guys

    Thank you 

  • 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 

  • 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 
  • 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.

  • 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.