Guide to Problems and suggestions

Hi apythany,

Sorry to read you're experiencing problems posting a new discussion. In order to do this, you must first choose which category your discussion best fits with so other members will find it easily. 

If you go to the list of discussions (community.autism.org.uk/discussions) you will see the categories available. Once you have chosen a category, for example, 'Education matters' and click through, there should be an option at the top of the page, under the main heading that reads "Start new discussion".

If this is not available to you, please email community.manager@nas.org.uk and I'll investigate further to see why you can't post new content.

Best wishes,
Mike, NAS 

Hello, I have been trying to start a new discussion for days now, with no joy! I can reply to posts, go on any info pages but I can't start my own. I have tried internet explorer/firefox/mozilla with no joy. Please help

Hi John,

Sorry it's been frustrating for you. One of the issues is that because we built a system that combines the main website login and the Community login, we have to use the login from the main website. So it's not that I disagree that the timeout is frustrating, but that it's a pretty big decision to extend it.

I can't promise an immediate fix to the issue but I will be looking at some work to check that the timeout is working correctly and get people to consider whether it should be extended. You're also not the first person to suggest a permanent login - given that banking and direct debit details may be held by the main account in future that would need careful consideration - but I'll certainly put your view forward.

Do keep us updated if you are regularly being timed out early though, it should help us try to at least fix that issue.

Jim V - mod said:

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head - we're currently trying to resolve an issue where you're signed out of the main website after 45 minutes, no matter how active you are in the community.If the timeouts cross over the community thinks you should be able to post but doesn't know whose signed in - hence the Anonymous post.

There's a couple of possible solutions but should be resolved soon.

I don't think it's taking me as long as 45 minutes to compose replies,   but when I come to submit, I'm often finding I've been automatically timed out/signed out due to inactivity and I have to sign in again,  and after doing that I can't always get back to my draft so easily.      

I suppose the problem is that all the time I'm thinking about my wording and typing my message up, this clocks up inactivity.   I'm not sure whether it's me that's too slow or the timeout is too fast,  but I do find the net result is awkward.  

Other forums tend to use cookies to automatically authorise logged-in users, even after days or weeks of inactivity.   It's so much more convenient.   Would there be some security issue with adopting that same method here?   

At age 57 and having both Asperger's and IA; I started in IT in 1968 when we had one of the first IBM 'portable' machines, which only required three men to push it around the building and the floppy drive was 36 inches in diameter and everything was in binary.

A problem I have is that I cannot absorb a large amount of information in one go and I find the Home page of this website to be so intimidating that I tend to avoid using this website altogether.

Indeed, the Home page seems to ignore the needs of someone like me who needs a simple and uncluttered, logically laid out place from which to navigate to the rest of the website.

I've set the site for adult content but, as usual, there appears to be nothing of interest to those of us who are over 40 and approaching retirement.

Incidentally, my parents are long dead and I grew up in the 50s and 60s with parents who said, 'This is the reality, Chris, now get on with life.'

There seems to be a lot of needless reregistering, which, I presume, has something to do with the Data Protection Act and the requirement to maintain a separate member list per the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Guidance.

Seconding the desire for personalised avatars, either allowing us to upload them or link to them on external hosting. I understand the complications involved (hosting space, vetting, format/size control, rigidity/flexibility in forum style etc) but I hope that in time we'll be able to upload our own avatars. Like AMO, I have a (hobby-related) avatar that I use pretty much everywhere, and would love to be able to use it here too!

Hello,

Well this is very nice, I'm really pleased to see the NAS doing more grass roots stuff, if that's the right expression. But, as a disproportionate number of your users are going to be in IT fields and quite likely to have above average setups, can you make better use of the screen? I haven't gotten a ruler our but I'd say less than half the width of my screen is actually used for displaying messages. I have a grey/blue border on either side of the white background of the page, a large white strip to the left where some panels sit at the top of the page (perhaps these should stay in view as you scroll?) and another white strip to the right with nothing in it at all. I am aware that I can stretch this box that I am typing in, but as the forums grow there is going to be a lot of needless scrolling.

Nonetheless, an impressive and I feel bold move for you to take. Well done.

I'd like to second this, I had the same problem. I imagine a number of users will fall into multiple categories.

3hats said:

First time I have ever posted a message anywhere... please be nice.

When registering for the first time I am only allowed to be one category of person. But... I am a person with AS, I am a parent of, I am a family member of, plus I am also working as a 'professional' in AS. Depending on what I am doing I think of myself as being in different categories- different hats for different situations, but still me. The box below does allow me to add in other areas- but this feels like I have to decide which me is more important.

I am sure I am not the only person to fit into more than one category- and be proud of it.

 

I posted this in the intro thread cos I hadn't found this yet, but when will we be able to upload our own avatars? I use the same one for every forum I take part in so that I am recognisable to those who may know me in more than one context.

Hi Tabbybanx

Just to be clear, you don't need to add the private information in the profile in order to be able to post in the Community.

We've already separated out the Community profile to avoid it being linked to that long list of personal details.

I fully understand your reluctance to fill in that list of private information. There may have been a short delay between accepting the T&C and creating your profile so sorry for that.

And yes, I certainly think that when revising the profile we'll want to look long and hard at what is necessary and useful for users first and then the NAS.

So, a long process for you signing up but we're glad you did - hopefully you'll find the rest of your experience more encouraging :)

Hi.

I've just registered for this new community, and I have to say that I think you're making a mistake in your registration/profile process.

I am a NAS member, with a son with ASD (and daughter with Downs), and I'm sure that like others, I do not wish to give you my personal details (again) just to benefit from a forum.... especially when it can be a benefit to get info on such a subject anonymously.

Therefore, you have a load of rubbish that I've entered in my profile, just so I can post a reply!

Also you could make it clearer that once you've created the account, you still need to complete the community profile, so that others will not continually revisit a particular forum page, just to find out that they haven't entered enough info to enable the "reply" feature.

(I went to the forum page, went to create my profile, back to the forums page, didn't work, back to profile, ticked the T&Cs box, errors in profile... entered fake address, back to forums page, back to profile, entered fake interests, etc, back to forum page, and hey presto! it worked... hardly a user friendly process!)

Having said that I've managed it, and I'm only an IT professional with 20 years of experience....  

Take a moment and have a think... what do you *really* want the info for? You've already got it for your members... If you want to contact these people, surely email will be your primary means of communication?! 

So for example, if you want to direct them to a particular local NAS organisation, just ask that question ie: "pick the organisation nearest you for targetted local info...".

Now, I'll go and look at some of the other info available.

Bye! 

Hi 3hats,

Thanks for registering and posting for the first time. Really great that you've decided to do that here.

We're aware that the profile section on the NAS isn't as good or as clear as it should be. We'll be reviewing it and making it easier for everyone to use, hopefully very soon.

I'll make sure your comments are included when we're looking at what to change and what to improve. People's relationships with autism can be really complex and come from lots of areas and our profile should reflect this.

First time I have ever posted a message anywhere... please be nice.

When registering for the first time I am only allowed to be one category of person. But... I am a person with AS, I am a parent of, I am a family member of, plus I am also working as a 'professional' in AS. Depending on what I am doing I think of myself as being in different categories- different hats for different situations, but still me. The box below does allow me to add in other areas- but this feels like I have to decide which me is more important.

I am sure I am not the only person to fit into more than one category- and be proud of it.

It looks like I can comment on the entries in the list of other communities .. is this right?

Suggest the links open in new window. e.g. Terms and conditions

Anonymous said:

When I visited the Discussion Forum page, the number of "new" items wasn't accurate - the number of "new" items given was greater than the total number of posts in all the topics in that section.  For example, under the General Chat section, it said there were 5 topics with 16 new items.  In fact there were 5 replies in one topic and no replies in the other 4 topics. The Hobbies and Interests section said there were 3 topics with 8 new items, and so on.

I am not the most techy of people, but I assume this is a fault?

 

Yeah, the counters don't seem to be reset now, though they should be for the launch to founders. The number shown is including messages that have been unpublished - we'll be permanently deleting everything ahead of the launch.

Though hopefully the counters will be kept up to date and correct moving forward.

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head - we're currently trying to resolve an issue where you're signed out of the main website after 45 minutes, no matter how active you are in the community.If the timeouts cross over the community thinks you should be able to post but doesn't know whose signed in - hence the Anonymous post.

There's a couple of possible solutions but should be resolved soon.

I'm not sure why my previous post says it was anonymous, except that when I tried to send this reply I found that I was no longer signed in.  Between starting writing  my previous post and finishing I had to take a long phone call, so perhaps my "signed in" status had lapsed during that time.

When I visited the Discussion Forum page, the number of "new" items wasn't accurate - the number of "new" items given was greater than the total number of posts in all the topics in that section.  For example, under the General Chat section, it said there were 5 topics with 16 new items.  In fact there were 5 replies in one topic and no replies in the other 4 topics. The Hobbies and Interests section said there were 3 topics with 8 new items, and so on.

I am not the most techy of people, but I assume this is a fault?