Dear Online Community users,
We are excited to announce that our Online Community will be upgraded and will be hosted by an improved forum platform by the end of October 2024. For these reasons the online community may not be available on the 26th of September for a short amount of time due to these reasons. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. We would like to thank you for your patience and understanding during this period.
These upgrades will reduce the technical difficulties some users have experienced, increase the forum's reliability and make it easier for the moderation team to accurately detect spam. We will also be able to implement many of the suggestions Online Community users made during our consultation with you earlier this year.
We will send you the confirmed dates as soon as possible. We will also let you know if there are any actions you need to take when we upgrade the forum. We will share these updates with you by email and on the Online Community.
We would like to update you with some important changes and updates that will be implemented upon transition to the new community:
Inactive Accounts Clean Up - In order to streamline the forum upgrade and enhance performance, we have to remove all Online Community accounts that have been inactive for the past 12 months. This will happen on the 9th of October 2024 (this date has been extended due to unforeseen technical issues). If you have not logged into your account for the past 12 months, please log in by the 9th of October 2024 to prevent your account from being deleted.
We will make sure that all the comments and posts from deleted accounts, which we know are a great source of help and support to users, will still be visible. They will continue to be displayed on the new platform but will show as written by "Deleted user" rather than the original user.
Thread Transfer Limitations - There is new legislation that our Online Community must comply with called the Online Safety Act. This Act means that we will not be able to transfer non-active threads to the new platform if they have not been updated in more than 2 years. This measure will reduce the likelihood that information or advice provided in the transferred threads is out of date and inaccurate.
If there are any inactive threads that you would to retain when the forum is upgraded, you may like to add a comment to reactivate that thread before 4th of October 2024 (this date has been extended due to unforeseen technical issues).
We appreciate your understanding and cooperation during this process. We understand that some users may be worried about this upgrade but we anticipate that these improvements will enhance your user experience. We will also provide you with as much notice as possible of the upcoming changes and we will create clear guidance documents and videos to help you to stay connected and engaged in the Online Community.
If you have any questions or concerns, please email communitymanager@nas.org.uk
Many thanks,
The Moderation Team