Public Forums

Hi Andy, Thanks for the update, however it appears you will have an uphill struggle with this one as there have been almost no posts across the forum with the exception of the "G" game in the General section. The most prolific posters have disappeared and we are all going to be worse off for it.

For many of us who have children who fall into the gaps between no problems and enough problems to provoke intervention, this forum is an incredibly valuable resource in an adoption world with dire levels of state sponsored support. That support is provided by the users of the forum, the community. Right now, the community seems to have disappeared. Are there plans to try to reengage those lost users? Without those experienced adopters sharing their insights, this is not going to work.

Hi Andy,

Thanks for your update.

Like Ford Prefect, I am worried about the silence. The linkmaker / Adoption UK set up is unusual and therefore not very intuitive. I hope people will get used to it and the forums will pick up again. It might be worth doing a few screenshots and publishing a "how to" pdf or post. I think it is very important that users can use their old usernames as community names in order to be able to recognise each other and to "feel like themselves".

BTW, I noticed a small error in the chat filter. The ages the filter offers are 0-4, 5-OCT, NOV-15, 6+. Seems like the field is a text field and should be numerical.

Many thanks!

Why can’t I use my old name? To be honest it’s all too much of a faff at the moment. I appreciate there are security issues etc but three point ID for a public forum is just bonkers. It does put people off ... there are easier options!

As far as I understand, you need a username to log in and a community name that is displayed on the forums. The two cannot be the same. If you gave your old AdoptionUK username as your new linkmaker username, you then can't use it as your community name. I think that took all of us by surprise.

You can change your linkmaker username quite easily (top right corner) to something new, but I don't know how you can then change your community name to your old AUK username.

Hi - sorry this is confusing, but I hope this helps:

As chestnuttree says, you can change your community name (which displays to other users) to your old forum name, as long as the name you want is available. It is possible that you have already used your forum name for your username - this is purely used for logging in, for security reasons.

You can check your username by going to your account menu, top-right. If this is already using the community name you want to use on the forum, you can change it here to be something you just use for logging in.

To change your community name, go to the Adoption UK menu > My profile and click ‘edit’. So long as the name you want to use hasn’t been used by someone else, and isn’t already set as your user name, you should be able to set it here.

I totally agree Ford Prefect - the new forum is very hard to use & as you said there are hardly any posts.

Over the last 10 years this forum has been an absolute god-send. The wealth of experience & understanding has helped my family more than I could ever say. Without it I know I would have been lost.

There HAS to be a way of making it easier to log on/navigate/post & reply. A lot of us don't want 'real' friends through 'playdate finder' but a virtual friend who has been through similar/'gets it' who can post & share support.

I should be gutted to lose this support - but can't see how this is going to work.

:(

Could you order to list of topics when you click on "Public Forums" in the same order they were in the old forum? I think that would make a difference to users and make the forum look more familiar.

Hi Chestnuttree. The list of forums is actually the same order as it was before, except for 'Acronyms' and 'Rules of use' being at the top. We're going to move them to the bottom shortly so that it's just as it used to be. Thanks for the suggestion.

Hi Andy.

Very confusing re-registration process which resulted in my agency receiving an embarassing request to approve me. What was that all about? Why would they have been asked that? Is it this part:

"- Forum only users (when you have been verified by an agency) should not have profile pictures, but pictures appeared which caused confusion."

Would my agency have been asked to verify me purely so I could have a profile picture, be able to arrange physical play-dates etc? They were unhappy and rejected the application thinking I wanted to get onto the Link Maker family finding site.

That was my typo - it should have said “Forum only users (when you have not been verified by an agency) should not have profile pictures, but pictures appeared which caused confusion.”. I’ve edited it now, apologies.

i hope this explains it better: Guide to new community area

We do try to be clear with agencies about what the verifications are for, and have done many hundreds of these for community features in the past 5 years. I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding with your agency, but this can certainly be cleared up with them by us if you like.

While sorting out my AUK membership and going in and out of the Chat function while driving about my work, logging in and out of my mobile phone. I noticed that I could see the distance I was from other members. Please could the admins let me know if this distance is worked out from the registered address or from the location services on the device.

Hello Ford. The 'distance from you' figure is based on registered addresses - it doesn't know where you actually are.

Thanks LM Admins. I was just wondering why we need to know how close we are to other adopters?

You don't need to know this (especially if you are only interested in online support) in which case please ignore that figure. However some people might have adopted quite recently, or feel isolated, or might be looking to build their local support network. In that case we hope that being able to find other adopters in your area might be helpful.