Why this forum / site changed to worse and when is it going to improve?

daxys
Posts:45

The forums now look like from the beginnings of the internet (now paragraphs, illogical structure, need to scroll all the time etc..)
Are these things going to improve or is it the final version of the new version?
Most materials from the old forums and website seem to be lost or cannot be found. I saved some links to precious information by Jack West from the old website and they cannot be accessed now.

I do not understand this change in the forums and website. Two versions back the forums here were almost perfect and now they are worst of all lung cancer forums.

JanineT GRACE …
Posts: 657
GRACE Community Outreach Team

Hi daxys,

Thanks for chiming in. We're working to get the forums right. What do you mean by scrolling all the time? If your talking about having to scroll all the way past the filter choices to post a new thread; yes I agree. Are you saying that the layout of a forum thread is too spread out?

The last 2 sites had to be changed because they were unstable and ready to fail. The old forum should be up but I don't know when. If you would send Denise of me the links you're looking for Denise can find them on her end and post them. I realize there are tons of links that don't work and I'm so sorry about that. The links to the old forum obviously won't work but are you having trouble with the articles or videos as well? And yes the site will continue to improve.
I much appreciate you speaking up daxys.

All best,
Janine

I joined GRACE as a caregiver for my husband who had a Pancoast tumor, NSCLC stage III in 2009. He had curative chemo/rads then it was believed he had a recurrence in the spine/oligometastasis that was radiated. He's 10 years out from treatment.

daxys
Posts: 45

Sorry for the criticism, I got really frustrated because I think lung cancer patients would deserve a simple and good English forum such as e.g. krebs-kompass.de is in German.
to explain :
- the text of posts is not shown in paragraphs (or is there a way to change setting to see the text in paragraphs?) so you cant write posts that are a little more complex without getting one large mass of a text - really uncomfortable to read and understand
- scrolling down because of the spread layout - you get to see just one post in a tread and a lot of vacant space
- having to write the subject again for a reply in a tread again (the tread has the subject so why replies should have new subjects ?)
- why do we have to be tested whether we are human visitors with every post ? Have not seen this in other forums.

This is/was a great website that contained so much great and precious information - especially articles by Jack West (who is ahead of times) in many things and they are either moved or cannot be accessed. To contact someone by email to access every single thing again is quite uncomfortable and time-consuming.

JanineT GRACE …
Posts: 657
GRACE Community Outreach Team

No apologies necessary. There are obvious problems. The paragraphs and dead links are being worked out. You shouldn't have to add a subject line if you don't want. It will automatically use your first line or first few words as the subject line. That's just to give others a clue about your comment. I'll give Denise a heads in case she wants to comment.

Thanks again,
Janine

I joined GRACE as a caregiver for my husband who had a Pancoast tumor, NSCLC stage III in 2009. He had curative chemo/rads then it was believed he had a recurrence in the spine/oligometastasis that was radiated. He's 10 years out from treatment.

dbrock
Posts: 162

Operations Director, GRACE

 

Hi Daxys, I certainly understand your frustration. We have run into some drupal issues with the formatting but it should be getting there. really apologize for the frustration.

 

GRACE is made up of 2 moderators (Jim and Janine), myself, an executive director, a contract program director who coordinates the filmings, and Jack West and other faculty, who provide content. I understand your frustration with us, but as it has always been -- we are a small group of people who are working hard to make this the best it can be. I know we have been asking for patience for a while, but we honestly are working hard to make this website great.

 

The forums are an integral part of GRACE and it is high on the list of tasks. Janine is right -- the subject line should pick up your first line of text in your reply. The text formatting is showing itself to be something in the code that is overwriting our formatting settings, so we need to dig deeper to see why it is happening.

The vacant space is being cleaned up.

The reason you have to be 'tested' if you are human is because you would be shocked at the amount of 'bots' that come through and litter the back end with spam every minute of the day. If we opened it up, the site would crash with the amount of spam that would fill it up. I apologize about that -- but there is not much that we can do about it.

 

Again, apologies. hopefully you will see some fixes very soon.

 

Regards - 

Denise

Operations Director for GRACE. Have worked with cancerGRACE.org since July 2009.  Became involved as a caregiver to my best friend, and quickly came to see that GRACE is filling a need in the area of cancer education. 

Jim C GRACE Co…
Posts: 147

GRACE Community Outreach Team

Hi daxys, I certainly would echo what Denise has said. When I first became involved with GRACE, I was completely amazed by how much relevant, helpful and authoritative content a very small group of dedicated individuals was able to present on this site. That's the main reason that became a moderator, to help out. Over GRACE's ten-year existence, the amount of archived content that has been created is staggering, and although I too am frustrated by our current inability to make it all easily accessible, I understand what a huge task it is to take all that data and port it from an aging platform (continually at risk of collapsing under its own weight) to this new, more robust site. But we'll get these issues worked out, I promise! Jim C Forum Moderator

dbrock
Posts: 162

Operations Director, GRACE

 

Matter of fact -- look at it now.  :)  

Operations Director for GRACE. Have worked with cancerGRACE.org since July 2009.  Became involved as a caregiver to my best friend, and quickly came to see that GRACE is filling a need in the area of cancer education. 

daxys
Posts: 45

Thank you for fixing the paragraphing and changing the line distance.

I appreciate what people on cancergrace are doing and the website was/is a great source of information that in many cases was not to be found anywhere else. I also appreciate input I got from patients and moderators here on your forums.

Its a pity (lung) cancer patients cannot use one  really good forum where all the information could be gathered, saved, shared and used by everyone who needs it.  There is a lot patients and moderators can share to help them survive.  This is not just about the forum here, but about other forums for lung cancer.