This is the THIRD time all of my “Info” has been deleted or misplaced. I know I’m responsible for 1 of those. But give me a friggin break! ALL OF MY INFO IS GONE! The amount of time I’m had put into my page or profile. Someone really screwed the pooch with this site this time. It can’t find a thing, just have to “trip” on things. Found my page or profile, and the only thing there was my username, GREAT FRIGGIN JOB!!! And now do I do it ALL OVER AGAIN?!! I’M DON’T KNOW! It is so frustrating, so if anyone reads this and replies, maybe lead to a resolution.
Well, so far as I can tell, this site is just as frustrating as the 1 before, if not more. I am not bashing, being honest because I thought it would be easier to navigate.
Thats correct. Everything that can come over is over. Three messages were sent to members and one pinned post made on the old site that they needed to save their friends lists and personal information as that was not a feature available in the new site the way it was in Ning. The announcement was made over a year ago that Blogs was also a feature that was being shut down as it would not be available on the new site.
It would have been great if it was possible, but it isn’t. As discussed frequently over the last year, the reason for the change was that Ning was no longer supported by “Mode Media” and we forced to make a change or have additional communities completely collapse. Different is certainbly better than having no communities at all.
The resolution was announced well in advance of the migration.
I am sorry if I did not catch the necessary notifications, in the necessary time frame, I do apologize,
it must have been MY fault. So, in that case, I will try harder to pay more attention to this site in particular so as to be SURE to catch ANY future notifications.
I’m sorry you feel that way. Literally several thousand hours from volunteers (we have no staff) and thousands of dollars in donated services from the discourse Organization have been put into preserving these communities in as near to the old as possible. I wish we had the resources to provide our 60,000 members personalizied services rather than group notifications, but we don’t. Your contributions have been greatly appreciated by other members, I’m sure. Hopefully you will find another group that will provide you the support those members have given you.
Agreed cant get to chat, threw you out of your former groups, friends list is gone and it sucked that you have to right your story all over again. Clew look before you leap. They didn’t when they changed every thing.
Would love to have duplicated what had. We could have bought the Ning2 format for 1.8 million dollars but Mode beat us to it. We also could have custom coded our own system. In the 2 years we spent examining various pre existing formats and built working communities on several of the better, we actually got estimates for custom coding they ranged from 150K UP.
We finally decided on Discourse which because it was stack exchange and written in Ruby on Rails which allows it to be integrated with Word press We spent several months trying to do that with a multi site format but abandoned that project when became apparent our monthly operating expenses would increase six fold delaying the establishment of nearly 100 waiting communities indefinitely. Something unacceptable to me.
We received estimates of 50k to integrate a fully robust chat system that shows whos online. We instead wrote a workaround that does everything (and actually more when we roll out all the features) Chat is a rarely used feature on most of our communities as is the use of Groups.It was none the less a tough decision tp proced without. We didn’t have the money anyway. This is a fully volunteer group.
The total collapse of two of our larger communites One of which we were only able to partially restore from Back-ups mad a lot of decisions easier. The option of no communities loomed large.
I am working with a development group on a plug-in for chat which once we can keep it less glitchy. Its a 50K project being done by volunteers. Its a group project just google “Stack exchange summer of code” You are welcome to add your expertise. Your comment lead me to believe you know something we don’t. I am more than willing to learn. I haven’t written code since college 40 years ago.
The good news is we own this format entirely. This is our first and last migration, we are no longer dependent on the everchanging tech world. Our monthly expenses are for hosting are basically the only expenses we have except for some coming design and customization as funds are available.
We would like to at some point add a full time community manager as that job is currently being carried out by 2 really great ladies (Seenie and Jules) but the job is becoming overwhelming for part time volunteers.
I truly am sorry our volunteer group didn’t meet your expectations Maybe after more than 10 minutes on the site and 2 topic views (yup its all on your profile), you will find something you like.
Thank you to our amazing moderator team here – they’ve done a stellar job of guiding the community through this chaos. And thank you to our members for your patience. I know it can be frustrating to have to relearn a new site but I hope this message explains things.
AVMSurvivors.org has been running on Ning servers and software since 2007. Ning has almost gone out of business. Customer service takes weeks to get back to us and our old web site was down part of everyday, it seems. It would have been only a matter of time before Ning completely shut down, taking all your data with it.
The technology team of the tiny nonprofit that runs AVMSurvivors.org looked far and wide for a new home. We hit the jackpot when the founders of one of the largest discussion sites, StackOverflow, offered to rescue us by writing custom scripts to move our communities to their world-class discussion software.
This new software is brand new to us, but we’ve seen polished versions of it and it’s really amazing.
The team at Discourse told us early on that we wouldn’t be able to bring over all our data, and we did our best to make sure everyone knew what would and wouldn’t be migrated.
I really wish there was another alternative to this migration but we looked far and wide and this was the best we could do to save the old data. New members won’t know the difference. They’ll only see what a great community of AVM survivors this is.
We are and will remain the oldest, most authentic, and friendliest AVM support group on the internet. This is our first migration in almost 10 years. It should be our last for a long, long time. We’ll rebuild and be stronger than ever. Thanks for your feedback. We take it very seriously.
I understand that a lot of people spent a lot of time & effort creating & maintaining this site. I did not come to this site because of THAT, I came here to get my AVM stuff off my chest and share with other AVMers. I didn’t think I was also expected to pay homage to the site. Isn’t the name of this site AVM Survivors Network.
Then perhaps you should “come here to get your my AVM stuff off your chest and share with other AVMers” instead of telling my team they are a bunch of screw-ups. Without them there would be no site. 5 posts and one thread since you joined in Feb and this is the thread and all your posts…
Hello, Skippy
I’m Seenie, one of the Moderator Support team with TJ and JulesG. I know things are difficult for you, and the change of platform doesn’t make things any easier. I’m not as quick on the uptake as the other members of my team, so I’ve had my own challenges with the switch. But I’m getting there. Some days, anyway!
If you’re looking for something easy and positive to do at avmsurvivors, you could post a short message on this thread. (That’s a link, just click on the blue text.) I’m sure a few words from you will bring a smile to Jasmine’s face, and maybe even brighten a few other members’ days too.
Peer support isn’t all about information: sometimes it’s about sharing a bit of companionship and empathy.
All the best to you
Seenie from Moderator Support
