Thank you, will try it - almost have the hang of the varifocals now so I'm hopeful.
K
Hi, ive been thinking about this reaction quite a lot....sea angler 29/12 22.17
I have apologised profusely to sea angler both publicly and privately, through pm and had no response.
i would like to clarify the following points:
1. At no point did I say or insinuate that sea angler hadn't helped people, why would I do that, I don't know him/her.
2. I asked people's thoughts, many do on the forum, of course I didn't expect everyone to agree with me only, I don't quite know where that accusation came from.
3. I most certainly do not have an 'agenda' to make a sport out of anyone, again, Im not sure how this was presumed.
my point was that in my mind the puk forum has to be different to a forum that is provided for a hobby, passion, or pastime, it's a lifeline to some.
Apologies for revisiting this thread, but it's been on my mind.
Ali, its really just another missunderstanding that can happen when faceless people are responding to a point of view via computer via the internet. I'm sure if we were all sat around a table and looking at the person speaking at any one given time there would be less missunderstanding and more agreement. Its easiar sitting face to face in reality to disagree with anothers point of view, and body language speaks volumes....when you can see it.
Your original post asking if the forum was used to its full potential is extremely relevant, in fact i'd go further and state that if the forum was more functional and user friendly then these type of situations might not even develop in the first place !
Carry on posting Ali, the subject needs aired and a response from PUK would be appreciated, but dont hold your breathe !
Oh.......and Fishing can be a sport, hobby, pastime, and even escapism 
Hi kyloe,
Thank you so much, you speak a lot of sense and I totally agree with what you are saying.
It's a pity I think that PUK havent responded, it would be nice to have their point of view.
thanks again
ali
Hi,
Just wanted to say that I agree; I responded to your original post early and although it was just my personal (slightly rambling) opinion, I have wondered since about the wisdom of writing it. We are all connected because we are affected by PD in one way or another but, like any random group of people thrown together, we are all very, very different (situations, beliefs, approaches to dealing with PD, personalities....) And I guess our differences can lead to misunderstandings and hurt. I have no idea how this can be avoided, but I do know that the fall-out from what was a genuine, thought provoking question and discussion, although sad, isn't your fault. It is so much harder to have this sort of dialogue by this means than it is in a face to face discussion (but I don't know the answer to that either). Do keep posting. K
A slightly radical thought has come to mind now I 've tried the PD Junction fully featured private forum.
PD Junction Forum would fit in well as the official private and secure forum for PD UK alongside their open forum or with an open section of PD Junction in place of the PD UK busier but limited forum
Hi Jackson, you ask how it can be avoided, missunderstandings that is.....................
My own simple rule here and when i used to adminster and moderate my own forums was/is never to write anything that you wouldnt say to to someones face. I know i can be outspoken, and i call a spade a spade, but i'm the same offline as i am online, I'm not perfect but I do try.
In the past and now I have always been critical of the lack of functionality and options which makes these forums uninviting and difficult for new members to navigate their way around, I would be just as vocal at the AGM of PUK on the same subject..............Hmmmmmm now there's a thought !
Kendo , PD Junction is just one example of how a forum should be, bright, cheerful, full of options, administered and moderated sensibly, informative, supportive, and somewhere where one feels they can open up and share their problems with others of like mind and spirit
Hi Kyloe,
Food for thought, makes sense too. Not too sure any of us are perfect, think I may apply myself to trying a bit harder.
Thank you, K
Thank you all for you're replies. Unfortunately, ive tried several times to post receiving the website is under maintenance post, or my messages just disapeared into cyber land. I'm keeping this quick or im going to lose the will, but thank you x
Hi kyloe,
im glad you feel the same re PDj. It's been a great lifeline for me.
What was you're name on PDj, maybe before my time lol.
ali
x
Quote "ive tried several times to post receiving the website is under maintenance post, or my messages just disapeared " Unquote.
Yep, thats another persistent problem on this forum that still has not been resolved.
Ali I've never posted on PDJ, dunno why, despite being a member for several years, perhaps because I sill hope someone here will one day sit up and actully resolve the various issues. I'll pm you later via pdj after ive got my chores done 
Hi kyloe,
glad I'm not the only one!
Ali
Hi all
Happy Monday. Over the weekend, we’ve had a couple of requests for a response from forum admin here. I didn’t think this would be easy given the range of topics and feelings here but I’ll give it my best shot.
Please do bear with me - my response is quite long but I hope I've addressed many of the issues that you've raised.
Issues with posting
Firstly, I am disappointed that so many people are still mentioning problems with basic posting on this forum. We are constantly trying to get to the bottom of this but it sounds like there are a number of issues.
SarahB, our Digital support officer investigates when forum members complain about problems posting. To date she has written here about posts disappearing due to:
But it sounds like there might be other problems as well. As we have said before, it is incredibly difficult to try to recreate these and investigate them without information.
SarahB has posted about this before but to address these problems, we really need to have detail from you when this happens.
We understand your frustration, especially after you’ve taken the time to draft a long post and it's disappeared. But comments like ‘I’ve lost a post and I’m really angry’ don’t give us the detail we need to help you.
Again, please write to us at [email protected] letting us know as much detail as possible about what happened (this could include what device you were using, what browser you were using, how long you had been typing, what you pressed, etc.)
I know that this sounds a bit of a pain but it is the only way that we can really get to the bottom of what is happening and make real change.
Features
Some of you have said that you want the forum to have more features. We have addressed this point in the past.
This forum does not have a chat room and we have repeatedly explained the reasons why. A chatroom takes resources both to build and to monitor. We are a charity and we have to make choices about how we use the resources that we do have.
We have heard in response to this that many forums have a chat facility and these are available free of charge on the internet.
But our forum is a part of our website that we are working on improving all the time. The forum is designed to work alongside the rest of the site and over time the content here will be increasingly integrated into the content on the website making it as complete a source of information for people as possible.
The current structure of the forum is also linked to commenting and blogging features which we hope to roll out over the next year.
It is not a simple forum picked from the web and embedded into our site. There are no national charities that we are aware of who do this.
As for photographs, to allow you to post photographs on this forum, we would have to host them on our server (as we do with your profile photos). We aren't able to do this safely at present.
I really do think that it is worth saying that this forum can’t and won’t be everything to everyone. It is just one a range of services that we offer people with Parkinson’s.
Public/private forum
This forum has always been a public forum. This provides real benefits to people with the condition whether they are forum members or not.
It is true that your results come up in search. This often means that people looking for information are able to find this forum and though many don’t log in, they can still get the information they need. We suggested that you use a forum name that is different from your real name to protect your own privacy on a public forum.
But there is scope for having more private forums. Currently, only the Social club is like this. I am happy to talk about what kinds of private forums we might have. But one thing that I wouldn’t be inclined to do is to create two forums on the same topic with one private and one public. I think this would be confusing and counterproductive.
But should we start another thread to talk about potential private forums?
As far as making PDJunction our adjunct private forum - I can’t see that there would be a good reason to co-opt a member’s private forum to give it 'official' status. It's not clear what that would add.
Why not use both as many do?
Forum’s full potential
Ali p, I was intrigued by your statement that the forum is ‘not living up to its full potential’ and that it ‘could be so much more’. You note that only a fraction of the people who are registered are posting at any one time. There was a conversation about the level of support that people receive here from others and how inviting we are as a forum.
I was hoping that this would continue as a conversation between forum members. While there are things that forum admin can do to make things more welcoming (being available, providing easy-to-understand help, creating an unanswered topics tab), the real culture of a community will always lay with the members.
So, I would turn the question back to you - what are the things that members of this community can do to make things more welcoming here?
We have in the past had a committee who made sure that new members were welcomed properly and they also gave feedback on various aspects of the forum. The idea for this came from forum members.
I’m really grateful to the people who took part in that. But over the years there have been many attempts to get forum members more deeply involved in the forum. This hasn’t always been successful.
I’d really like to talk about this further. If I could arrange a Google hangout, is there anyone here who would be willing to have a video chat about what we can do to make the forum more welcoming and get members more involved?
That's all for now. I hope that though you surely won't agree with everything I've said here that you'll at least understand a bit more where we're coming from.
I look forward to hearing back from you all about the Google Hangout and the potential private forums.
Ezinda
Hi Ezinda,
thank you for you're response, I really appreciate what you have said.
The purpose of my original post was not to state that 'the forum is not living up to its potential', but to ask the question 'is is living up to its full potential'. I had no idea that this was going to get the response it did to be honest. There are some very strong feelings.
it is my belief that the forum is an essential part in supporting pwp, it has been to me, but I still think there has to be room for improvement, and as with any corporate group, I'm sure you are continually looking at areas for improvement. Lots of ideas were brought up in the thread, I don't think they were intended as a critisism of what you are doing, more just ideas to maybe make things better.
i understand completely that Puk is a charity and I am personally fully supportive of the charity as are my family.
I would be happy to talk about ideas, as I am sure others would.
again, thank you for your response.
ali
x
Thank you for your response Ezinda.
I'll keep this as short as posible in case it again gets lost in cyberland.
Chat rooms can be self moderating and take no human resource to run, if A wants to chat to B they enter the chat room and chat for as long as they want. If A doesnt want to chat with B they dont accept the request to chat and vice versa. Anyone who might become a problem could be blocked or reported to admin where a copy of the chat history would provide proof. However as we all look for advice and support or want to give it its unlikely that there would be any issues, and we are all adults after all.
To suggest that we could instead go to other websites where there is a chat facility is quite frankly unacepptable. We should have all that we need under one roof ie PUK.
With regard to having the option to post photos, this has been discussed before and my reply is the same now as it was then, that is that members photos would be stored on a photo storage website, such as Photobucket, Flkr, etc and would therefore NOT take up space on PUK's own server, and safety would'nt be an issue either. You dont seem to understand this concept, or is it that PUK policy just doesnt want this option for members, if thats the case then please say so.
The current very small amount of emoticons are really not acceptable, in fact they are less in number than the old forum and the quality are very much poorer. Please dont insult my inteligence by saying they would be a drain on human or financial resources to upgrade.
With regard to the rest of your post I'm confident that Ali p will respond to what is after all her thread.
I have kept my opinions to myself for several weeks but I can't anymore because I'll just burst!
Where have all the nice people gone that talk about their problems with PD and posts to people to help by saying something to them to make them feel better or running a quiz that everyone enjoys.
It all sounds too
.........political for me. (Sorry, I'm always pressing the wrong buttons)
I understand people like something a little more juicy to bite on but as someone who is as unconfrontational as you can get, can't we be a little better to each other and walk away from comments we don't like?
Hoping to be allowed to send posts again.
All the best
Casie
Hi Kyloe
But you are free to share your photos on a photo sharing site such as Flickr and then link to them from here. In fact, we have a page on Flickr where those taking part in events have shared loads of photos. But could you tell me more? How were you thinking of sharing the photos there if they are hosted there?
On the chat room issue, we have discussed this over a period of years. And I don't think it really helps anyone to keep repeating this. We signpost people to all sorts of services that are beyond those that we offer. And similarly we have signposted you to sites that have chat rooms to help you. We won't be getting a chat room, I'm afraid. And I think there is little else I can offer on this issue.
Take care
Ezinda
Hi Ezinda,
Would it be possible to have a decidated thread - a FAQ's - for techie problems inn posting.
I have post a virtual post-it note on my desktop reminding me how to avoid the back spacing vanishing my post.because you tend to forget exactly what the advice is and as you have indicated new problems seem to rturn up depending on the computer etc. used by the poster: computers, tablets, i-phones, notebooks, laptops etc..
Whist writing I now use Mozilla browser as advised, but only for PD UK (I don't want the hassle of changing to another browser completely) because it allows me to cut and paste from a word programme to the forum whereas Internet Explorer wouldn't without fiddling with settings which I don't want to alter.
By the way, the site just rejected my password although I went to log in automatically (computer remembered) just as I always do so I have had to reset it.