Macmillan Admin Blog

BBC Radio 4 programme - update

2012-06-06T17:07:51Z

Hello All

Laura is away from the office this week. I am the senior manager responsible for all of Macmillan’s online communities and therefore everyone’s comments and emails have been passed on to me by the moderators.

Why did Macmillan take part in the programme?
One of Macmillan’s core values is “We are open”. The BBC approached us to take part in this documentary and we agreed to answer the presenter’s questions honestly and help raise awareness about this condition. Laura gave a detailed 30 minute interview of which 40 seconds was used in the final piece.

Münchausen’s by Internet is a rare illness and we have only come across a very small number of community members who have displayed certain behaviours associated with this condition in six years of running the online community.

We hoped that the programme would help to improve the understanding and management of a complex mental condition.

Why did you allow the BBC to link to a post I had commented on?
One of the reasons that we always encourage community members to protect their privacy and respect the privacy of others is because posts in public groups and blogs have always been visible to the public and are indexed by Google. This is made clear in our Terms and Conditions when you sign up.

Macmillan aims to support all people affected by cancer. The reason we do not block non-members from finding and reading posts is because we know many people are unwilling to blindly register on a community without being able to see what kind of issues are being discussed. Additionally we want to ensure that anyone who is looking for support by searching for keywords relating to their, or a loved one’s, cancer diagnosis is able to find our community.

Why did you change the number of replies visible on topics?
We noticed that on Friday when the BBC website was pointing lots of people to our site that it was getting slower. In order to maintain the service, we reduced the number of replies visible on each page.

How can we protect ourselves?
The best protection that this Community has is its members who always look out for one another and let us know when they think something is wrong.

The best way for you to protect yourselves is by working with the admin team to report suspicious activity and trusting us to fully investigate. Please remember that we can only take into account information which appears on this website in our investigations, so this sometimes means that it can take us longer to uncover a fake.

Why are Charley and AnnaJohns’ posts visible?
They’re not. All of the posts made from these accounts have been removed. The BBC article links to an admin blog (http://community.macmillan.org.uk/blogs/b/admin/archive/2011/11/25/please-read-anna-johns.aspx) updating the community about what happened. If you see a post that you think was from them, please send us the link and we will remove it.

In the interests of free speech we will not erase or forbid any mention of them by other community members as has been suggested.

Abuse and personal attacks on staff
The online community is a forum for discussion and we welcome your opinions, concerns and feedback. However personal attacks are unacceptable. We would ask that you show the same respect that you give each other to our staff.

Comments insulting staff or other community members will not be tolerated. The Terms and Conditions (http://www.macmillan.org.uk/TermsandConditions/TermsAndConditions.aspx) of the site are very clear.

I hope that this answers some of the concerns that I have seen expressed today. However if anyone has any more questions or would like more information, please get in touch with me or the Community Team via community@macmillan.org.uk.

Best wishes

Carol Naylor

Social Media and Online Communities Manager

Blog Comments Problem.

2011-12-25T10:59:00Z

Hello all,

We're aware that there are some problems for some when posting to blogs. Unfortunately since we are operating on a skeleton staff over the holidays we won't realistically be able to fix the problem until the new year.

If you are using Internet Explorer to browse the internet I recommend you try Firefox as there seem to be fewer problems posting with Firefox.

I'd like to offer my sincere apologies for this, and I hope that you manage to make yourselves heard in other channels like the Chat Room and your statuses.

Best wishes for a happy Christmas, and thank you once again for your understanding.

Rebecca x

Please Read: Anna Johns

2011-11-25T12:08:21Z

Hello all,

It has come to our attention that a community member going by the name of Anna Johns is in fact a girl named Abbie who fabricated her story. Anna Johns has now been removed from the site.

She has posted a message to a Facebook group accusing her of being a fake to confirm this:

I am so sorry to those of you who have spent time talking to, supporting and crying for Anna and her family.

Personally I was taken in by this story too. But I would always rather be tricked because I am too trusting, than fail to support someone who genuinely needs it because I am not trusting enough.

***I would like to take this opportunity to remind you all NEVER to share personal details, send money or swap Facebook account details. I would suggest that you never even tell people your real name.***

The person who has done this deserves our sympathy. Munchausen's by internet is a recognised condition and I hope that Abbie gets the help she needs. You may find this article in the Guardian helpful to explain a little about the thinking behind something like this.

We take your security very seriously on this site, but there is very little that we could put in place to prevent someone who is determined enough to create an entire false life from joining the site. You can protect yourselves by not sharing your contact details, however sure you are that someone is real and needs your help.

You can offer plenty of support via the Community site, and also remain totally safe and secure.

Once again, I understand how much sadness, disappointment and anger there will be around this, but please do not let it distract you from the main purpose of the site which is supporting each other. You all do such a fantastic job and it would be so sad if something like this managed to ruin that.

Best,

Rebecca.

Site update 18/11/11

2011-11-18T11:13:00Z

Hi everyone,

Our developers have been working hard on making improvements to the community. We have several fixes that are now live on the site.

1) You do not need to be a member to reply to a group

Many of our community members are proactive in supporting others across the site. Now you no longer need to be a member of a group to post a response. We hope this will allow everyone to continue to support others whilst not having to be subscribed to every group on the site.
Please note this only applies to public groups. For groups that require you to request membership, you still need to be a member to reply.

2) You can now control your email subscriptions for groups

To access this, go to the group you wish to control and click on any discussion within that group and look on the right hand side for the discussion tools tab:

From here you can select whether you wish to receive emails notifications for group activity or not.
We are going to build upon this feature, however we have released this as some people have been experiencing difficulties in turning email subscriptions on and off for groups.

3) View a list of your blogs

Some community members have several blogs, now if you click on My Account > Blog Posts you can view these along with your most recent blog posts. All of your blogs will appear in a bullet point list:

We will be building upon this feature and improve signposting on the page itself in the meantime.
Next month we will be releasing a collection of fixes which will improve the accessibility of the site, addressing many of the issues you have highlighted to us. Thank you for all your patience and feedback, it has been useful for us in finding out what parts of the new site you like and what parts you are less keen on. Please keep this feedback coming to the community email address or comment on this post!

Take care,

James

Empty white boxes appearing when you try to post? Here is how to fix it

2011-10-03T10:50:08Z

Hi,

A small number of users are having problems using some parts of the site. This being focused around being unable to enter text into blogs posts or discussions. It mainly affects people using Internet Explorer 9, if you are unsure what you are using please check here.

If you are using Internet Explorer, you can quickly fix this problem.

Step 1:

Go to tools and click on Compatability View settings

Step 2:

Add Macmillan.org.uk

Step 3:

Check that macmillan.org.uk appears as it does below, and then click close!

Our developers are fixing the problem, however in the meantime please use this quick fix to get full access to the site.

Problems with your Blog?

2011-09-21T14:53:39Z

We've spotted an issue affecting some members which is stopping people from posting updates to their Blogs.

If you think this is you, please reply here and we will fix it for you.

Take care,

James

New community: latest update

2011-09-20T16:00:00Z

Hi all,

Thank you all for your feedback, we are aware that there is still work for us to do!

We are looking into the slowness of the site and issues surrounding chat. We are working hard to make the new community an enjoyable place for all of you and your feedback is really helping us in achieving this.

Please accept our apologies if these issues are not resolved straight away, we are listening to your concerns and are continuing to work hard to resolve them.

Take care,

James

PLEASE READ: Possible site downtime

2011-09-16T17:25:00Z

As part of our site relaunch there is a possibility of prolonged periods of downtime for essential work over the next few days.

The rest of our website will be up during this period. For information on cancer, please visit:

http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Cancerinformation.aspx

If you would like to speak to someone the Samaritans provide confidential emotional support 24/7 to those experiencing despair or distress:

http://www.samaritans.org or by phone on 08457 90 90 90

Thank you for your patience,

James

Tell us what you think of our website

2011-09-16T11:50:00Z

Hello everyone,

We want to make it even easier for you to get involved with Macmillan’s campaigns, and so we’re giving our campaigns website a bit of a makeover. Before we do, we want to find out what you think of the site already, so we can keep the things you like and work on the things we could be doing better.

Our survey should only take a few minutes – we’d love to hear what you think.

Thanks in advance!

PLEASE READ: Site down on Sunday and Monday

2011-09-01T15:08:40Z

Hello everyone,

As part of our site redesign we'll need to take the site offline on Sunday 4th September between 10pm - 7am and on Monday 5th September between 10pm - 7am.

I realise that this is really inconvenient for all of you, as you will not be able to access the site during these times. However it's an important part of the relaunch process and there is no other way we can do it.

Apologies,

Rebecca. x

Apologies for the recent site problems

2011-08-04T13:32:25Z

Hello all,

Just a note to say how sorry I am about the recent site problems with speed and failure to load.

I hope that none of you were inconvenienced too badly, and we will try to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

Once again, I'm sorry.

Best,

Rebecca x

Groups to be deleted. Please Read.

2011-07-28T17:19:50Z

As you know, we’ll be relaunching the site on Monday September 19. As part of our goal to improve and develop the site, we’ve been undertaking an audit of all the content on the site, including groups.

There are a number of different reasons why the groups below have made it on to the to-be-deleted list. In some cases, there is no content in the group, in other cases no members. Some of the below are duplicates of other groups and some are in a language other than English. A few of them haven’t been added to for over 2 years. The purpose of this exercise is to make the community an easier place to navigate, and to make it more straight-forward for new and existing members to find the groups they need.

If you strongly disagree with any of our decisions, please let us know by adding your comments to the forum of that group. Or, you can email us at community@macmillan.org.uk. The deadline for any feedback is Friday August 19th

Bikers 4 macmillan

Get creative to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support

Raising funds 365 days a year!

Friends of Macmillan Calderdale and Kirklees

MacRide at Silverstone

MacRide in Warwickshire

grupo de prueba de cgparadinas

Warrington

Missing You

hannah's private unlisted group

A new group

save tiger

SPIRITLEVEL

stemcell transplant (donated)

you will find us in chat to help and support you

Open 24/7 including Sundays and Holidays

A place to vent and be honest!

Bladder Cancer

Grade IV Brain Tumours: Recurrent Medulloblastoma

Plymouth Area Catholics

Prostate Mates

recurrent cervical cancer

Scarves r us

scarves and hats r us

Sufferers of Anal Cancer,chat here

survivors 4 survivors

testicular cancer

testicular cancer and brain tumours

the yorkshire region cml support group

vulva cancer support

vulval melanoma group

vulval melanoma support

What do I do now I'm on my own - I'm scared.

Cancer Support Group for Asian Women

arty farty

Animal Crackers

Imagery and Meditation

Macmillan

Macmillan Cancer Support

jean

macmillan what now? Admin

The Room

THE CONTACT PYRAMID

THE SCREAM ANS RANT GROUP

Chemo treatment/daily life

BT Inner Circle

Cancer drug

Closed Group

young cancer conference 2009

yvonne laidlaw

Macmillan Share Admin

brijen

Listening to God

Anybody know anything about Salvestrols?

Helping Cancer parents with a new family member

light

teenager with ovarian cancer

scarvesrus

anna benson

sadie60

How do i support my mum

dollie

Sandra Thomas

My 44yr old lovely mum

TC TEST GROUP

Online community group

test group

brain group

going abroad after a total gastrectomy

Hillingdon and Hayes Chat & Share

Women Cancer Patients - East Hertfordshire

Medway Group

macmillan in UAE

breast cancer London

Please read the 'Groups to be Archived' blog post for further information.

Groups to be archived. Please Read.

2011-07-28T17:12:59Z

Sometimes groups have been created for a specific event such as London Marathon 2008. Since people aren't joining or contributing to these groups any more, but might still need to see the content that's there, we'll be archiving them.

The purpose of this exercise is to make the community an easier place to navigate, and to make it more straight-forward for new and existing members to find the groups they need.

These are the groups we're archiving:

medieval banquet Coombe Abbey 2009

China Hiking Challenge 2010

Kilimanjaro Hiking Challenge trips 1 & 2, Oct 2010

Peru Hike Sept/Oct 2010

Alps Cycling Challenge 2010

Central American Cycle Challenge 2010

London to Paris Cycling Challenge 2010 (July and August trips)

London to Paris Cycling Challenge July 2010

The Great North Run 2009

NYC Marathon 2010

London Marathon 2010

Paris Marathon 2010

Virgin London Marathon 2010

Dublin Marathon 2010

Cancertalk Week 2010

fuel poverty campaign

help us cut the cost of parking at a hospital

Brick Lane Takeover 2010

The What Now 2010 Calendar

Admin Blog: Emelia - admin leaving Macmillan

2011-06-20T11:14:25Z

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to let you all know that tomorrow is my last day working on this online community. I have been with Macmillan for a year and a half and it has been such a wonderful experience.

When I started here I had no idea that I’d meet so many inspirational people who have helped shape my life forever. This community is the most passionate and caring that I have come across and I am honoured to have meet and known you all. Every member’s story I have read through a blog, forum post, chat or status update has touched me since the day I began this amazing journey.

Of course this has been a tough decision to leave and I will really miss my days here but don’t worry I plan to pop back to see you all and the fantastic site developments.

I want to thank the members who made me feel a part of the Macmillan family - you put a smile on my face every single day. So please keep the love, passion and support going because you are Macmillan. : )

Also a big thanks to Rebecca – admin for being such a brilliant team mate, I know you will continue to do a fabulous job because you’re an absolute star!

I wish you all the best and lots of love,

Emelia xx

Admin Blog: Profile error message

2011-05-16T12:31:22Z

Hi Everyone,

Hope you had a good weekend.

I'm just letting you know that admin is aware there is a techical problem with updating profiles.

Please bear with us as we look into this problem.

Thank you for your patience.

Emelia