New categories

[Victoria-NRAS]

Hi all

When you add a post on HealthUnlocked, you may have noticed that you have the option of which category your post best fits in. From now on, when you add a post you will see that several categories have now been added. The categories are:

General RA

Medication & Therapy

Off topic

Other conditions

Procedures/surgery

Treatments

(or none of the above, which hopefully won't be used so much now)

In addition to this, there are 2 categories that we (NRAS) can post in to give you useful information about the charity and about anything going on in local areas that might be of interest. These categories are called:

Updates from NRAS

In your area

We hope that these categories will be helpful going forward, in making distinctions between different types of post. In particular, there has sometimes been some contention over people using the NRAS HU forum to post about things not connected with RA. These would now sit in the 'off topic' area, which we hope will help. Whilst this is an RA forum, we appreciate that many people have formed strong friendships on here so might want to post non-RA related topics from time to time, but hopefully by putting this into a different category this will separate these posts out if people don't want to view them.

If you click on the 'posts' section, you will see the option to 'browse by category' on the right hand side. At first, not all the categories will be displayed, as it is not possible to browse them until they have content, but as people start using the correct categories the option to browse will hopefully make it easier for people to look at topics of interest (or avoid other topics).

I really hope you will find this a useful function!

Kind regards

Victoria

(NRAS Helpline)

[lorann]

Thank you Victoria! That is very well planned!

Loret xx

[Riedenise]

Yes thank you, very helpful. Rie x

[Andrea_Shapiro]

Will disability related issues/ politics sit in off topic?

[Case in reply to Andrea_Shapiro]

Thats a good point, it is an important topic and possibly may be missed within off topic?

[Victoria-NRAS Partner Moderator NRAS in reply to Andrea_Shapiro]

I would probably put these in 'general RA' or 'none of the above' depending on the precise topic. Off-topic will probably have quite a lot of the more 'fun' posts that are completely unrelated to RA, whereas a political or disability issue would presumably be spoken about because of its relevance to RA/RA patients.

[stbernhard]

Thank you very much Victoria. This is very helpful.

[Case]

Presumably the strictly would come under 'off topic', although would like to share with others what it's about so people can make informed decisions about its content. Contestants are given a topic related to Ra , and then write and post a limerick around this part of their journey with Ra .

It is purely to entertain but with an underlying message about Ra. Laughter is a good medicine for me.

[Victoria-NRAS Partner Moderator NRAS in reply to Case]

Hi Case

I appreciate that this is to do with RA as well as being a bit of fun, but think this should be in 'off topic'. Some people don't use the forum regularly and just want to find information on specific topics, like treatment etc, whereas this would be more something for regular users. People can still see all recent posts in their newsfeed, so it won't be hidden from people if its in 'off-topic'.

Hope that helps

Victoria

[Luthien66]

Thanks for this Victoria, I agree that these topic categories will be most helpful going forward.

[Vivante]

Excellent information. Sometimes medical conditions do interlock, like a jigsaw puzzle. We think about carpal tunnel syndrome which is associated with both hypothyroid and Rheumatoid arthritis. The medications also have an effect. Thyroid heart disease, hypothyroid-bradycardia. Hypert-tachycardia and so on. When we look at it all in depth there are so many links. Think about a tree with many branches. One way or another, a medical condition seems to be part of that tree. Many thanks for interesting info once again.