Candles in honor of our babies at The Bridge

[labblab]

Good news for our family! I did send an email to the "gratefulness" web team, and they very graciously responded. They explained the reasons for needing to revise the candle site and altering the group pages. Unfortunately, there was malicious misuse of the group pages, plus the "architecture" of the site was breaking down so that the group candles were not displaying properly. In addition, though, they sent these suggestions for informally creating a group page for ourselves. I haven't yet tried it, but I am thinking that we can just continue to use "K9C" as our acronym. So what they are suggesting is to embed the acronym in the text of each of our messages, so that we can then search out all candles for our group. Here is what they wrote:

We recognize that part of what is important to many people who appreciated the groups is a sense of community. As such, we offer the following way to informally make a “group” so that you can continue to connect with others through the candles:

Commit to using a word that you all agree to inside the message (best to use an unusual word or an acronym associated with your “group” rather than a commonly used word like “prayer,” “love,” or “grateful”).

When looking for your group's candles, search on the word you have chosen in the search field in the upper right hand side of the page.

All candles with messages containing that word will show. It is then possible to open the candles to read the messages.

After opening a candle within the group, use the back arrow to return to the group rather than clicking on "Back to Candles."
This way you can dip in and out of your "group" and also quickly see how many candles are lit.

We hope that you and others in your group will continue to use the candles and find them a source of great comfort and healing throughout your journeys.

With kindness,

The Gratefulness Webteam

I told them how much their candles have meant to our family, and thanked them for providing the site to us all. I am anxious to try lighting a candle using their instructions, so I will do so in a little while!

[labblab]

It works!!!!

I just lit two candles (accidentally duplicated myself ) labelled for "All." One difference is that now the only listing option is by country (not by name or state, etc). So if you want to identify yourself further, you will need to write that part in the body of your message, too, as I did.

To find my candles, just search using "K9C" as the search term (I used caps for the K and C), and then you'll see them displayed together on one page.

http://www.gratefulness.org/light-a-candle/

I am so relieved and grateful to have the candles "returned" to us.

[Budsters Mom]

Thanks Marianne for doing this.

I like the other page tons better, but this is a at least way for us keep family here together, which is crucial. Did the administrators from the other site mention why they changed it?

[Squirt's Mom]

That is wonderful, Marianne! Thank you for doing this!

[labblab]

Thanks, guys! Kathy, these were the reasons that prompted the change:

Sadly, the groups were often misused. People wrote offensive messages upsetting those who were sincerely endeavoring to honor a beloved sick person or animal and with more than 10,000 candles lit each day it was impossible for us to monitor them.

In addition, the architecture of the old Light a Candle feature was breaking down. More recently, we and others created groups that did not show up and which did not respond to a Search effort and this was upsetting.

Increasingly the candle group numbers weren't accurate and we were receiving complaints from people who were upset that the number of candles in their group weren't reflected accurately on the entry page.

As a result of these and some additional issues we made the difficult decision not to continue the group element of Light a Candle in our new design.

[Squirt's Mom]

uuhhmmmm, however when I searched for K9C this is what I got -

There were no search results found for K9C

Anyone else find the candles Marianne lit?

[Squirt's Mom]

Never mind - you have to search from the candle lighting page, not the home page.

[Squirt's Mom]

It works when you do it right.

[labblab]

So glad you found it, Les. And I see the K9C can be lower-case (k9c) and it will still work/search fine. So if that's quicker and easier for folks, you don't have to bother with the caps.

If it's OK with you, Leslie, I am going to edit your threadstarter here and on EE in order to provide the new link and the posting instructions.

[Squirt's Mom]

You bet!