What ID?

[Athenian2]

I'm completely confused about how to register for the new forums. When I come here, there's a screen that talks about "linking your Adobe ID" to the forum ID. What is that screen talking about? When I input my e-mail address, it gave me an ID I've never knowingly used anywhere. I signed it and posted a message but now I can't get back in (and I don't want that ID anyway).

How exactly are we supposed to "link" these two forum sets and continue to use the same forum Name?

Thank you.

[Guest]

Athena, in order for the new forum software to associate the posts you have in this set of forums to the new set, they need to be linked through an Adobe account. Are you able to log into the forum at http://adobeforums.adobe.com ?

[Ann_Shelbourne1]

The whole thing IS confusing!

8/

The Association thing is so that when the Threads from these Forums are added into the New Forums, any Posts that you have made here will get credited to your name in the New Forums otherwise they just get listed as being posted by "Guest".

For the moment you have to log in to these Forums as you just did using your Forum Screen Name; and you have to Log in to the New Forums using an Adobe ID Account Screen name and Password.

You can change the screen name in the Adobe ID if you want to and if you have forgotten the password for that account, just enter your e-mail address; click the Forgotten Password box; and Adobe will e-mail you a temporary password so that you can get into your account and change Screen name and password to what you want.

[_BJBBJB_]

I have a username and login on this forum.

I have a login (which is an e-mail address) and password for the "my account" area (adobe ID) that they are trying to merge. That login does not have a screen name at this time.

If I merge these accounts, will it continue to use the screen name from THIS forum? It implies it will switch to the "adobe ID" which is an email address for most people (I thought it HAD to be?) which of course makes no sense.

I have no problem merging the accounts. But I do not want my new forum login to be based on an adobe ID that is an email account.

I read all the FAQ's, it really does not explain this well...

thanks,
BJBBJB

[Kath-H]

The essential thing which identifies you in the 'other' Adobe forums is your login/email address, along with your password. You can change your screen name as often as you like, as long as the one you pick isn't already taken.

[_BJBBJB_]

Kath,
I guess that was my question. So it sounds like you LOGIN with your e-mail as username but your screename is what will get displayed and your e-mail still remains private.

It also sounds like you do not automatically get the screen name on the new forum which was your login AND screen name on this old forum.

I actually thought that was what the migration was going to do...

BJBBJB

[Kath-H]

I think one problem is that because there were two separate sets of forums, any one screenname could be taken by different people on the two sets of forums.

If you do the linking thing, your old posts, which will be carried forward when the forums join up, will appear under your name. Otherwise they will appear as 'guest'. That's what the linking is supposed to achieve.

[Kath-H]

... in the current temporary forums, no-one is showing up with an email address as their user name, if that's any reassurance.

[_BJBBJB_]

Kath,
Thanks for the reassurance. Please indulge one more question. When you say that old posts will appear under your name, you mean SCREEN name, correct? :)

BJBBJB

[Guest]

I filled out the link window, but for screen name it would not let me use my old name - curt young. I had to use curt98. So with that do my old posts transfer as curt young or as guest?

Somehow with the current system I can't reuse my old name with the new system as it is currently be used by myself in the old system. Is that correct? And if so how do I get around that?

[Guest]

I'm going to wait to see what happens, Curt. Ideally your posts from here will show up as they do on the new forum. That is... if they got linked correctly, and apparently, there isn't a way to know for sure.

Before they do the final import, I'd really like it if there was a way that you could cross reference all your account, from both old forums as well as the new, and get them linked up. But that isn't likely to happen. What might be possible, and reasonable, is to have your login (Adobe account) in the new forum indicate what login here it is associated with. They obviously have that info, they just need to figure out how to make it available to us.

Most of the logins from here that are not associated to an account for the new forums will have the posters name in parenthesis, so mine would show up as (dorothyk).

[Kath-H]

I thought old posts would show up as 'guest' if not associated?

>What might be possible, and reasonable, is to have your login (Adobe account) in the new forum indicate what login here it is associated with.

What do you mean by 'login'? You can change your screen name whenever you like in the new forums without changing anything else, I've done it a couple of times to see.

I set up a new account using a gmail address so I would get email notifications, and changed the screen name on that a couple of times just to see if I could.

In the new forums you have an Adobe ID (which is often an email address, but not always); a password and a screen name. Screen names can be changed at will so it wouldn't be easy to display an old screen name as used here.

[Guest]

By login I only mean the account in each forum, regardless of usernames or screen names or anything. I'd simply like to be able to see what accounts from here and there are associated to one another.

That is what we were initially told to expect, but, before the current import, John got them to change the out-of-the-box "guest" import to being able to grab the posters name and use it with the ( )'s. He's been working on other stuff that should show up in the final import as well. But I'd like people to be able to verify... and change, if needed, how the accounts are associated, before that happens. There's been a lot of coding to do to prepare for the final import. To meld two forums into one is not a piece of cake.

[Kath-H]

>There's been a lot of coding to do to prepare for the final import. To meld two forums into one is not a piece of cake.

Well obviously it's not. What I'm saying is, you can change your screen name at will in the new forums so I don't know if that (old forum name in brackets) will always work.

Also, with my second account, my made-up 'real name' shows up by my posts, not my screen name, although my screen name shows up in any quoted posts. Changing my show/hide prefs doesn't work. That is weird. I hope this isn't going to be a bit of dog's breakfast, but I'm not altogether confident at this point.

I'm not sure either how things will work where someone's Adobe ID isn't their email address, since the ID is the only thing you can't change and retain your actual identity - linked to product registrations etc.

If you have a non-email ID, and an email somewhere else in your profile (changeable at will) I don't know how email notifications will work - if the Jive people ever fix the spam-blocking problem.

I don't expect you to know the answers, just pointing out some possible bumps in the road.

[Guest]

The longer term one is that Adobe has to change the policy of locking accounts to email addresses and not allowing those to be changed. Live Journal, at the very least, had to change a similar policy, because accounts were being hijacked as people quit using email addresses and hotmail (as the primary example) recycled them. People would pick up new hotmail addy's and check Live Journal to see if there was an account using it. Then all they had to do to gain control of the account was to request a password reset. Made me wonder whether there are hotmail addy's used for registering software at Adobe.

I kinda doubt that there will be a lot of problems with the ( )'s... since the new software will be using them along with the base name as a username. It's unlikely that many people already have login's set up like that... and if they do, it would probably come up as ((name)) instead.

[_BJBBJB_]

<Also, with my second account, my made-up 'real name' shows up by my posts, not my screen name, although my screen name shows up in any quoted posts. Changing my show/hide prefs doesn't work.><br /><br />Now this would not make some people pleased. If your screen name was your made up name....and for the new forum your real name was, well your real name (as it will be as that is for registered software), I am fairly sure some people would not want that displayed.<br /><br />BJBBJB

[_Paz_]

>Adobe has to change the policy of locking accounts to email addresses and not allowing those to be changed.

I hope you're not serious.

Over the years my email address has been pboone at this service or pboone at that service, depending on which ISP service I was using at the time.

I was on dialup with a whopping speed of 12k, even though my 'speedster' modem was capable of 56k, when I first became an Adobe customer. Surely you're not going to demand that everyone pay to maintain every old email address they might have had at the time of purchase of some Adobe product or other in order to be able to get to the forums for tech help.

I don't think they guy who ran my initial ISP service is even still in business.

Paz

[PJonesCET]

I've had to change my address slightly, one time because of Spam concerns. I still maintain that address just as Spam catcher.

[Guest]

This is the story I referenced http://news.livejournal.com/114123.html which was pointed out to me by a friend.

When you change your email address for your Adobe account, you will be creating a new account, and the old one remains, as I've come to understand it. The big question, I suppose, is where do your registrations live... in the old, or follows the new? Anyone care to test it?? I'm not gonna... mine are stable.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/membership/index.cfm says:
ALERT Editing your e-mail address will change your Adobe ID.

Linked from that is https://www.adobe.com/misc/privacy.html which includes a number of places to ask questions.

[Ramón_G_Castañeda]

Dorothy,

It can get even more complicated.

Adobe Customer Service has been able to merge Adobe accounts independent from the forums for a long time.

A long time ago, perhaps over five years ago or longer, I had occasion to call Adobe Customer Service for the purpose of having them merge my Adobe accounts, as over the years I ended up with several accounts, each one containing one or more of my product registrations, mainly because my name always gives the unilingual character encoders headaches. I had accounts under Ramon Castaneda, Ramón G Castañeda, Ramón G Castañeda and Ram?n G Casta?eda .

They merged/consolidated all those accounts into a single one named RAMON G CASTANEDA.

Shortly thereafter, for sure over three years ago, I was asked by the system to change my Adobe-account log-in name to my email address in ALL CAPS. I obliged. All of that had nothing to do with any forum changeover, which occurred later.

When the eventually aborted forum changeover was running, I ended up with a mess of identities to which my posts were attributed, as follows (yes, I wrote it down at the time):

At that point I seemed to have about 53 posts or so in the Camera Raw forum, where my ID was mangled as Ramón G Castañeda , some 5,000 posts under Ramón G Castañeda, and about 21,210 posts as Ram?n G Casta?eda in other forums.

Others (like Claudio) reported seeing other, equally picturesque variations of my name on my posts.

Recently, on what we now know as Black Friday, I was once more asked to associate my accounts to my forum ID, or viceversa, for the impending move to Jive forums, and I also complied. The current post count is not reflective of anything, as I see it. 😉 All my product registrations have been merged in that account for a few years now, and they remain there.

I had contemplated changing my forum user ID to "The Ram" , short for Ramón/ Ramon as I am an Aries, to go with my avatar and profile picture in the Preview forums. However, I decided it was prudent to let things be until the new forums have settled and calmed down before introducing any further confusion into the mix.

B)

[Kath-H]

Freeagent - one thing I notice is that in the new forums you are credited with only one post. I know the current new forums are just a temporary arrangement, and post counts are all over the place, but right now it doesn't look as though old posts are linked to the new name.

We'll see.

[Kath-H]

I've just looked again at your screenshot - in the new forums, DFosse allegedly has one post since March 12 2009. I'd hope it would count all the ones under your Freeagent name as well.

I'm not sure it means much, some people who've been around for ever are popping up with hardly any posts, others seem to have thousands.

[Guest]

I went back to the screenshot, on close comparison, the number is 881... pixels were lost in the resizing process, virtually eliminating the cross bar in the 8's. But comparing it to the zeros below it, the shape is more squared off, and you can see indents in the middle that would be the ends of the cross bar as well. You can also click on it for the full size pic that shows it clearly. shortcut back to the post... Freeagent, "What ID?" #19, 29 Mar 2009 10:08 pm

[_Paz_]

My apologies, Dorothy. I now think what I thought you meant to say was exactly the opposite of what you intended.

Paz

[Guest]

> My apologies, Dorothy. I now think what I thought you meant to say was exactly the opposite of what you intended.

In effect, I was saying that you do need to retain control of email accounts that have registrations attached to them, if, in fact, Adobe doesn't allow the primary email name attached to them to be changed. So in a way, you were getting what I was saying. I'd like to know for sure how it works but I'm spread too thin to take time to find out.