There are some resources that I haven't used in a long time. Sometimes it's because the information isn't directly applicable to my situation. You'll also find a lot of information is repeated in a many books, websites, etc. It's been a long time since I went to adoption.com for both these reasons. The site is chock full of resources and has an active forum community.
First off, I am a design snob. I like things simple and beautiful. A lot of adoption websites feel very thrown together. The information may be great, but the packaging leaves a lot to be desired. I've crossed a few agencies off my list because the website seemed unprofessional and, frankly, home made. Adoption.com feels a bit thrown together.
But the real reason I was drawn to the site was because of the forum, it seemed like the only place to get perspective from other people involved in adoption. This was before I discovered Yahoo groups. But the forums at adoption.com are true forums and not an email group like the Yahoo ones. But the forum feels very tightly controlled. For one, you can't ask directly for people's opinions on agencies — or rather, you can't get a direct answer. You can create a post asking people to send you private messages about their adoption experiences, but you cannot get replies directly to the thread. I think the admins of the site want to avoid people getting into arguments about their experiences with agencies as well as keeping agencies from promoting themselves within the forum.
But this doesn't prohibit agencies from emailing you directly if they want. It also keeps the forum from archiving useful information. Since no one is allowed to talk about their agency experiences, you can't search for opinions on agencies. Which was the reason I joined the forum in the first place. You can feel so alone and confused as to what choices you make when researching adoption it was really a blow to find out I couldn't access useful information regarding agencies here.
In fact, I did post a question asking for information on a couple agencies I was looking into and only got one private message from someone who didn't have any information about those agencies but told me about the agency they used. Sigh. That's not to say there isn't other useful information. There is plenty of helpful advice. A lot of it is post-placement discussion though. And while interesting, it isn't helpful in picking an agency.
Another reason I didn't visit often was it felt very exclusive to the LGBT crowd. They had forums topics for every type of family: Single Parents, Christian, Catholics, African Americans, Jewish, Mormons, Transracial, special forums for both fathers and mothers. But no help for gay people looking to adopt despite having very specific obstacles in the process. They had one topic for "Non-Traditional Families" support, but for post adoption only.
The reason for this, I believe, is that the community must have had a lot of problems with gays looking to adopt. There must have been a lot of negative posting and fights back and forth. The admins have language stating that any activism or bashing on either side will be deleted from this forum. I'm assuming that by "sides" they mean pro-gay or anti-gay. I think the site is trying to find a middle ground, but all it is doing is appeasing the haters. They should just ban folks who break the site's terms of service and be done with the hate.
There is a discussion with a moderator explaining how and why the forums are changing, but it was posted in 2003 and the changes she talked about to make the forums seem less exclusive to gays are still not in place. A shame. Stuff like that really puts me off.
I know this was a rather long, rambling post. Sometimes when I start typing it's difficult to know when to stop.
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