The CCAA always words their statements that way, and they have always included the day that they list. It’s possible that at some point in the future this will change, but for now I’m going to continue to assume that they will continue in this manner.

I wish I could tell you. I really do. But the fact is that only the CCAA has an idea of this information, and they aren’t sharing. Actually, there are some who think that even the CCAA doesn’t have a clue.

Most first bannings in the forum are for one week. Unless you did something really bad, if you ask to come back after one week you’ll be unbanned. The second infraction is for a month, and the third results in a sitewide ban. We do not keep track of your time though, you’ll have to let us know when your time is up so we can unban you. When you are unbanned you should probably read through the forum rules again: http://chinaadopttalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=3.0

http://chinaadopttalk.com/ccaa-update-and-referral-histories/
http://brightoutlooks.com/Charts.htm
http://people.wwc.edu/staff/stirra/china/stats/index.htm

The best up to date stats I’m aware of for that can be found here under Referral and Age Tables - the two week average will be closest to what the current wait is. However, this can be vastly different by country and by agency. The best guess you can make on this is to ask your agency, and to ask other people who have recently travelled with your agency.

My contact information can be found here. Or, if you prefer you can send me a PM on the forum software. I don’t respond to emails, so if you want a response you’ll need to PM me.

When it comes to rumors we don’t name agencies because we don’t want to cause any problems between the agency and the CCAA. We know that the CCAA apparently gets a bit miffed when an agency releases information before the CCAA is ready for them to, and we don’t want to get an agency in trouble with the CCAA. Also, we want the agencies to feel comfortable telling their people information as soon as they know it, and we don’t want them to worry about getting into trouble if it makes it over here. So, we don’t name them.

When it comes to other things, it’s kind of important to understand that a while back on one of the Vietnam Yahoo groups a couple of people gave their experiences they’d had with a facilitator. The facilitator not only sued the people who made the remarks, but also allegedly (I’m told) sued the list owner for allowing the remarks on a list she controlled. You can read a bit about the case here:

So, since we can’t say anything bad, I think it’s probably only fair to not say anything good either, and that means just not naming an agency at all. I have absolutely no problem with someone asking people to PM them with their experiences with an agency, just please keep it off of the board.

I hope you all understand why I put the “no agency names” rule in place. I’m actually not terribly happy with it, but I am also not prepared to have to possibly spend thousands of dollars to defend myself in court. At least not until we win the lottery.

Here are a few places to rate your agency:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RateYourChinaAdoptionAgency/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Adoption_Agency_Research

First, check your spam filter to make sure the verification email didn’t get filtered there. Next, try registering again with a slightly different name and the same email - if you get an error that the email address is already used then email me for help and watch the forum for my answer. If it lets you register then that means you typed in the wrong email address the first time. Email me and let me know which login you’d like to keep.

The forum software and blog software do not use the same database. You will have to register twice, once for the blog and once for the forum. Please use the same username and password for both places.

AFAIK As far as I know
BTW By the way
DH Dear Husband
FWIW For what it’s worth
IMO In my opinion
IMHO In my humble opinion
IMNSHO In my not so humble opinion
IOW In other words
LMAO Laughing My Ass Off
MIL Mother-in-law
OMG Oh My Gosh / Oh My Goodness
OTOH On the other hand
ROFL Rolling on floor, laughing.
:-) Smile (happy)
:-( Frown (sad)

The adoptions specific terms are:

APC http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a-parents-china/
LID - Log in Date
DTC - Dossier to China
TA - Travel Approval (called other things in other countries, this is the Notice of Coming to China)
CA - Consulate Appointment
SN - special needs
NSN - non special needs
PA - Pre-approval (part of the SN process)
PAP - Potential Adoptive Parent
LOA - Letter of Acceptance - used in both NSN and SN process. In NSN program it is the document that allows you to officially accept a referral. In SN program the CCAA sends it after the LOI and before TA.
LOI - Letter of Intent (again, used in the SN process)
SWI / CWI - Social/Children’s Welfare Institute, what orphanages are called in China

Some agencies rely on their liaison in Beijing to talk to the CCAA and then relay the information back to them. One liaison in Beijing may have a relationship with someone in the matching room, and another may have a relationship with someone who does the logging in, and another may have a relationship with the director of the CCAA. So each of these liaison may talk to their contact and each of these contacts may have a different view over what is happening. So, the workers at the CCAA may be unclear on things, and then we have to deal with the liaison at the agency translating it to your agency so they can understand it, and then we have your agency personnel interpreting what their liaison said. Ever played the telephone game?

Some agencies have personnel in the U.S. who are fluent in Mandarin and who have a contact at the CCAA. A few agencies can call their contact at the CCAA and ask questions directly. Not surprisingly, these agencies tend to be right more often.

Further complicating the matter is something called guānxi. Some agencies are told basically bogus information while others are told this information isn’t available while others are given an accurate answer. I talked about guānxi while we were still over at blogspot - you can read it here.

This was written into the FAQ in the summer of 2006:

We now know that the CCAA workers were right. But they’ve been told to not talk anymore and most of what we get now comes from higher up.

What we are hoping is that we get a statistically accurate set of numbers that will allow us to make assumptions based on percentages. We are aware that we don’t get every single person to vote in the polls, but it does appear that we get possibly as many as 30% of those who are logged in with the CCAA (less for those months that are farther out). This is more than enough for a statistically correct data set. What you should keep in mind is that those with LID’s closer to referral are more likely to be stalking a rumor blog, with it going down a little bit as we go forward. Comparing two or three months at a time will not be enough of a difference, but comparing two months that are six months apart probably is.

If you PM me whatever language you speak I’ll PM you the board I go to that is in that language. I will not post the board address on the open forum because most of those servers aren’t set up to get 4,000 hits all at once, and I don’t want to crash their server and lose a source of information for however long it takes them to get it back up. Please remember that I do not respond to emails, if you want a response you must PM me.

There is an agency that is not in the U.S. that usually knows the correct cut off date ahead of time. I called it The Agency that is Usually Right for months, then started calling it TATIUR, which quickly morphed into tater. However, many people knew which agency Tater was and the rest were trying to figure it out. This put Tater’s good relationship with the CCAA in danger so I stopped referring to them this way.

Look at how many dossiers your agency sends on average to the CCAA every month. We aren’t interested in what they may send to other countries, just China.
 

If your agency is close to a cutoff and you aren’t sure which then say small/medium or medium/large.

Note: These numbers are pre-May 2007 numbers.

In May of 2008 I made a change to that everyone’s first comment is moderated. This was done in an attempt to keep the spammers from spamming the site, the idea being that they won’t make a coherent post about adoption before they start spamming.

After your first post has been approved then various things can put a post into the moderated queue. Some people insist on naming their agency or pushing their religion, and thus they are now on moderated status. When a person is put on moderated status the software moderates both that username as well as a range of IP addresses to include that person. Some people have the unfortunate bad luck of having an IP address in the same range as someone who insists on naming their agency or pushing their religion or otherwise not following the rules.

There are also some keywords that can throw a post into moderated. Also, to keep spam from hitting the board, posts that link to another site are also often thrown into the moderated queue (and yes, people do try to spam the site with free ringtones quite often, for some reason).

I have also started moderating people who feel the need to come to the site and lecture us about the hazards of rumors. We are adults, we know the hazards of listening to rumors. If you don’t like rumors then I’m not sure why you are here, but we certainly do not need to hear your lectures.

Simple answer, either you haven’t abided by the rules, or someone who uses your ISP and is assigned to the same range of addresses as you couldn’t follow the rules… or, your post has a keyword in it that threw it into the queue. Or you gave us one too many lectures.

I find it interesting that some people come here to read information from other agencies and then get on their high horse when information from their agency filters onto the site. This is what we do here, we bring all of the information to one place and try to make sense of it. We do not name agencies and we shy away from using direct quotes, but we do share information.

This NPR article gives a good synopsis of it.

If your agency gave you the tracking number then you can post about it.

However, if you’ve called DHL in order to get the tracking number then please do not post about it on the blog or the forum. The CCAA found out several years ago that people were doing this and they got very, very, angry about it. We do not want to make them angry.

If it’s a question about something we are talking about on the blog then feel free to ask in the comments. If it’s not something we are talking about then feel free to start a thread in the forum.

Note from RQ: The section below is for comments from ChinaAdoptTalk.com's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that I agree with any particular comment just because I let it stand. Posts are generally only removed if they don't follow the rules of the site. Anyone who fails to comply with the rules of the site may lose his or her posting privilege.