F R E Q U E N T L Y      A S K E D      Q U E S T I O N S

Do I have to register?
How can I use smilies?
What are moderators?
Can I customize the bulletin board in any way?
Are cookies used?
Can I search?
What are announcements?
Are there any censor features?
What is Daily Active Topic List?
What are archives?
What are icons?



Registering
Registration is NOT required, and you are not required to post your real name. You are required to post your actual email address, however.

Smilies
You've probably seen others use smilies before in email messages or other bulletin board posts. Smilies are keyboard characters used to convey an emotion, such as a smile :) or a frown :(. This bulletin board automatically converts certain smilies to a graphical representation. For example, if you type :o in your BB post, it will automatically be converted to - a shameful face. The following smilies are currently supported:

:) smile
:( frown
:o embarrassment
:D big grin
;) wink

Moderators
Moderators control individual forums. They can edit, delete, or prune any posts in their forums. If you have a question about a particular forum, you should direct it to your forum moderator.

Customizing User Preferences
As a registered bulletin board user, you may store your username and password in memory for up to one year at a time. This will prevent you from having to type your user name and password every time you post a note. You also have the option of changing the default number of days back to view topics. Just click on the "prefs" link and you can make either of these settings.

Cookies
This bulletin board uses cookies to store the following information: the last time you logged in, your username and password, and your preferred "topic view", if you set it in preferences. These cookies are stored on your browser. Cookies are not used to track your movement or perform any function other than to enhance your use of the bulletin board. If your browser does not support cookies, or you have not enabled cookies on your browser, many of these time-saving features will not work properly. Also, you need to have cookies enabled in your browser if you want to enter a private forum.

You may delete all cookies set in this forum by visiting the "preferences" area of the forum and selecting the "delete cookies" link.

Searching For Specific Posts
You may search for specific posts based on a word or words found in the posts, user name, date, and particular forum(s). Just click on the "search" link at the top of most pages. Note: announcements are not included in the search returns.

Announcements
Announcements are one-way communications from either a forum moderator or a bulletin board administrator. No one may post replies to these announcements. If you want to talk about specific announcements, you will have to create a new topic in the appropriate forum.

Censoring Posts
The bulletin board administrators have the power to censor certain words that may be posted. This censoring is not an exact science, however, so certain words may be censored out of context. Please realize that the censoring, if any censoring is being performed, is being done by a computer based on the words that are being screened. Words that are censored are replaced with asterisks.

What is the Daily Active Topic List?
When you visit this bulletin board, you will see a link at the top of the list of forums called "Daily Active Topic List". Clicking on this will provide you with a list of topics in all open (non private) forums that have been posted to that day.

What are archives?
Archives are read-only areas that contain topics that were previously posted to one of our forums. You may not add a reply to a topic that is in an archive. Topics in an archive may have been conpletely removed from the original forum where they were started, or they may still exist in their forums.

What are icons?
Depending on the configuration of your forums, you may be able to associate an icon with each post that you make. There are currently 14 icons, each expressing a different emotion or identification. These icons range from a simple note to sadness to warning. These icons appear next to each topic in a forum listing and on each post. If you do not see icons, your forum administrator may not be allowing icons on this particular forum. (Thanks to Kombat03 for the icon idea!)