What are Smileys?Smileys are small graphical icons which you can insert into your messages to convey an emotion or feeling, such as a joke or embarrassment. For example, if you entered a sarcastic comment, rather than type 'that was a joke', you could simply insert the 'wink' smiley.
If you have used email or internet chat systems, you will probably be familiar with the concept of smileys already. Certain combinations of text characters are converted into smileys. For example,
is converted into a smiling face. To understand smiley codes, tilt your head to the left and look at the text: you will see that
represents two eyes and a smiling mouth.
On occasions, you may want to prevent the text in your message being converted into smileys. You will see a checkbox which you can select when you make a new post, which will allow you to 'Disable Smileys'.
How Do I Create and Vote in Polls?You may notice that some threads on this forum also include a section where you can vote on an issue or question. These threads are called 'polls' and this is how to create them:
Creating a New PollIn the Forum Section that you want to put the poll in, click on "POST NEW POLL".
This function allows you to ask a question and specify a number of possible responses. Other members will then be able to vote for the response they want, and the results of the voting will be displayed in the thread.
An example poll might be:
What is your favorite color?
1. Red
2. Blue
3. Yellow
4. Green
5. Sky-blue pink with yellow spots
To add a poll to a thread you just made, click the "add poll" button.
Specify the question and the list of responses you want to include.
Voting In and Viewing a PollTo vote in a poll, simply select the option you want to vote for, and click the [Vote!] button. You may view the current results for a poll before you vote by clicking the 'View Results' link. Voting in a poll is entirely optional. You may vote for any of the available options, or cast no vote at all.
Generally, once you have voted in a poll, you will not be able to change your vote later, so place your vote carefully!
What Are Attachments?The administrator may allow you to use the attachment feature of this forum, which gives you the ability to attach files of certain types to your posts. This could be an image, a text document, a zip file etc. There will be a limit to the file size of any attachments you make.
To attach a file to a new post, simply click the [Additional Options] button at the bottom of the post composition page, and locate the file that you want to attach from your local hard drive.
After posting, the image attachments may display a thumbnail, depending on the forum settings. To view the contents of the attachment (if it is not already displayed) simply click the filename link that appears next to the attachment icon.
Can I Edit My Own Posts?If you have registered, you will be able to edit and delete your posts. Note that the administrator can disable this ability as he desires. Your ability to edit your posts may also be time-limited, depending on how the administrator has set up the forum.
To edit or delete your posts, click the modify button by the post you want to edit. If your post was the first in the thread, then deleting the post may result in the removal of the entire thread.
After you have made your modifications, a note may appear, which notifies other users that you have edited your post. Administrators and moderators may also edit your messages but this note may not appear when they do so.
CensorshipCertain words may have been censored by the administrator. If your posts contain any censored words, they will be blanked-out like this: *****.
The same words are censored for all users, and censoring is done by a computer simply searching and replacing words. It is in no way 'intelligent'.
What is email notification?If you post a new thread, or reply to an existing thread, you can choose to be notified by email when someone else replies to that thread. Click on the [Additional Options] button at the bottom of the post composition page and tick the box which changes the notificiations.
Only registered users may receive email notification, and they can set whether they want to receive email notification by default by editing their options.
Email notification is also referred to as 'Thread Subscription'.
