Frequently Asked Questions

• FAQ?
• The Basics; Forum Survival Guide
• How to operate this board?
• Logging in/out
• What goes where?
• Personal preferences
• The icons near user posts
• Signatures
• Markup tags
• Topics in parts?
• Http-compression?
• Change my username?
• Who looks after things?
• Personal information

What is a FAQ?

A FAQ is a list of frequently asked questions, which is meant to give an insight into the dos and don'ts at Discussion Zone.
Furthermore, it is an explanation of how this forum works and what you can do to customize it.

The Basics; Forum Survival Guide

For starters; be civil to each other. When a community grows, more and more different opinions are bound to surface. There will always be people with different visions to your own.

Dyslexia is a problem many people have to cope with. That's why occasionally someone may post a message that contains quite a lot of spelling errors. It's considered impolite to continuously point these errors out to the writer.
On the other hand; if you know you have dyslexia, try to keep your messages brief en press [Enter] once in a while. Despite the open mindedness of most users, it showed that a piece of text without some basic formatting ([Enter]'s and punctuation marks) is not read carefully and that's a shame.

Keep in mind that not everybody is equally educated in all subjects.
There may be professionals as well as newbies here, but every once in a while we all run into problems we cannot solve on our own.

Flame wars do not contribute to the forum; don't let yourself get involved in one. It's up to the moderators or administrators to decide how to act when one occurs. Also, it's of no use to keep going on about something, when the topic has turned into an endless discussion about who's right.

Try to keep the discussions as much on-topic as possible.
When the topic has changed from one subject to a completely different one, please open up a new thread and continue the new discussion there.

Know whom you're talking to. There may occasionally be experts (usually regular visitors) here who know all about the relevant topic. Their advice should should not be dismissed. It's you who's asking them a question, not the other way around.
In any case, it's prudent to pre-check the profile of unknown visitors before posting a (negative) reply.

If you have a problem; first try to find the answer yourself. Some things are brought up very often, and sometimes even the same solution applies.
In the long run this is very annoying. As the community grows, so does the knowledge-database. You only need to search.

Don't yell with the intend to get a reply. ("Yell? How do I yell in a text-based discussion?") By using capitals only in your posts, you appear to be yelling.
A TEXT THAT IS WRITTEN IN THIS MANNER, is highly irritating and will probably anger the other users on the board. Making SOMETHING clear however, is something completely different; in this case it stresses some portion of the text.
So, please use your caps-lock wisely.

Don't go posting the same question about in all forums (cross posting). This is pointless; you irritate other users and risk disciplinal measures.
Cross posts will be closed when spotted.

How does this forum work?

That's quite simple. First you need to register yourself. The minimum of information we need of you is a username and a valid e-mail address. A valid e-mail address is one that actually exists, but there's one more catch to it. The forum administrator may have locked out certain internet hosts (typically free, web based e-mail services such as Hotmail, Yahoo/GeoCities, Excite), so in that case you can't use that e-mail address.
After you register, an activation key will be mailed to this account, so you'll want to check for any typos.
If you're concerned about your privacy, firstly you can be assured that your e-mail address will never be visible to other users. You can also opt to not allow others to send you emails through this board.

After you register and login, you can start new topics and reply to existing ones.

Why do I have to re-enter my username and password all the time when I want to post a message?

You can circumvent this by logging in. This way, a cookie is presented to your system that is automatically destroyed after a certain amount of time of inactivity on this forum or when the last browser window is closed.

I don't like the idea of having my username and password stored in some cookie on my system

This cookie is not a 'data-cookie', but rather an 'id-cookie'. It does not contain any sensitive personal information, but a mere identification number that is based on your username and password among other things. This will make sure the identification number is always unique.
The actual username and password data is still stored on the server and accessed by this unique identifier.

But when I log in, everybody working on this PC can post messages pretending to be me

When you're finished on this forum, just logout or close all your browser windows.

Hmmkay... Nice forum by the way; and quite a lot of subforums... What goes where?

This should be pretty self-explaining. The administrator may have added some description to the subforums to make the differences clearer.

Right, as said, put your threads in the right subforum! The moderators and administrators ARE able to move topics to the right subforum in case anyone makes a small mistake, but they are not the clean-up crew. Make sure you place your topics in the right place.

Can I customize some things?

Yes, your preferences and profile are user-adjustable.
Deleting and moving threads and/or posts is reserved to mods and admins only.

I see a whole lot of icons near every post. What are they for?

With this button, you can view the poster's public profile.
If this user has specified to allow it, you can send an e-mail to this user through this button.
With this button, you can find the latest posts by this user.
/ indicator - Indicated whether or not this user has logged in on this forum.
This image will indicate the number of posts this user has made.
With this button, you can post a new message with this message's text automatically inserted into a quote.
Poster and moderators can edit this post by using this button.

What's up with these signatures? I don't want to see those!

Well, that's the fun part about them. By the default they are both visible for all visitors of this forum, but at the settings page you can disable them individually. Your settings are stored in a cookie in your web browser, so the next time you visit this forum, your preferences are automatically restored.

I'd like to use HTML in my posts.

It all depends on the administrator whether or not you can use HTML in your posts. It may in fact be available in one forum on this board, while it's not in the next. This will be indicated when posting a message in a particular forum. As an alternative, you can use YBB tags (a subset of HTML). Codes that work in YBB are:

[b]bold[/b]
[u]underline[/u]
[i]italic[/i]
[s]strike-through[/s]
[tt]teletype font[/tt]
[sub]subscript[/sub]
[sup]superscript[/sup]
[rev]reverse[/rev] (yes, this text will be actually be reversed)
[size=X]text[/size] to set the font size of the text
[color=X]text[/color] to set the font color of the text
[hr] for a <hr> (Horizontal Rule, or simply a line)

[url]http://www2.jc-tv.net/[/url] for a simple URL
[url=http://www2.jc-tv.net/]JC-TV[/url] for a nice URL
[email]admin@jc-tv.net[/email] to make this a e-mail address hyperlink
[email=admin@jc-tv.net]Board admin[/email] to make this an e-mail address hyperlink

[quote]text[/quote] to make this text stand out as a quote
[code]text[/code] to use a small, non-proportional font to display program code
[php]code[/php] for syntax highlighting of PHP code

[off topic]text[/off topic] to use a small font for this text
[edit]text[/edit] to specify a text that was added to the original
/me to use IRC style schizophrenia (also: [me=UserName]thinks...[/me])
[you] to address the reader

[list]
[*]item 1
[*]item 2
[/list]
to make a list of items

In some cases, it is also possible to just type URL's or e-mail addresses to have them automatically converted to hyperlinks.

Why does the forum divide the topics into parts?

The default value is 25, but you can easily change this value in your preferences.

Http-compression? What's that?

Especially for those people on low bandwidth connections, like modemers, http-compression was invented, which may save up to 80% of your bandwidth. Your CPU will need to do extra work, so you will have to decide for yourself which trade-off works the best for you.
Note that this feature may not be supported by this server. Compression will then automatically be disabled.

I want to change my username!

By default this is disabled, since this can lead to serious confusion among other forum visitors. Contact the board administrator if want to alter your username, but are not allowed to.

Who looks after things and who's in charge?

Depending on the size of the board, there are a couple of forum moderators available. These can be divided into 3 categories:

• Moderators - this kind of moderators are specifically assigned to an individual forum. They have limited power, but can still close or move threads, delete or edit posts and enter certain restricted areas.
• Global moderators - while pretty much the same as normal moderators, a global moderator can perform his actions in any forum. Global moderators can also appoint normal moderators, but cannot appoint them to any forum.
• Administrator - Administrators are the super users of the board and are allowed to do everything moderators are allowed to. Besides this, they also can alter the physical 'structure' of the board (adding new forums, categories, appointing moderators).

And when do I become an Admin or moderator?

You don't automatically become one, as opposed to what is the case with some other forum systems available. You are invited by the crew to become one. Applying for the job is probably pointless.

Do you guys really need to know all of my personal information?
What do you need it for?

You don't NEED to specify all your personal information. The only things you are required to enter are your nickname, password and e-mail address. We need your e-mail address to send you your activation code. All other information is purely optional and to aid fellow board visitors. However, if you'd like, you can choose to disallow other users to view your e-mail address or even your whole profile.