REQUIRED: Guidelines for the good forum member

How to register at Cluesforum / General administrative topics / and things that every member must read
nonhocapito
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REQUIRED: Guidelines for the good forum member

Unread post by nonhocapito »

This is a work in progress of possible guidelines for the members of the forum. There still might be corrections, amendments and additions made to the following.

1) Always source your material. Nothing is more annoying than an image without a link or an indication of its origins (unless it is implied by the context of the post). The forum does not benefit from having material of dubious origin being dumped on it, even if it is ground-breaking material.

2) Do not limit yourself to asking questions. We all first approached the research on fakery with a lot of questions. The board probably already contains an answer to the doubts you have. Rather, use a search engine to scoop out new material around the topic that you care for, and offer it to the attention of the other members. This will speed the discussion along.

3) Do not post super-long quotations from other websites and documents that are still reachable to everyone. Post a teaser and a link: the reader who is interested will follow. We want to see cluesforum grow with original material rather than with copy-paste. Also, if a quotation goes long and non-formatted, try to break it into paragraphs or adding some sort of markup to make it more readable. Also, when quoting a previous post, don't quote it in its entirety, especially if it is really long. Try to quote just the parts that are relevant to your answer, excluding pictures where not strictly necessary.

4) Always check your spelling and grammar, even if English is your mother tongue. Ungrammatical or confused writing turns off readers and gives them a lower opinion of this forum. It also associates thinking persons with anti-social handicaps like illiteracy. Furthermore, one of the telling signs for trolls and shills is usually one or another form of writing sloppiness, which serves as a mask to prevent their military/insider lingo to slip through. We are normal people who try to write correctly to be best understood: not only by your immediate forum pal, but by the reader of tomorrow who should browse the pages of this board in search of some clarity and sanity.

5) Post in the correct forum. The board is divided into different forums of different areas of interest. When creating a new topic, do it in the correct forum for the post you are starting with. If you think the research will prove that a certain story is linked to a different, more important area of interest, there will be time to move the thread later.

6) Learn the essential BBcode. Tags like IMG, URL, B, I, U, QUOTE are useful to make your posts more readable, and to include imagery and links to it. If you want to add your own images to the forum, rather than simply link to third-party pictures, get yourself an image-sharing account like Photobucket or Imageshack and use the IMG tags to post your images on the forum. [Or upload to your own site. But don't hot-link!] Also, if you are going to post VIDEOS, read our REQUIRED how-to in this forum. Don't clutter the forum with bad code. We believe in your ability to learn these simple tags. Ask a sharp nephew for advice if you can't figure it out.

7) Do not be hateful. No topics are taboo, but the forum cannot be a megaphone to our personal dislikes and intolerance. Also, don't be a fear-monger. We are not set out to scare anyone, the MSM and the "Alternative media" are both already pretty much focused on that. We go for the emancipation.

8) Don't be a bully, don't be a suck-up. All we care for is good research and good comments. The fortunes of members and administrators always fluctuate along with the quality of their contributions, but what really count is the material that is left behind on the forum, not our personal success in it. Also, Try not to turn issues into dividing issues. Nothing is more enjoyed by trolls and agents of sorts to see the researchers go at each other over some unsolvable question, causing a stalling in the research for everyone or worse, forcing everyone to take sides.

9) Do not abuse the edit function. Editing your posts is for a few key things: clarifying, improving spelling, grammar and punctuation, or adding additional information. It is not for retracting the meaning of the post or erasing the entire content of posts. It is not for deleting your posts. You can request us to delete posts for you in a private message. Please learn to think before you post. Learn to stand by your words and be comfortable with your mistakes being preserved in the forum. The admins do it, too. It's how we all learn from one another. The content of your posts may be deleted or moved or changed by administrators or moderators. We only alter posts worth reading, and we do it to improve readability in the following ways: fixing typos, spelling words correctly, removing misused code such as stray tags. We do not edit garbage posts. If anything, they are removed or left to represent you for good or ill. So don't post garbage.

Note: Members and administrators that are puzzled by some of the board functions may consult the phpBB help pages. More links to helpful pages and technical tips will always be added to this thread.
Last edited by hoi.polloi on Sat Jun 21, 2014 1:35 am, edited 4 times in total.
nonhocapito
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Posts: 2579
Joined: Sat Jul 10, 2010 5:38 am
Location: Italy
Contact:

Re: Guidelines for the good forum member

Unread post by nonhocapito »

What follow are a few technical tips for the practical use of the board. Sorry if they sound completely useless to the experienced forum user. They are obviously intended for members new to the workings of a forum board.

How do I follow so many open discussions?
Be sure to be logged in on the forum, then click on the "View unread posts" link at the top-left in home page (or better, bookmark it). The link will show you all threads that have new unread posts in them since your last visit.
As in general across the board, by clicking on the icon Image next to the last poster name to the right, you will be taken to the last unread post.
Before you rush to answer to it, consider that there might be previous posts that are unread as well, even in previous pages.

How to save a long uncompleted post before I finally submit it to the forum?
If you need more time to gather material to finish a new post, you can save the post as a draft. When in the post editor, click the "Save draft" button next to the "Preview" and "Submit" buttons. Later you will be able to re-access your drafts clicking on the "User Control Panel" link at the top-right, next to this icon Image.

How do I embed videos in the page?
See this thread: viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2093

How do I find that certain thread about something?
In the upper right of every page there is a textbox to search content across the whole board. If you need to limit your search to a certain forum or author, use the advanced search: http://cluesforum.info/search.php
If you are accustomed to use the search form that is part of your browser, you can download the cluesforum search plugin here: http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engine ... cluesforum

[to be continued...]
nonhocapito
Member
Posts: 2579
Joined: Sat Jul 10, 2010 5:38 am
Location: Italy
Contact:

Re: Guidelines for the good forum member

Unread post by nonhocapito »

Spell-checking your posts

Image

How to: Firefox spell-checker
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Usi ... %20checker

How to: Chrome spell-checker
http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/an ... swer=95604

How to: Opera spell-checker
http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/ ... eed/#spell

How to: Internet Explorer spell-checker
Never-Use-Internet-Explorer! :P
nonhocapito
Member
Posts: 2579
Joined: Sat Jul 10, 2010 5:38 am
Location: Italy
Contact:

Re: Guidelines for the good forum member

Unread post by nonhocapito »

It could be useful to familiarize yourself with the derailing and hijacking tactics generally used by shills and trolls on research forums.

This thread reproduces a popular "guide to forum spies" that illustrates most of these tactics.
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