Because we have a lot of new users on this forum, I thought I'd make a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) topic.

Please limit your responses here to general or specific use of this forum. If you want to know what JMHO (Just My Humble Opinion) means, or BTW (By The Way) means, just ask.

Fellow moderators, perhaps you may wish to post suggestions here on what should be and what shouldn't be posted on this site.

Webbie, perhaps you may want to add some TOS (Terms of Service) stuff here.

I'll make this sticky so it's always at the top.

Is Webbie a person? or a moderator?
What do those things stand for...?

Webbie is the username of our webmaster. Yes, she's actually a real person. Though, sometimes we wonder if she's a fembot. Hmmm...

She's the ultimate moderator. She can control everything in here. She makes new categories, like the new Photography forum.

JMHO means "just my humble opinion."

Please do not cross post topics. Cross posting is when you post the same thing in different forum topics.

Announcements of special events, concerts, feeds, bingo, church gatherings, etc., should be appropriately posted in the Calendar.

New member has nothing to do with length of time since joining, but rather the number of posts one makes. Until a person makes 100 (or 200 maybe?) posts, that person is considered a new member. Between 100 and 500 you are simply a member, and after 500 you become a mod. - from momsapilot.

How do you use the quote thingy? step by step.

Click the "Quote" button on the post that you want to cite. In the large white box type your response. Below the large white box is a smaller white box that contains the quote. If you want to edit the quote (perhaps shorten it so it doesn't take up so much room, or you're only concerned with a small portion of the quote) you can do that. It is suggested that you not edit the quote beyond that which the poster was discussing. In other words, if the quote was:

"I like Carrots."

you wouldn't change it to:

"I like artichokes."

Generally don't quote the immediately preceding post as your response would flow with the conversation. But you may quote several posts back in time so that people know what you are responding to.

When finished editing your response, just click on the Add Reply button as you normally would.

All about IP addresses on this forum:

Ok, I hope everyone will read this one because it seems to be misunderstood by both moderators and newer members.

What is an IP Address?
A 32 bit designation for a host, that consists of a network address, host number, and subnet mask. These are written in dot notation (ie, 206.144.2.3) that actually corresponds to numbers of bits. IP addresses can be in one of three classes: A, B, and C. They can be "legitimate" or "non-legitimate". Legitimate addresses are public, such as those used for web sites, whereas non-legitimate addresses are given to devices behind the scenes, such as web servers reached through a proxy device such as a firewall. Source: LoadBalancing.net

What are the IP Addresses used on this forum?
Every moderator has the ability to see the IP address assigned to each posting. These IP addresses are not unique identifiers for each poster's computer. These IP addresses are the IP addresses of the server on the network they are accessing the Internet from. For example, if you use AOL to connect to the Internet, your IP address on your post may be identical to several other user's posts that also use AOL to connect to the Internet. If you access this web site from a company that has a network, the IP address that shows in your post is the IP address of the server that routes you to the Internet, not your individual machine.

So if someone tells you that they traced your IP address on this forum to your machine and therefore they know that poster "Jane Doe" is the same as poster "Suzie Q", they are either misunderstanding IP addressing, or simply trying to scare you with erroneous information.

Bottom line, the IP addresses that show to a moderator, don't really mean jack ....

Webbie

While it isn't conclusive proof of identity, I still find it very peculiar and coincidental when a new poster from the same IP address as another member starts off with a flaming post against somebody. Maybe it's just some co-worker at the desk beside them or their neighbor with the same ISP. Dunno.

Not definative, but still suspicious to me. I've been on other forums where folks would use multiple member names for the purpose of fanning the flames. I just wouldn't want to see that happen here.

And now a question for webbie about IP's. When my laptop connects through my wireless router, it appears the router assigns it an IP that is a spinoff of my main IP that's fixed from the cable co. The same IP that shows up here when I post from the laptop is the same thing that Windows network manger (or whatever it's called) shows was assigned. Under what circumstances would any other poster show up under that IP, short of somebody else being connected to my home network?

If this belongs in it's own topic, we can move the discussion. This knowledge helps me from looking the fool. Thanks!

The key for you is that you have a fixed IP from the cable co. But it is a fixed IP of your modem, not your computer.

If you are the only computer on that network, then the IP would always be the same. If you have more than one computer on your network, and you are looking for the unique identifier of each computer, you would need to determine the MAC address of each device.

Do you use your laptop both at home and at work, if so, is the IP address the same? If so, are you connecting from home to your work network and accessing the Internet from there?

A fun link to try from work and from home is www.whatismyip.com

Why was the delete option taken away from the shout box?
Was that just a mod thing?
And when you click on the report button in a post who does that go to? The Admin or one of the mods?
I don't like the fact that I can't delete something that I wrote.I change my mind about my posts alot.
I don't want to have to ask someone else to do the work.Maybe they(yoss and snoop) won't be on here ALL the time.
*I'm NOT complaining here people.Just asking a question and giving an opinion.Mine.

Also,one of you might want to re-arrange this post so that only the question about the report button is left along with the answer.

I have the delete options for the shoutbox and will see about having mods having it too, not sure why it went away.

The report button should send a message to Mods.

You should still be able to edit and delete your own posts (and shouts). Let me know if you try and it doesn't work.

If this arrangement proves to be inefficient, we will change things around a bit :-)

Why has everyone been turned from mods to members? Webbie> Are you and Yoss going to be the only Moderators?

We had too many mods, samy. That whole chiefs/indians thing.

I can be a good indian. I thought it might be the whole " I see your IP address and I'm going to narc on you" thing or we were turning into the channel 25 forum
and ruling with an iron fist

Maybe this will help:

The Twelve Steps for Moderatordom are as follows.

1. Admitted that we were powerless over editing — that our posts had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Moderator greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Webbie as we understood Her.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of posts.
5. Admitted to the Administrator, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our posts.
6. Were entirely ready to have the Moderator remove all these defects of posting.
7. Humbly asked Her to remove our mispellings, bad grammar and flameful posts.
8. Made a list of all posters we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure the Moderators, the Administrator or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through thought and meditation to improve our conscious contact with the Administrator, as we understood Her, asking only for knowledge of her will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a cyber-kinetic awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to all other posters, and to practice these principles in all of our Internet excursions.

How is this censorship?
You're not prohibited from posting darn near anything you please.

While I am not responsible for eliminating mod status based solely on the number of posts, I have seen an abuse of mod power by a couple of our members. For the most part, the abuse was limited to deleting certain of other's posts, or changing a word here and there in someone else's post.

We had no way of knowing WHO deleted or changed these posts, with so many mods.

And, how many with mod status even KNEW how to use the mod control panel? When was the last time you, or any of the other mods, checked the "Queued Status" control panel? When was the last time a mod checked member's profiles for prurient or obscene web-links? When was the last time a mod directly emailed Webbie to advise of a questionable post, or a troublesome poster? (and, do you even know her email address, other than "webmaster"?) When was the last time a mod moved a topic because it didn't belong where it was initiated?

Mod status holds a certain responsibility to our Host, The Herald-Mail Company. They've pretty much given us a discussion board (a successful board at that) with a hands-off policy, allowing us to run the forum as if it were our own.

Having been a member of numerous forums, this is the first forum that conferred mod status merely on the number of posts that a member had.

I'm sorry if you feel this is censorship, but I just don't get where you are being prohibited from initiating or adding to topics and threads.

I think pic & link are restored. Actually, I have no idea why it wasn't working after we re-did the mod thing....

Let me know if you are still having trouble. I might be confused!

BTW, we are not opposed to having a few mods, so if you are interested in becoming a mod, PLEASE PM me!

A refresher for the agreement we all agreed to when we signed up:



PLEASE NOTE - Obviously there are topics that will lead to a heated discussion. That is 1/2 of the fun of this board. If you participate on this board you should understand that there will be people who may not share your point of view and may, in fact, strongly oppose your point of view. This is one of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. Please do not ask that a post be removed because you perceive it as not in keeping with your own views, or because you think the post, or the person writing the post is mean.

This is not intended to encourage any member of this board to be mean to another member. As an online 'community' we should all try to respect each other as people and realize that we all have ideas and opinions. Please try to keep your posting directed to the topic, and do not use this board to begin personal assaults against other members.

Why do I feel like an elementary teacher on the playground at recess?

Bottom line, play nice, and use your manners everyone.

And most of all; please, please use these boards as an opportunity for open discussion and have fun!

Either the previous version of this software, or the other software that was used when this forum first started, had an option to change the skin. I think there was Olive Drab, Fairy Fuscia and Blue Baloney.

Why won't the color change for my fonts? As a matter of fact,the only thing that does work is the bold ,italics ,and underlining . Could my fire wall have something to do with it? Looks like alot of others can change the color.

WVDragonLadyHmmm...

Could be something with your display settings.

I'm not exactly sure what it could be

play around here with it. maybe try to edit this post and see what the format is.

i'll try blue first
then red
wonder if this'll work with purple

Edited by Yoss.

Fixed it for ya.

ya' gotta close the tags. the only thing you had was open tags. Ya gotta do the slashCOLOR to close the tags.

Ok, I updated my avatar Sunday night. It looked really cute when I went in and found one of my posts to see how it came out. Now it's gone. Any idea why? Also, I want to use one of my own photos, but the are all 700KB. Any way to shrink them so they will work in here?

No idea on why your avatar is gone. Unless it was too big. The easiest way to shrink a photo is to email it to yourself and then use that version to post. If you're kinda tech minded you could use an editor, such as the free Irfanview to shrink the size. But if you're using Windows XP, emailing to yourself is the easiest.

Some of you may need to change your board settings to get the time on the board set correctly.

Go to

My Controls - in upper right hand corner of main page
Options - on left side
Board Settings
Is Daylight Savings Time in Effect - remove check mark
Click Change my Account Options button

Why doesn't the Ignore User option work in the shout box?
It does everywhere else on the board.
just wondering.

The Shoutbox is an add-on that was written by someone other than the company who wrote the forum software.

The moral of the story is that whoever starts a topic has the ability to delete the topic.

I think it is time for a poll on this issue...

Some of us have had this discussion before, both publicly and privately in pm's. If things get out of hand in a topic, a request should be made either to the moderators or the admin, to close it, but unless it contains slanderous, libelous, profane, obscene, pandering or otherwise indecent content, it should not be deleted.

This does not prevent anyone from editing their post, or deleting their post. In my opinion, posters should keep in mind, that if they start deleting their posts, they may not be taken seriously in future posts.

Upon the request of some posters, I have deleted individual posts because of specific and valid reasons mentioned by the requester.

Deleting a topic should always be the decision of the moderator or the admin.

JMHO

ok, thanks for the clarification on the term!

Personally, I would prefer that all forum members play by the rules, show courtesy and respect for each other, even during a debate - and leave personal bashing to the middle-school kids. I am actually saddened by the effect that personal bashing is having on our forums, and the general sense of community that we should be striving for.

I also believe that once you have opened Pandora's box, you should have to live with the consequences.

I think the forum members' method of ignoring most continued bad behavior is our way of putting someone in a sort of "time out" so they will learn that we refuse to play that way.

If someone is simply trying to stir up trouble, the less we allow the effect, the less they will (theoretically) persist.

If people have differing opinions, those opinions should be allowed to be stated and opposing sides should be allowed to debate the opinion, but the issue should remain the topic, rather than evolving into personal attacks. This is one of the primary reasons this board exists (to debate and dicuss and share ideas and opinions). If people are continuously attacked for doing so, they will (most likely) eventually give up trying and this board will become a "has been".

Is this poll just a waste of time or can something really be done about deleting entire threads?

If it must be done it should be up to a mod or the Herald directly and should have good reason. I was not involved in any threads that have been deleted. But it seems to me that if someone wants things removed from a thread even if they started it they should delete thier own posts. Anyother posts contributing to the thread by other forum members should be left in place unless they violate forum rules. Like I said this has not effected me but the thought of losing the thought and time it took to debate an issue because of someones insecurities or any other non-offensive reason is a shame. Individual posts I can see but not entire threads unless all participants were to agree.

I've had trouble changing my avatar as well. I've found that I have to remove the old avatar first. Log out and clear my cookies. Log back in and upload the new avatar. It seems to stick after I do that. Weird.

I would guess that you just need clear you cache in you internet browser.

You're right. Just tried it. Don't have to log off. Thanks.

What is a PM my computer knowledge is limited? If Someone is told to check your PMs what does this mean?

jenpoo,
PM means someone sent you a Personal Message.

PM stands for "private message." When logged into your account on here, you can go to the private message section of your account, (upper right hand corner). Here, you can send a message to another poster. It just goes to them. It is not posted on the board. Try it out and play with it. You can use me to practice with, if you'd like.

If someone is told to check their PMs, it means that someone sent them a private message and they might to check it out and read it and respond.

Let's all send jen PMs now. That way she'll get the hang of it.

I have another techie question.

How do you put a picture in the avatar box? I know about the choices on this site, but how do you put in something different?

Is it basically a cut and paste thing?
THanks.

Basically, you pick a picture and save it as jpeg, (picture.jpg), and then load it. But that doesn't always produce a good avatar. You have to remember that the picture is going to be shrunk down to fit into that little box.

Every time I try to make my own avatar, it squishes up funny or isn't clear enough. I finally got tired of trying so I went to this website that has avatars already made and took one from there. They have everything though. Whatever you're interested in, it's probably there. Just go to a search engine, (google or ask.com, whatever), and search for avatars. Tons of stuff comes up.

If you're really set on making your own, I'm sure the more computer saavy posters around here could give you advice and guidelines.

Rowdy's on probation... and quickly moving to becoming the first H-M forum poster to have his posts reviewed prior to posting.

Just as an fyi, if you see that a poster has started a topic, and you know that that particular poster has a habit of deleting whole topics that he has started, you might want to think twice about posting in that topic, especially if your post is a long and well thought out reply.

Question: What doe the letters ICQ and the little daisy mean? It's in the profile section and I was wondering what it ment. It's with the AIM and Yahoo icons.

ICQ is a messaging program like msn messenger or yahoo messenger. It is much like our chat box, but on an international scale. You have a user name on ICQ (I seek you) as you do on msn and yahoo.

FWIW, in response to another reply in another topic...

I would have no problem suspending/banning a person that would use foul/obscene language or who purposely instigates arguments or flaming/baiting material or whose posts are intended to disrupt the free flow of discussion on this board.

It would be nice if everyone could CC on private messages and not just not just mods.

This post from Heather keeps coming up as a new post, posted today

That because users are voting in the poll. It refreshes the topics activity date.

The above is an example of baiting.

??? Why aren't there more " Fast Reply" options in more threads??? (like the one for the "when I was in school thread")