welcome! New Member Guide (9/2021)

[Gargamel]

Hello and Welcome!

Welcome to the Official KSP Forums! We're glad you decided to join our community, and you probably have some questions as to what's going on and what can you do here.  This little guide may help answer some of those questions.

First off, you've just joined and might have missed a couple things in your haste to post about your love of little green men flying through space, or more likely, as most of us have experienced when we were new, posting about our little green men dying in fiery explosions. We'd like you to start off by taking a look at our Community Guidelines. These are the rules that we try to follow here on the forums, and we ask that you do too. Give them a read; there's nothing overly restrictive about them. We try to maintain a positive, non-confrontational, family-oriented forum here. If you keep that in mind, you'll do just fine! 

This guide is broken up into small sections, indexed below, so you can easily find the info you are looking for. If you're brand new, I recommend reading all of it first, and then just referencing the various sections as you have questions.

• WHAT CAN I DO?  The functions available to you, and the minor restrictions placed on your new account.
• THE FORUM  Getting to know the basic layout of the forum, and what goes where.
• POSTING General guidelines and etiquette for posting on the forum. (Including Pictures)
• CONTACTING A MODERATOR How to get help. 

Edited September 12, 2021 by Gargamel

[Gargamel]

WHAT CAN (OR CAN'T) I DO

As a brand new member, there have been some limits placed on your account. These restriction are in place for security reasons to help protect the forums as a whole. These will be removed from your account in after the moderators have approved five^* of your posts, but here is a short list of what to expect till then:

• Your first few posts need moderator approval - If you have tried to post your first message, you might have seen this message: "Your content will need to be approved by a moderator. New members, after 5 approved posts you will no longer see this warning and will be able to post freely."  This means a moderator will have to review your post, and make sure it's suitable for our forums (see Posting below).  This may take some time for a moderator to actually approve the post, but it doesn't mean anything is wrong.  The moderators are volunteers and aren't always available to approve things. Be patient, and it will get approved. So if you don't see the post go through immediately, it's not a bug, and you don't have to try again. If for some odd reason we can't approve it, we'll definitely contact you privately to explain why and help you edit it so it is acceptable. Edits to an already approved post also require approval during this period, so make sure you get the punctuation right the first time, or else you'll have to wait for approval again. 
   

•  You can't send Private Messages - Until you have reached the 5 post mark, you will be unable to create a new PM in our message system. You can receive, and freely reply to, messages from other members, but you cannot start a new conversation. If, for some reason, you need to contact a moderator, you can report a post (see Contacting A Moderator below), and we will message you as soon as we can.
   

•  You can't customize your profile - One of the cool things about a forum is having your own identity that others can associate with you. The picture next to your post is your avatar, you can select whatever you want to represent you, as long as it follows our Community Guidelines. Inside your profile, you can change various settings to display information you want shared with the community. We ask though, you do not reveal information that could possibly identify yourself in the real world, especially if you are a minor (under 18 years of age).  For your protection, the email address you used to register is never revealed to the general public. But, like posts and PMs above, you cannot edit your profile until you have reached the 5 post count. Then you can add an avatar, profile pics, and info as you desire. 

 

^* - A note about your post count:  Posts in the Lounge and Games forums do not count towards your post count.  So posts in these locations will not bring you closer to your 5 post mark.

 

[Gargamel]

THE FORUMS: What Goes Where?

Now, let's take a look around the forums a bit. This guide will help you get started in the forums, but if you need some help on more specific things about how to use the forums, we have this great thread on just that topic. It will cover most of the stuff you need to know. If not, you can ask there or in the "Ask the Mods" thread (see Contacting A Moderator below). In fact, I highly recommend reading the "How to use the Forums" thread once you get settled and get a feel for the basics. 

Let's take a look at some of the sections of the forum you might be most interested in as a new member. Take a look at the description of each sub-forum on the main page: they each have their own content to offer, and you might find a home in one of them. But I'll just be looking at the most common ones for which you might have signed up with us:

• General - This is where SQUAD posts updates and such on upcoming KSP releases. 
• KSP Discussion - This is just general talk about the game itself.  Questions and Tech support go other places.
• Gameplay Questions - This is where you ask "How do I do X?", and the forum will answer you.  You might want to check out the FAQ to start with.
• Tech Support: Stock, Modded, and Console -  If the game doesn't seem to be working properly, ask here. 
• Add-ons -  If you want to talk about or find mods for the game, this is the place.
• Community - Stuff not directly related to the game itself, but mainly about the forums.  Fun place to hang out. 
• Making History / Breaking Ground - For topics that directly relate to the KSP DLCs. 

There are many more forums and sub-forums. We encourage you to check them all out.

[Gargamel]

POSTING

While you might choose to lurk for a while before posting anything, most people find it more fun and rewarding to be active participants in the community. You do this by posting messages to threads within the forums. You can even start a new one if you can't find one on that topic already existing. Feel free to contribute right away!

But before you do, I'd like to you to read at least the first post in these two threads:  The Good Conduct Guide and The Positive Forum Movement. These two posts encapsulate what we strive to have here on the KSP Forums; a friendly place to discuss one of our favorite games, and to also discuss other stuff about science and the world around us. We maintain these forums as a family friendly place and expect you to try to do the same. 

While we are pretty open about we we talk about here, there is some basic forum etiquette you should try to follow:

• Does the post adhere to our Community Guidelines?  These are the rules that you are required to follow when posting to the forums.  If you are unsure if a post meets these guidelines, feel free to ask one of the moderators in a PM for advice (see below).  While your first few posts do require approval, submitting a post for approval that doesn't meet these guidelines is frowned upon.  Embedded content or links to outside content must also follow these guidelines.  If you have any question, just ask first. 
   
• Does the post have content relevant to the thread?  While we do encourage everyone to get involved, it becomes cumbersome to other members of the forum if they have to scroll through pages of contentless posts before reaching something of value. So consider if what you are posting adds to the discussion at hand. But don't let this dissuade you from posting, if what is a simple thing to veteran players might be a complicated question for you, then ask away.
   
• Necroing is the act of posting to a thread that is very old.  Usually these threads have died off for a reason, and they might be better off that way. If what you are posting is relevant to the conversation in the thread, and the subject matter of the thread is not outdated for whatever reason, then it's ok to necro a thread.  But if the thread only kind-of fits the comment or question you want to post, then you might be better off finding a newer thread, or even starting one yourself. 
   
• Is there a current similar thread?  Before starting a new thread, take a look at the first couple pages of a forum. What you are planning to ask might already be actively being discussed by the community. If so, ask in that thread. The moderators will often merge similar threads together that have the same topic, and sometimes that can make the resulting discussion very confusing to follow. To avoid this confusion, it's better to post in a current thread than to start a new one. Even if you can't find a current thread, your new thread might still get merged. We have a bunch of "mega' threads on the forums, and we often merge new threads on the same topic together into these preexisting threads. If that happens, don't worry, you did nothing wrong, sometimes those bigger threads are hard to find. 
   
• Is this new thread in the right forum?  As mentioned above, we have sub forums for various topics of discussion. Try to do your best to place your thread in the right subforum for the topic. If you don't, it's not a big deal and we can easily move it later, but it's easier for everybody if it's in the right place to start with. It might take you a little time to get a feel for where each type of thread really belongs, so don't worry if we do move your thread without warning. Each time we move a thread, we'll leave a link to it's new location. But these links only remain for 24 hours, so if you don't visit the forums in that time, you may be wondering where your thread went. If so, click on your avatar and look at your activity stream,  because this will show everything you have posted and you can find the thread there.
   
• Be courteous to Mod Makers - Mod makers work on their mods in their free time. They know when KSP gets updated, so asking them for updates can be very taxing for the mod maker. We call this "Poking the Bears," if it's done rudely or too often, and it's considered rude and bad form. You can usually tell by how active a mod thread is if the mod will be updated soon or not.  If you have a question about a mod though, feel free to ask away. 

That's all we ask of you as a new member.  When you are posting, as mentioned in the two threads I urged you to read above, consider what you are saying. Talk to others the same way you would want to be talked to. 

Our editor is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), so most formatting issues that you might experience will be visible to you before posting. If you are writing up a complicated post with some formatting in it, we have a Test Thread that is ideal for testing out formatting and the like. Use it instead of creating a new thread where you work out the bugs of a post.   

If you'd like to post a picture in your post, it's pretty simple here.   There are more detailed instructions in the "How to use the forums" thread mentioned above, but you simply have to paste the direct link from the picture into your post.   Don't use the embed or html codes some sites offer.  Usually it's easiest to just right click the picture, copy it's location, and then right-click paste in your KSP forum post. 

Edited September 12, 2021 by Gargamel

[Gargamel]

CONTACTING A MODERATOR

Sometimes, you just need to ask for help. Or even point out something amiss on the forums, be it a thread in a wrong place, spam you've noticed, or questionable content that needs to be removed.  That's where the moderators come in. We are here to help. As a new member, you can't send a new PM as mentioned above, so there a couple ways you can get in touch with us.

• Reporting a Post - This is by far the most efficient method of letting the moderators know about something. In the top right corner of every post, there is a button that says "Report Post."  Clicking on that will bring up an editor box, where you should enter some info about the problem.  Leaving it blank can make it difficult for us to figure out what the issue might be, so help us out and fill in some info. This will create an alert that all moderators on the forums will see. We can respond much faster to it that way than trying to contact us individually or in a thread. Even if you just want to have a PM conversation with a moderator about something relevant to the forums, report a post, any post, and we'll contact you as soon as we can. 
   
• "Ask The Moderators" Thread - If something you need addressed is not urgent, you can pose your question in this thread. We will respond fairly promptly, and will openly discuss any matter that we are allowed to. If using the report button has not gotten a PM from one of us, you can ask in this thread to be PMed by a mod, but this will be a rare occurrence, as we usually check the reports first.  

Use the report button as you see the need. If you notice something wrong with a post, maybe it's in the wrong forum, or there's something in it that violates our Community Guidelines, then click the report button, let us know what is happening. As long as you don't abuse it, the worst that can happen is that we decide it's not worth doing anything about, and everybody goes on their way. 

Well, that's the welcome wagon.  I hope you enjoy your time here, we all do.  We hope to see more of you in the future, and become a solid member of our community.