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Hello there. I was just wondering, what forum user has the most rep? I don’t mean to spark an argument or anything. Thanks!

The KSP forum moderator's team presents the A Forum User's Guide to the Thread of the Month A brief introduction: As many of you know, since June 2013, the moderation team has been able to bestow the Thread of the Month to deserving threads created by community members. Only recently, within the last few years, have I become involved in creating the thread announcing the monthly Thread of the Month and the annual Thread of the Year. Since my involvement, I will be the first to admit I've gradually made a few changes to both the Thread of the Month and the process used to select them. It is my hope that this guide will answer a few questions about how the moderation team goes about using the nominations we receive from the community for the Thread of the Month, and the expanded categories nominations are filtered into. There are also some other things that I'd like to share with the forum community that goes into the decisions made when the Thread of the Month is prepared. Each major part of the decision making process is explained in this guide. For those of you who strive to create a thread worthy of the Thread of the Month recognition, I hope it helps answer many of the questions I've been asked over the past couple of years. I'll start the guide by explaining the categories and then I'll address the other major points used in turn. The categories explained: One of the changes I wanted to do to the TOTM was to highlight more of what the community was offering each month - and the best way to do that was by creating categories. Currently, here are the categories we use for each Thread of the Month and a brief explanation of what each category is (most of this is copied off the Threads of the Month): Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works: This category features a thread that, while not directly Kerbal Space Program related, is a creative work, fan-fiction, or other presentation related to the game. If you write fan fiction, do KSP-themed doodles, paint, CGI, or Lego dioramas or craft, or anything else that is creative arts-based and associated with Kerbal Space Program, this is the category where your thread might be featured if it is nominated. Forum Member-Created Challenges and Missions: This category contains missions and challenges created by you, the members of our gaming community. Many excellent missions and challenges threads are created that expand our fun with the game and press our skills, creativity, and sometimes, luck beyond what we get accustomed to. Let’s face it, we all have our go-to design basics and vehicles we like to use. So sometimes, a good challenge can cause us to think of another way to achieve our goals. Ideally, these challenges and missions should be original or older challenges from the forum. Still, they cannot be modifications of official challenges from @SQUAD or @Intercept Games as released on official KSP social media platforms. This category will probably be divided into KSP and KSP2 subcategories. Game Support/Game Mod of the Month: This category features either help with the game (stock or modded) or mods that add quality-of-life gameplay improvements to Kerbal Space Program. This category will probably be divided into KSP and KSP2 subcategories. General community thread of the month: This category features a thread that adds to the community and doesn’t fit the game support/game mod categories. This can be anything. In previous months, we have featured threads involving actual science, suggestions for KSP2, real space missions, and anything else you can think of. Video-based Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works: This category features a video or other form of cinematography of a Kerbal mission report using in-game video recorded gameplay. In January 2023, I changed this one without warning the moderation team. Most of the more recent cinematic posts have been posted in one thread rather than their creators creating a new thread. And there’s nothing wrong with it; it just meant those creators did not receive the recognition they deserved. A change was made, and for this category only, the TOTM became a Post of the Month (POTM) - with a unique graphic. Honorable Mentions: Just as it says on the TOTM, sometimes it’s a challenge to choose which threads will receive the honor of being selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories. We get so many good nominations each month to choose from, but we limit it to one for each type. Threads nominated but not selected as a thread of the month become honorable mentions. Honorable mentions will automatically be reconsidered for future TOTMs. After a thread is nominated, it is categorized according to its kind. Any thread that does not fit one of the easy-to-identify ones is put in the General Community Thread of the Month. When we first began the categories, there were times when we would list more than one as a "thread of the month" for that category. Over the past couple of years, we no longer do this. There is now only one thread of the month per category. All other threads nominated for the same type will be listed in the "Honorable Mention" category. What makes a thread a Thread of the Month: In the header of this post, there’s an image containing five points. These five points are important guidelines to determine the difference between an honorable mention and a thread of the month. I want to explain those a bit to give you insight into what we look for in the nominations. The value of the thread to the forum community: Of the five guidelines used, this one is the most important. We consider the value the thread brings to the forum community. Since we have various categories in the TOTM, this becomes easy. The categories allow us to consider nominations of the same kind rather than having to choose just one thread of the month over a variety of threads – even if they were totally different. If a forum game is nominated, it will always be listed as an Honorable Mention. Participation in forum games does not add to a member’s post count. Although forum games are fun and add to our sense of community, they are… fun. Moderator action on a thread does not disqualify it from consideration for TOTM, if nominated. Older threads that have never received recognition as TOTM are eligible to be considered for TOTM if nominated, as they still have value to the forum community. The Original Post (OP) organization/OP design: This is where presentation becomes extremely important. The organization and design of the OP is the second most crucial part of any post we consider for TOTM. A poorly designed OP can distract from the value of the information you're trying to relay to the forum community. Often, this makes a difference in a Thread of the Month and an Honorable Mention (there are other factors, too). If you are trying to design a thread with the hopes of it becoming a TOTM, here are some things about the design and organization to keep in mind. These guidelines are not hard rules or are meant to be strict rules to be enforced or curb your creativity. Basic Original Post (OP) helps: A clean-appearing OP can keep the forum community engaged in your thread. Try to avoid including "clutter" in your OP. These are things that look nice or cute but may not have any real connection to what your thread is about. Use visual organization to help you organize your OP. (Hint - this guide has one, the image at the top of the page. I enjoy making images to help tie things together). Use highlights, such as bold, larger text size, and colored text, to set off headers. Making visual dividers helps to allow the reader to see the divisions in your OP. Be careful with using any font other than the basic fonts (Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman, Lucida Sans Unicode). Those are standard stock fonts. Others, such as Comic Sans MS and Trebuchet Sans MS, may or may not be available to all forum users and may be substituted on some web browsers. Be careful with tables. Apple devices do not like tables and often cut them off if you use preset dimensions. Basic image helps: Use a site that allows you to copy and paste your images with their extensions in place (*.bmp, *.png, *.gif). Otherwise, you'll end up with a URL and no picture. Some sites offer free image hosting, such as Imgur, the most commonly used site on this forum. You are free to set your image dimensions to whatever size you wish. If you use the default size, the device's web browser will auto-size the appropriate images. However, setting hard sizes for your images will create problems for those viewing your thread on mobile devices. Use images that are relevant to your OP. Resist the urge to use images that are off-topic or distract from the information you are trying to relay to the community. Presentation of ideas: This guideline covers how well you explain the purpose of your thread and what it is you hope to do. Some of the best examples on the forum can be found in the mod, challenge, and forum game threads. We are looking at how well you explain the purpose of your thread. Explaining your idea is equally important as your post organization. If your post has a clear purpose and you present your ideas well, your post is probably organized well, too. Here are some suggestions you can use: Use a graphic, image, video, or introduction to explain what the thread is about. Make it easily understandable by the forum audience. Within the introduction, keep it short. You can go into greater detail later on in the OP. Keep the OP structured where the reader can easily follow your progression. The more "cluttered" the presentation, the less likely you will get your idea across. In this thread, I am using a combination of headers, bullet points, and sub-points to relay important information. This is a method I have developed over twenty years of writing academic research and study aids for undergraduate and graduate students. Look around the forum or develop your own style; find what works best for you and use it. Forum community engagement: This one has many different factors and may surprise a lot of you. There have been threads with few responses and many nominations in the past. There have also been threads with many replies and one nomination. But we consider each nomination equally based on community engagement. What kind of engagement did the thread generate from those who participated in it? Did the topic create an opportunity for debate or an exchange of ideas? Did those who nominated it feel it was a good example of what makes a really great forum thread? Nomination: This is probably the least important of all the criteria when we are deciding on which thread becomes a featured TOTM. But because many of you have asked, here's the answer to the questions most commonly asked about thread nomination: Can I nominate a thread again if it was an honorable mention already? Yes, and I encourage you to do so. Since the most recent changes to how we do TOTM, there can only be one per category and we receive a lot of really good nominations. There are some months where we have only a handful of nominations. So, please, yes, renominate honorable mentions you feel are worthy of a second (or more) look - unless they are a forum game. Can I nominate a thread again if it has already received TOTM? No. In the past there have been some mistakes made and threads have earned more than one TOTM. I am working on a side project to track TOTMs so this does not happen again. If you feel a thread is worthy to be considered of additional recognition, you may always nominate it for Thread of the Year (TOTY). I've made this really nice thread. Can I self-nominate it? Sure, you can. However, a self-nomination is given a lower weight than a thread nominated by another forum member. We also ask that forum threads be nominated without "favors" (if you'll nominate mine, I will give you a bunch of likes) as this takes away from the value of the TOTM. Threads of the Month should be meaningful and the nomination should come because someone notices your thread and thinks it has value and NOT because you asked them to nominate it. I've already nominated one thread this month. Can I nominate another one... or three? Yes, you may nominate as many threads as you feel are deserving of the monthly TOTM. Just remember that each thread you nominate should be what you feel represents the best efforts of the forum community. This thread belongs to a user who just joined the forum. Can I nominate them? Yes. There's no better way to encourage a new any forum member than to nominate their thread as a thread of the month contender. Even if they are listed as an honorable mention, it is a great way to bring focus to their efforts! Other related comments about the thread of the month: Future projects for this guide: a guide to the threads of the month listed by year (2016 to the present) Sort-able Google Docs spreadsheet link which will include honorable mentions TO NOMINATE A THREAD FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a thread you feel should be considered as a thread of the month, then use the “report comment” feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the comment. Please put in the text field of the report post “Nomination for thread of the month,” and we will do the rest! You can always nominate more than one thread, too. TO NOMINATE A CINEMATOGRAPHIC POST FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a cinematographic post you feel should be considered as the cinematographic post of the month, then use the “report comment” feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the comment. Please put in the text field of the report post “Nomination for post of the month,” and we will do the rest! IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS ABOUT THIS GUIDE, PLEASE MAKE THEM ON THIS THREAD:

Every once in a while, we all just slip up and say something stupid. Or we say something, that makes total sense with the rest of the conversation, but alone, is completely nonsensical. What quotes have you seen on this forum that are super weird / nonsensical out of context? Rules: 1. Don't put in things you have said. 2. It must be from the KSP forums. Not reddit, not some Discord server, not some other forum. Just the Official KSP Forum. 3. Do not ridicule others, make sure you are not doing so unintentionally. See the first post for details on why this is. To start us off:

Yeah, so it's possible to automate many aspects of forum moderation, which liberates moderators to spend their time on special cases and moniter the automated system for errors. Also, instantaneous post approval would be a plus, and I bet you're busier on weekends. https://utopiaanalytics.com/utopia-ai-moderator/ https://www.theadminzone.com/threads/moderating-a-community-with-ai-automated-actions.151885/ I know this thread may not belong on this forum as the suggestion is peripheral to the game.

So, i was searching the oldest thread in the forum but then I found a thread by Guest for the forum rules which wasn't from 2011. It was from 1970. I will now search it again and put a link here. Found it, it is in the last page of the announcements

I'm wondering if the moderators have given thought to how KSP2 will (or will not) be integrated into the Forum? For example, in Challenges and Mission Ideas, will there be a separate KSP2 section, or will they all be together and it is up to the poster to distinguish? For all we know, there may be many challenges where participants could have the option to do them in either game--in the same way we sometimes create separate leaderboards for stock and modded submissions. I have no preference, but it might be a good idea to have some outline idea. I think this is a superb forum, and I have little desire to leave it whether I play each game or spend more time in the new one. Moderators...do you have thoughts on this?

I've seen quite a few people around here using images as links, particularly in their signatures. How is it done? If I paste the URL of an Imgur image into the 'link text' field, the link works but the image doesn't embed.

This forum Wiki: I would like to know what the underlying accessible markup language is? To give a clarifying example, KerbalX uses Markdown. Great. What about this forum: forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com? Is the toolbar above (in the Edit window) the only set of markup tools available? Is there any escape through to basic HTML [doubtful]? [I've www.searched "invision community" but turned up nothing useful...]

Hello there! I joined this forum on March 24th, 2017. I was confused, and didn't know a lot at the time, but now, approximately a year and a half later, I'm celebrating joining the 4 digits club! I've met so many people, laughed at many jokes, even got a TOTM! And now, as the post count rolls over to 1,000, I'm celebrating and filled with so much happiness and joy right now! I've made many friends, shed a few tears, and seen how I changed from a confused and scared person, absolutely terrified of the moderators (and to some extent, still am) I've been through tough times, but this forum has really helped with my life, post by post. So thankyou, to everybody on this forum, whether you are the oldest user or the youngest, or if you've joined 5 minutes ago, or 5 years ago. It doesn't matter. Thankyou to everybody Time to join the 4 digit gang! Oh, and before I go, special thanks to these people: @Lo Var Lachland, @Vanamonde, @Snark, @Coca992, @4x4cheesecake, @Deddly, @Dman979, @Fraston, @Just Jim, @Cydonian Monk, @Geonovast, @The Minmus Derp, @cratercracker, @DeltaDizzy, @RoadRunnerAerospace, @NSEP, @HazelPine, @Kebab Kerman, @StrandedonEarth, @Lisias, @cubinator, @Gargamel Thankyou all for being my friends on this amazing place!

I often write mission reports on my thread, and put them in spoilers. When I, say, receive a notification while writing, I go to look at the notification, then come back to my thread. While the forum saves your WIP post until you come back, it doesn't do so for anything in a spoiler, so I have to re-write my whole report. Would it be possible to have the forum save stuff in spoilers? It's a bit annoying to have to start again every time you come back to the page. (And BTW, I hope that made sense )

Is it possible to add kOS syntax highlighting to the "insert code" function in the forum post editor? If it is possible, how do we make it happen?

This may be more of an Invision functionality than a KSP implementation one, but I'm trying to streamline my forum catch-up times, and trying to use a custom activity stream to show only unread topics in forums I follow. It works great until it doesn't: Old, previously read topics are constantly re-appearing in the stream, even though I have selected "unread." I can re-visit all of the all of the old threads, and it seems to catch up/remember that I've seen them, then eventually the first page of topics will all be old, *already-read* threads again. Is this a cache/cookie-ish kind of thing? I'm not blocking the forum in any way I know of, and every other read status works fine in the normal forum views. Anyone else successfully use the activity streams to view unread topics like that?

I'd like to delete or at least deactivate my forum account, but see nowhere on the profile settings or anywhere else to do this.

A long time ago, all links to one filehoster were edited so the domain was removed but the rest is still there. (I think it was because the ads had adult content). II want to access one of these links but don’t know which domain to put there. Can you tell me what it was?

@Phineas Freak's forum topic for the Real Solar System Visual Enhancements mod seems to be locked with the message "This topic is now closed to further replies" displayed where you would usually type a reply at the bottom of the page. I could not find a post by a moderator telling that the topic was closed. Instead, it looks to me like the topic was locked mid-conversation when @softweir explained to a user that you need to upload files to a file-sharing service to be able to link them in a post. If this locking of the topic is deliberate, then it would be nice to see a short message from one of the moderators explaining that the topic is closed. I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this or if this belongs in Kerbal Network. If it's wrong, please move it and forgive me.

Hello. I just logged in this morning and had to read all the terms and conditions, press agree, and then access the site. So... what's changed about them?

I've seen several people(kerbals) put some nice badges that I assume is related to KSP challenges under their posts. How can I get them, and what badges are (or were) existent? A list of badges and links for them would be really the thing I want, but I couldn't find any, so I'd like to learn about those. Thanks!(in advance)

Hello people, so I gotten Kerbal Space Program a few days ago after putting it off forever as I was really curious what it was like, and quite frankly haven't stopped playing since. So I figured I'd join the forum as well and see what it's like here.

https://youtu.be/tmpQT3SBobk

Hi! It's me, cratercracker! The guy who you probably heard of, but never really cared! So. So,so,so,so,so,so. Here is the thread, to tell your stories, about joining the forum and what you did here and what you are going to do here. I am going to start! So, I started my forum "career" is when I started my "The science behind the ..." threads. And oh, man. Those were the dark times of mine. Then I posted my "Beuty" post, it was noticed by the SQUAD. It was the breaking point for me. I started to post more things! I started drawing and THAT is what made me more or less popular! What about you?

The forum thread for the kOS modwas first begun by user @erendrake, but he hasn't been active in the mod or in the forums for quite a long time now. For the last several versions he's not been available, and the mod has been updated and maintained by myself (@Steven Mading) and @hvacengi. Now we're running into the problem that we can't change the first post in the thread. So it claims incorrectly that the mod hasn't been updated in a while. What is the protocol for trying to do something about this? Do we just have to start a new thread and hope people eventually stop using the old one?

Hey! It is cratercracker with his mumblings again and today i am showing off a project that i will work for a long time, for it to be as good as possible! It is specially designed to look good in signatures and mission reports (in terms of mission report, just put it in the first post to show your progress) 1.Kerbin. (you need to scale those down to 100 if you are putting it in your signature) One black line on the right means one ship, two-more than one. Rhombus means unmanned, square is manned, rectangle at the left means randezvous. White line means return. Manned: 2.Kerbol Unmanned: (no return, because kerbin randezvous is a randezvous too) Manned: 3.Mun (now rhombus means that you went to there controlled, so square means randezvous, this applies to all pictures further up) And yeah, circle with a triengle inside means landing. Special thanks to @Urses Landed: Special patch pack! Craft tester/moder Combat general/aerial developer Normal player Space program host/Company CEO

I noticed that this forum has the same "design" as the war thunder form, just kerbalized... Link to war thunder forum. Notice how it is the same as this sort of: https://forum.warthunder.com/

(not really sure where to post this) I seem to be having an issue making an image into a link. Now, if you'd click on either of the images in my signature you'd see that they are links, and they work. But, for some reason, I am unable to add an image to a post and then make it a link. As a matter of fact, the "Link" button does absolutely nothing if I have an image highlighted. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi, with the growing community and the upcoming console support, i wonder Squad still not cares about https for community "support". Im not paranoid or else, but i'D love to know, that at least my logins here are encoded and cant be grapped whenever im on public LAN / using not known access-points or else. What are your thoughts? I mean, at least its something that would add up for the reputation of the maintainer of a site / game... edit: just checked my other top 3 games and all of them are using https for their whole website.