Ask the Mods questions about the Forums!

[Ethanadams]

Sorry wrong thing cascading style sheet css or scss for newer things

[Sampa]

I understand the reason for us being checked in certain areas of the forum, but, when we are as king questions, why can't the same moderator who approved the comment also answer it?

[Red Iron Crown]

I understand the reason for us being checked in certain areas of the forum, but, when we are as king questions, why can't the same moderator who approved the comment also answer it?

There's a few possibilities:

- The mod doesn't know the answer.

- The mod is working through a pile of posts in the queue and forgets to post a response (I do this all the time).

- The mod is one of those that doesn't post much anyway.

(I see your question, it hasn't been approved yet so let me fix that. )

[Flymetothemun]

Are steroids considered as a drug on this forum?

Also has has anyone noticed that this is one of the the few forums with a really nice ccs page?

As far as I know, this is VBulletin's default css. I've seen countless forums with this exact same color scheme.

[Ethanadams]

It's still nice to other crap I've seen on the Internet

[lajoswinkler]

Are we allowed to link to other forums in our signatures? For example if one has another project regarding another game on another forum.

[Red Iron Crown]

Are we allowed to link to other forums in our signatures? For example if one has another project regarding another game on another forum.

As long as the linked content doesn't violate our community rules it should be fine.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Pasting stuff with Ctrl-V on this forum hasn't been working for me for a couple days, and when I type the forums sometimes lose keystrokes. It happens on two computers, but only with IE. Any ideas?

I'm typin ver slwlyrihnow but te orumsstill are missingkeysokes. <That was without going back and fixing it.

[Ethanadams]

Don't use ie?

Check

check check

check check check

nope works fine on Firefox chrome and Safari

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Don't use ie?

Check

check check

check check check

nope works fine on Firefox chrome and Safari

I'm using firefox right now, and it works fine. Oh, and I use windows on both computers.

[Gaarst]

How does the - - - Updated - - - thing works ? Why does it sometimes update the post, some other times create a new one ?

I thought it was related to time, but I've seen "new posts" when writing after a shorter time than some updated ones. (I can't make that sentence clear no matter how hard I try, sorry )

Also, do mods have access to previous versions of edited posts ?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

How does the - - - Updated - - - thing works ? Why does it sometimes update the post, some other times create a new one ?

I thought it was related to time, but I've seen "new posts" when writing after a shorter time than some updated ones. (I can't make that sentence clear no matter how hard I try, sorry )

Also, do mods have access to previous versions of edited posts ?

Not-mod-answer time!

If the last post on a thread is yours and it was posted less than 30 minutes ago, your next post will be merged into it. Maybe it's different is some sub-forums?

[Superfluous J]

How does the - - - Updated - - - thing works ? Why does it sometimes update the post, some other times create a new one ?

I thought it was related to time, but I've seen "new posts" when writing after a shorter time than some updated ones. (I can't make that sentence clear no matter how hard I try, sorry )

Also, do mods have access to previous versions of edited posts ?

Not-mod-answer time!

If the last post on a thread is yours and it was posted less than 30 minutes ago, your next post will be merged into it. Maybe it's different is some sub-forums?

I also believe that editing the first post changes its post time, at least in some situations.

Source: I noticed it on the newest Suqadcast summary. I posted, and immediately posted a followup that went in --updated--. I then edited the first post a few minutes later, and the edited time and posted time were the same even though I know more than a minute went by.

Then someone replied several minutes later, and today I edited the post again. Now, the "posted" time is the same as the time of the first post.

Weirdness and unintuitive, but explains why the times don't match.

Edited October 17, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[Red Iron Crown]

Also, do mods have access to previous versions of edited posts ?

We do, in excruciating detail. Example from a much edited post. We can compare any two versions of a post with the changes highlighted, similar to viewing two versions of a wiki page.

Raise your hand if you tried to scroll down the linked image.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Red Iron Crown

[Claw]

Not-mod-answer time!

If the last post on a thread is yours and it was posted less than 30 minutes ago, your next post will be merged into it. Maybe it's different is some sub-forums?

Consistent across the forum.

I also believe that editing the first post changes its post time, at least in some situations.

Source: I noticed it on the newest Suqadcast summary. I posted, and immediately posted a followup that went in --updated--. I then edited the first post a few minutes later, and the edited time and posted time were the same even though I know more than a minute went by.

Not exactly. If you edit a post within ~2 minutes, the post time does not change and the "Edited" line will not appear. After ~2 minutes, the post time will not change but the "Edited" line will appear.

Cheers,

~Claw

- - - Updated - - -

Raise your hand if you tried to scroll down the linked image.

*raises hand

[Starwhip]

Raise your hand if you tried to scroll down the linked image.

*Raises hand*

[Guest]

We do, in excruciating detail. Example from a much edited post. We can compare any two versions of a post with the changes highlighted, similar to viewing two versions of a wiki page.

And the best thing: You can also do so with your own posts!

Raise your hand if you tried to scroll down the linked image.

*looks at the picture, doesn´t scroll.* *Goes back, reads this text. ("What, you can scroll?")* *Clicks the picture again* *Tries to scroll* *Raises hand*

[Dman979]

My hand is firmly raised, even though I saw it on a Mac.

[Red Iron Crown]

And the best thing: You can also do so with your own posts!

Really? I didn't know this functionality existed at all until I was a moderator and one of the others pointed it out to me (and then I assumed it was a moderator-only thing). For those who haven't tried it: Click on the "Last edited by $name" text at the bottom of your own post to see its edit history.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

[...]

Raise your hand if you tried to scroll down the linked image.

Hand raised. In fact, even though I read your text first, I still couldn't resist. In fact, I'm still trying to scroll down. NOW I'M TYPING THE URL INTO ANOTHER WINDOW!!!! THE ACCESS DENIED MESSAGE IS STILL TOO SHORT TO SCROLL!!!! I CAN'T STAND IT!

[Supernovy]

How does the - - - Updated - - - thing works ? Why does it sometimes update the post, some other times create a new one ?

I thought it was related to time, but I've seen "new posts" when writing after a shorter time than some updated ones. (I can't make that sentence clear no matter how hard I try, sorry )

Also, do mods have access to previous versions of edited posts ?

It's precisely thirty minutes, by the way.

[Sampa]

So, any chance of getting the full, exact story on how RPs were banned from this forum? I have heard bits and pieces here and there, but i kind of want to hear the full story.

[DuoDex]

A former moderator explains it best.

So, the basic concept of most of the roleplaying-style games as it were was that one person or a group of people would be a "country" or a "faction" or what have you, and would compete against other individuals or groups. All well and good, right? Well, not so much. You see, naturally this leads to it getting extremely competitive, and people don't like to lose and so forth. You inevitably end up with situations where just about everyone is breaking the rules of the game in order to win, and/or taking the game from that thread and allowing it to encroach upon other parts of the forum. Things like deliberately spamming others' threads in the Spacecraft Exchange in attempts to discredit them or make them look bad, etc., all for the sake of the game; some people could even go so far as to starting semi-separate wars and fights over PMs, which literally cannot be moderated directly unless one of the participants deliberately brings a moderator in, and even then the moderators could only be getting part of the story.

Now, naturally, moderating such a thing is a hellish nightmare (N.B.: I was not a mod way back then) since each thread tends to have its own rules, which first of all nobody's really following too closely, and second of all are very poorly worded and leave a large amount of loopholes. The forum rules are all well and good, but inevitably at some point the users and players of the game start to get it in their heads that since they made the game, they get to dictate the rules within that thread and that the moderators should stay out of it. I'm not 100% sure if this exactly happened here, but I've seen it happen in other places often enough to say that it's fairly likely it did. So simply keeping everyone to the usual rules of decency and civility is practically impossible unless we want to be handing out infractions and bans every other day.

One of the major reasons this tends to spiral out of control is that people start to identify too closely with their characters within the roleplay and forget to clearly draw a line between the game and the rest of the usual forum interaction. It all becomes part of the game, to them. If it was only one or two people doing it, it'd just be a matter of reminding them every now and again to keep it within the confines of the thread and the game, but... it tends to be the case that when one person does it, everyone just sort of picks it up and runs with it until serious infractions start getting handed out.

People don't draw the boundaries well enough, and it has long since been decided that if roleplay is to happen, it should not happen on these forums at all. At least if the roleplaying is on a totally different website, people will be better able to draw the correct boundaries between roleplaying and correct forum etiquette and interactions with other people. All it takes is one single person to overstep the boundaries of the thread and then suddenly either everyone thinks it's okay, or simply does not want to be left behind in the game by not following suit... and then everyone is doing it. As such, even though being extremely concise and specific about what's going on helps... we'd still err on the side of caution and say it's not allowed at all for the simple fact that one bad apple ruins the bunch... like wildfire.

This is generally my personal view on the subject, but as far as I have been able to tell is also pretty much the official word on roleplaying pretty much as far back as I can remember. I remember taking one glance at the roleplaying that was going on at that time and just vowing to stay the hell out of it.

[Ethanadams]

Why when I log on to a the Irc chat in a library that I get a blackout dns error? Tried on several computers and non of them have blocks that I know of

[Noname117]

A former moderator explains it best.

With that quote, I must wonder what happened to Vexx (If we're allowed to hear why he's left).