now that we're starting to have kind of a forum culture and a bunch of in-jokes and so forth, i'm thinking it might be handy to have a place where new members can ask stuff.
Something I've already seen asked a couple times: What Is Up with the shutter shades I forget the exact story? It was CDCF related
Answers to questions I've seen asked: I made a joke, but I'm worried people won't get what I mean, and I don't want to leave them out... should I explain the joke? We appreciate when you explain the joke. I advise putting the explanation under spoiler tags, since it lets us choose whether to hear the explanation. I see a thread about something I'm really into, but it's been months since anyone posted. Should I just make my own thread...? Feel free to revive old threads! There's absolutely no stigma against it, and a lot of us appreciate the continuity. It makes it easier for new people and longterm members with common interests to meet (since oldies will get notifs that the thread was posted ib). It kinda fits with an attitude a lot of us have, anyway: there's good in remembering where we came from, as we add the our influence to the world. A beautiful sedimentary culture. (Some exceptions apply: please don't revive fight threads.) Why do so many people have [thing] in their icons? / Why is there a [butterknife, nrcissist, lavender curse, etc] emote? CDCF in-jokes. CDCF is, to our infinite regret, one of the longest threads on the forum: the Complaints Department Circular File, an archival thread for all things to do with Atticro, an ex Homestuck fan who harrassed a great many people in the fandom (a good number of whom are now on this forum). In practice, a majority of the thread's contents is better described as a derail central station. Lengthy dissections of what makes his approaches to people harmful and his ongoing themes in his fictional work that seem to indicate his attitudes towards people. Lengthy derails about just about any topic that comes to mind. And shitposting raves, times when we get giggly and silly and do things like add shutter shades to our icons, dress in black and spork (or butterknife) taking oneself too seriously in absurd ways, hold mass weddings between forum members, and roleplay. (The roleplaying derails are discouraged because they get too long and it's easy to leave people out, so please keep character commentary to one-two post jokes, and send actual roleplaying to the spinoff threads we made for it.) I must scream We have a forum for that! It helps the anxious among us feel a little more like it's permissible to have a venting thread, since there is literally a place for it. And it lets us keep the non-vent forums easier to navigate by those of us overwhelmed by Emotions. I need a mod to do something with this post, what do?? Use the report button, and say in the text box what you're looking for them to do. It's the easiest way in a couple of ways.
What does it mean when people say "witnessing" or "witnessed"? (copy/pasted from a pm where someone was asking me this) It's a phrase I think @Mercury brought in from another forum, with a bit of Fury Road in there too. Like... I see and acknowledge what you've said. A way of communicating that you've seen something and that you care, and that the person you're witnessing isn't just screaming into the void, even if you don't really have anything else you can or know how to say.
also: the report button isn't just for reporting things you think are getting bad! it's basically just the easiest draw a mod's attention to a thread, because alerts can get lost.
*kicks down door* T'WAS I THAT PLACED THE SHUTTERSHADES ATOP THE USERPICS!!! (full story: ray's two SOs showed up in the CDCF, it was a Shocking Twist but turned out to be a big non-event. to liven up the place luka started a dance party, so i started adding shuttershades to all our emoticons for fun and profit. then it exploded, and shuttershades became the Hip New Thing)
basically, alerts and pm's, the little 'how many in the box' number vanishes when you look at the box -- which means the items within vanish from my knowing, because my brain is a soft pudding. but the report box continues to say it contains reports as long as it contains reports. so i don't lose them. reporting is not used for 'tattling' around here, it's used mostly for stuff like "i posted this in the wrong forum can you move it" and "hey what if we stickied this thread". i mean, i do get reports along the lines of "look at this terrible thing someone said" but i mostly don't do anything about it, because being a jackass isn't against the rules.
We should have a group chat! Way ahead of you. There's multiple Skype chats, the ones I know are General (lighthearted conversation), After Dark (more serious venting and discussions), After Dark 18+ (for serious topics that may not be appropriate for minors) and NSFW 18+ (for discussion of teh sexxors). There's also a Discord. Thread for requests to be added to Skype chat(s) Discord link Handy (optional) directory
its one of those weird forum status-ish things. there's nothing really to do with them, they just exist and eventually max out. i think we all shrug and ignore it
You get points for forum participation stuff like making posts, and getting likes. You do nothing with them they´re just kind of a thing that I think came with the forum software. ETA: Ninja´d. Also at some point it was suggested the mods make up new and snarky names for the trophies, maybe that should be revisited. We could help :P
another thing re: reports -- no one has yet asked this, but i feel the question is floating around: what does it mean if a report is 'rejected' or is 'resolved' but nothing was done? nothing really, it just means i didn't do the thing. you're not in trouble. you weren't wrong to file the report. i just looked at it and decided 'nah'. maybe you asked for something i decided wasn't a good idea; say, a thread move to a sub that isn't right for it after all. maybe you reported something that was asshole behavior but not actually against the rules; you can ask me to come have a word with a person, but we don't ban, and i'd rather you use the ignore function. maybe the report became redundant -- e.g. i've got a bunch of reports in my box from kit, asking me to move posts to a new thread, but i was like "dude i have swirly eyes from cold meds rn can you just quote them" and kit was like "no prob" so now i'm gonna go tick the 'resolved' box on all those reports without doing anything about them. and then i'm going to take a nap. tl;dr: i am not frownyfacing at you for reporting, even if i didn't do what you asked. :)
members only, i think. aka you need to be logged into an account in order to access the thread people can and do make accounts just to lurk, and that's allowed, so there isn't a 100% gurantee of privacy. general forum guidelines are use a subacount if you don't want something linked to you.
@raybot covered most of it, but it's also worth noting that google (and other search engines) does not index those subforums, so stuff in them can't be searched from the general web It's also by forum (applying to all the threads in it), rather than thread-by-thread. For general reference, I think the current list of members-only forums is: Is This Abuse?, XX/XY, Sperglord Central, Top Serket and its subforum Bottom Serket, Fine Imported Drama, Witness Me, That Could Have Gone Better, and the Holler Closet (subforum of brainbent)
here's a culture question: Is it okay to double post? On a lot of forums i've been on in the past, it was frowned on for any user to post twice in a row in a given thread. I can't recall any practical reason, it simple Wasn't Done. Around here it seems like people don't care; if you want to add further thoughts and feel it's more appropriate to add a second post than to edit the first one, nobody seems to think it's a problem.
Adding on to that, xenforo prevents you from posting more than once every like 15 seconds so that can somewhat dissuade doubleposting if it's of the panic variety.
