Forum Code of Conduct / FAQ Thread

[Bry]

I’m not certain that’s possible with this software, SaintPeter. Can anyone with more Vanilla knowledge confirm or rebut?

[SaintPeter]

I may be confused, then. Perhaps I was thinking of ignoring certain categories.

Not a big deal.

[SaintPeter]

What does “ETA:” mean, in the context of forum usage?

I keep seeing people say go:

ETA: Another unrelated comment here.

I have been unable to divine its meaning.

[Bry]

“Edited to add.” Thanks for reminding me — that definitely deserves to go in the FAQ / glossary!

[Al]

I would add smileys to the FAQ / glossary, since 😛 confuses me somewhat.

[Bry]

I haven’t been worrying about updating this too much, though I should start to get around to it more often.
Here is a link to a Frappr map for JoCo fans to mark their locations. Here is a fairly comprehensive list of emoticons and their meanings, from Wikipedia (link active until declared non-notable / trivial).

[Bry]

Q6: Can I get a quick guide to linking?

A6: I suppose. HTML-literate people should try not to grit their teeth too much, because I am going to go for “usable” before “technically correct.”

As far as we are concerned, links have two components: the text of the link (the part that shows up blue and underlined) and the target of the link (the webpage, etc. that it takes you to). The text of the link must be surrounded by HTML tags, to make it clear when the link begins and ends.

Here is a link:
Back to JoCo

The HTML for this link would look like this:
Back to JoCo
where the link target is http://www.jonathancoulton.com and the link text is Back to JoCo.

You can type that in by hand every time (make sure you include all the punctuation!), but the forum software also allows you to create a link with the “link” button above the “Add your comments” text box. To do that, first type in the link text, then highlight the text, click the “link” button, and type in the address of the link target.

(If you do not have any text selected, the “link” button assumes you are creating the first tag, that is, the one that reads <a href=”Your URL Here“> — so to finish the link, just type your link text and then </a>.)

All this also applies to the other html buttons (with different tags than “a”, of course), but linking’s the one that comes up the most.

(Edited to reformat, as was suggested.)

[Bry]

Q7: How do you get the little picture next to your name?

A7: That’s an icon, and here’s how to get one:

First, you need your picture. Make it as small as possible — the forum software automatically crops and centers your image to 32×32 pixels, which is to say that if your picture’s too big, your icon will be a little square taken from the exact middle of your picture. Any graphics-editing program should be able to shrink your picture to the right size. (Specific instructions will depend, of course, on which editor you use.)

Then you need a place to upload pictures: Flickr and Picasa are two popular and free sites. If you’re using an icon that already exists somewhere online, you can just copy the address of the image; if you can’t find what that address is, leave a note and someone’ll try and help.

Once you’ve created and uploaded your pictures, go to the Account tab in the forums and choose “Personal Information.” Select the check box for “Icon” and enter the address of your picture in the text box; save and you should be all set.

Icons are not the same as account pictures — the latter are the images you see when you click on someone’s profile. Account pictures can be a lot bigger, but other than that, the process to add them is more or less the same (choose “Account picture” instead of “Icon,” of course).

[Bry]

Q8: I’m having problems getting images to work.
A8: That’s not really a question.

Q8: I’m having problems getting images to work?
A8: Ha ha, wiseguy. There are a couple of things that might be causing the problem, depending on what you’re trying to do and what result you’re getting, but the one that arises most often is that the forum software really, really wants you to put in exactly the right kind of input, and it doesn’t cooperate otherwise, and yeah, it’s confusing, and yeah, it’s not well documented (well, read this FAQ entry and then tell me if it’s still not well documented).

I’ll try and try to simplify — you have webpages, and webpages have pictures in them. When you’re trying to use an image, the forum wants you to give it the picture itself, not the webpage with the picture in it. If you’re trying to pull a picture from a site like Flickr or Picasa, it’s very likely that what you’re looking at is the webpage, not the image itself.

Let me put it this way: The webpage is a kind of “wrapper” — it has some things that are meant for humans to use, such as letting us move to a different picture, or resize the picture, etc. But the forum software doesn’t know how to “unwrap” it, so you’ve gotta do that for it. And the way you do that is, you give it the address of the picture itself — and the way you find the address of the picture itself is slightly different, depending on what you’re using.

On a Windows machine running Mozilla Firefox, right-click on the image and choose “Copy image location.”
On a Windows machine running Internet Explorer, right-click on the image and choose “Properties.” One of the pieces of data you see should be “Address (URL)”. That’s what you want to copy.

Then come back to the forum and paste that address wherever you meant to use it.

(Tip: A lot of files have an extension, that is, the last few characters of the filename tell you which kind of file it is — for instance, “.html” is a webpage, “.doc” is a Word document, “.mp3” is a sound file. There are certain file extensions that mean “picture” — actually, there’s a pretty lengthy list, but ones you’re likely to see include “.jpg”, “.gif”, “.png”, and maybe “.bmp”, and I may have skipped some common ones but that covers most of it. So if the address you’re trying to use ends in “.html”, it probably isn’t going to work, and if it ends in “.jpg” or one of the other picture extensions, that’s probably what you’re looking for.)

[Jon Who]

How do you view private messages without having to send one first? I’ve only just seen that I have one from Gamith from before the JoCoLoCoShow..

[Shruti]

I mean, you can go Account -> Send Private Message -> Inbox. As far as I know, there is no more direct path.

If you go Account -> Send Private Message -> Options (or Account -> Forum Preferences), you can check the box that says “receive e-mail notification upon new private messages,” though.

[Bry]

The only more direct route is to click the link Lex provides above, which takes you straight to the Inbox.

[Jon Who]

You mean it’s been adressed? I feel such a fool.

[Bry]

It has, in FAQ #4 (and Lex’s follow-up).

[Bry]

Q9: I’d like to make a playlist of JoCo songs. Any suggestions for songs?
A9: Sure! (I’m indebted to Colleenky for hunting out most of these links.)

• First off, there’s JoCo’s official Listening Suggestions, with a selection of 24 songs divided into 6 groups, mostly by mood (funny, sad, geeky, etc.) Not really a playlist, but a good starting place for thinking about one.
• In the “JoCo primer CD?” thread, Encubed drafted a playlist for introducing his friends to JoCo’s music, and the forum members gave a lot of feedback.
• Not two months later, the same question was raised in the “What would you include on your “Beginners Guide To JoCo” CD?” thread, with bonus footage of your forum admin trying to act all forum adminny.
• There’s the “Favorite Songs List” (which I still encourage everyone to participate in); it’s a great resource for discovering underappreciated songs. It’s very dangerous to read it while putting together a playlist, because you’ll find yourself unable to exclude any songs, but even if you don’t, it’s a pretty good playlist on its own.
• Not much commentary, but plenty of suggested playlists at the “Your Personal Favorite JoCo Mixtape” thread.
• Encubed (again), in a fit of Coultonmania brought about by driving five hours and across a national border to see a JoCo concert, compiled the ”
  JoCo Concert Stats 2008“, a list of all the songs he’s known to have played in concert, with frequencies, to give you an idea which songs are most popular.
• Similarly, check out the Shows pages at JoCopedia, the Jonathan Coulton wiki, particularly the shows with full setlists — setting up a setlist isn’t quite the same as a playlist, but the idea’s very similar.

[Author]

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