Advice on Using a Web Forum

[hatkirby]

I think a lot of people are probably not used to using a web forum (or maybe haven't ever used one before) so I think we should gather some tips in here to help people feel more comfortable!

The thing that immediately strikes me is image uploading. I think image uploading is technically enabled on the Fourm right now, but the limit is pretty small and I might turn it off altogether, because hosting images is more expensive than just hosting text. I've been using imgur for image hosting! You don't even need an account, which is nice. You can just upload an image, right click copy address, then put it between [img] tags on here.

This is best for random images that we might want to share like screenshots or shitposts, but there might be stuff we'd want to tie to the lifespan of the Fourm, in which case local uploads could be good. Anyway!

[BeelieveinBees]

General overview:

• The forum is divided into organizations buckets, the highest level of which is called categories, of which we have two, Discussion, which is the one you're in now, and Fourie's House. Categories are fairly static, only an admin can add them or change their names, generally once a forum is established they'll stay the same.
• Categories are further divided into forums, which might have another name to be slightly less confusing? IDK. We currently have four of them, this topic is in the General Forum. Forums are similar to categories in that they, in most forums, won't change much once established.
• Forums are then further subdivided into topics. You're currently reading the topic "Advice on Using a Web Forum". Now, topics are different then the other levels of organization. Anyone can make a topic! You want to start a new topic of discussion? Make a topic for it! Start talking! It's cool.
• A Topic is subdivided into posts, like, this block of text you're reading right now. Anyone can make a post in a topic
• Topics can be "pinned" in a forum, meaning they will always be at the top. If a topic is not pinned, topics with more recent updates will appear above it in the forum.

BB code
Many forums, including this one, use a mark up style called BB Code to format posts. BB Code works similar to HTML in that you have tags that go around what you are formatting, but they use square brackets instead of pointy ones, and they are much more limited.

Our Custom BB Code:

Code	Effect
Code: Select all [spoiler=what you are spoiling / content warnings]The content![/spoiler]	what you are spoiling / content warnings The content!
Code: Select all @BeelieveinBees	@BeelieveinBees
Code: Select all [imgwidth=25] https://www.fourisland.com/fourm/download/file.php?avatar=59_1747144285.png [/imgwidth]
Code: Select all [imgwidth=50] https://www.fourisland.com/fourm/download/file.php?avatar=59_1747144285.png [/imgwidth]
Code: Select all [table] [tr][td]Tables![/td][td]Second table cells[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Second Row![/td][td]filler data![/td][/tr] [/table]	Tables! Second table cells Second Row! filler data!

Some default BB Code:

Code	Effect
Code: Select all [b]Bold[/b]	Bold
Code: Select all [i]Italics[/i]	Italics
Code: Select all [u]Underline[/u]	Underline
Code: Select all [size=50]Little Text[/size]	Little Text
Code: Select all [size=150]Big Text[/size]	Big Text

A complete list of default BB Code supported by the fourm can be found here

What's a forum good for?

• Forums are good for slower paced longer forum conversation, that can be read in chronological order
• Forums are good for asynchronous conversations! The slower pace of it means it's easier to respond to something that was said yesterday
• Forum games are a thing! We have one of them already, the Paragraph Fiction game that Star started, and I proposed anther one that would require a bit more planning.
• Forums are good for having control over your own community. This is Star's website, he controls if there's disruptive updates, we can know that there's no AI here and never will be, same with ads.
  • in forum games, it's often a good idea to make a "claim" post to notify people that you're working on a response, that you then edit with your actual play, so someone doesn't post while you're still writing
• Forums have a much longer character limit then Discord does
• The fact anyone can make a topic gives them more organizational potential then Discord has. The forum also appears to have thorough search tools for finding things that may have gotten buried or put in an unexpected topic

Common Etiquettes
In a more generic sense, there are etiquette things that vary across forums, besides the obvious "don't be a dick" type rules. We haven't established any rules along these lines, and will probably either figure it out as a group or have Star declare something when it comes up. I mention them to give you an idea of greater forum cultures.

• Thread locking: In some forums, if a topic gets out of hand, the admin will lock the topic, preventing new people from posting in it but leaving it readable. Sometimes locking is used to force people to take a breather and the topic will be unlocked after a day or whatever, sometimes it's permanent.
• Necro-ing: Some forums would prefer you make a new topic rather then post in one that's been abandoned for months to years. Some forums are the opposite way! In my experience the loose guideline is if it's a technical forum they want to minimize clutter and repeat topics thus keeping related information easy to reference, where more social forums tend to not want to spotlight users old thoughts.
• Force retiring a topic: Some forums don't like topics getting too long, and at X many pages will lock them, saying you can make a new topic if you want to keep that line of thought going. This can be useful for archiving purposes, but can also be worse on that front depending on how the forum is managed. I've only seen this in the MSPA forums which had a soft cap of 100 pages per topic, but it's probably used elsewhere too.

[hatkirby]

I believe that the things that contain the topics are commonly called "subforums", which could help distinguish them from the overall forum.

Some thoughts on the etiquette stuff, which I could canonize in a rules post at some point:

• Imo necro-ing is best suited for things like questions that might want an answer even if that answer comes much later. That also isolates the question to one place that people could look at in the future.
• I doubt we'd ever get a really long thread, other than maybe a forum game like Count to 5000, but if we did, it'd probably be handled on a case-by-case basis.
• Double posting (posting in one thread twice in a row without someone else posting in between) is generally frowned on because unlike instant messaging platforms like Discord, you have more time to formulate your thoughts. An exception to this would be something like a liveblogging thread (like what I'm doing with Dan Brown books right now) where you're essentially writing your own blog with other ppls thoughts in between sometimes.