Q: I’m a new user and I have not received my confirmation email. What do I do?
A: : If you do not receive your confirmation email within an hour or so after your initial registration, check your spam filter; often the confirmation email gets stuck there. If you do not find the confirmation email in the spam trap, contact engineer_comp_geek via e-mail at EngineerCompGeek@gmail.com.
Q: What’s the difference between Guest, Member, and Moderator? And what’s SDSAB?
A: Guests are people who don’t pay. Guests can read and write to the board and have a few similar privileges. Guests see the banner ads on the pages. Members are people that pay an annual subscription fee and post at the SDMB. Members do NOT see the banner ads, as one convenience of membership. Charter Members are people who were posting before we went on a fee basis, who paid their fees in the first months of change and have remained with us on a fee-paying basis ever since. (NOTE: Failure to pay on time can result in loss of the “Charter” title. This is a system effect that we have no control over.) Moderators are people that are in charge of reviewing the posts in a certain forum to make sure they meet forum guidelines. Our goal is to build community, and to have reasonably polite discourse and debate. Moderators are the ones who help enforce the rules. SDSAB stands for the “Straight Dope Science Advisory Board,” people who write Staff Reports (see the Archives.) The SDSAB play no role in the running of the Straight Dope Message Boards; their opinions are their own.
There are a few other titles, like Cecil Adams’ title “Perfect Master,” but these are rare. Custom Titles are also available. For a small fee, you can change your title to almost anything (but not Moderator, Administrator, SDSAB, or any of the other standard titles). See the details here.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SUBSCRIPTION SYSTEM IS NOT WORKING AT THIS TIME
The custom title subscription is also not functional at this time
Q: I want to change my user name.
A: Contact engineer_comp_geek via PM or send an email to EngineerCompGeek@gmail.com and request the change. You must use the email address under which you are registered. We do not “recycle” screen names; once registered to the board, that name cannot be used again. First come, first served. Remember that names are subject to approval by management. NOTE: Do not simply re-register on your own. Multiple screen names may cause you to lose privileges under ANY name, as spelled out in the registration agreement.
It’s quickest if you provide two or three new names you would like, ranked in the order that you like them. We have many names already on the board and since we don’t recycle, you may have chosen a name currently in the database. Remember that names have meaning and power here. Use wisely your privilege to choose. Management reserves the right of final approval on all names.
Q: How do I change my password?
A: Click on your user icon in the upper right corner of any SDMB page, then click on your user name. When your Profile appears, first, make sure that your email address is correct and that you still have access to that account. Then click on Send Password Reset Email and follow the on-screen prompts and the instructions that you receive in the email.
Q: I forgot/lost my password! What do I do?
A:: Go to https://boards.straightdope.com/ (the main page of the Straight Dope Message Board) and click on Log In on the upper right. When the log in box appears, click on I forgot my password and follow the on-screen prompts and the instructions in the password reset email. If you do not receive your password email within an hour or so, check your spam filter; often the confirmation email gets stuck there. If you do not find the confirmation email in the spam trap, contact EngineerCompGeek@gmail.com.
Q: How do I change my email address?
A: Click on your user icon in the upper right corner of any SDMB page, then click on your user name. When your Profile appears, scroll down to Email and click no the wrench icon to the right of your email address. Make sure to save your changes when done.
Q: I see something posted on the message board that I think breaks the rules. What should I do?
A: Report the post. You can easily do this by clicking on the flag at the bottom of the post. You can flag posts as Off Topic, Inappropriate, Spam, or Something Else. If you choose Something Else you may then write a custom message stating why you are flagging the post.
Since the message board is so active, and the moderators are unpaid volunteers, we appreciate any assistance that our members can give us. We can’t be everywhere, we can’t see everything, so we rely on you to report infractions of the rules. Your Report of a bad post will send an email to all the moderators of that forum.
If you want to edit your own post (for example, if you made a coding error), you have five-minutes after posting during which you can do. so If you miss that time limit, you can now REPORT your own post and explain to the moderator exactly what you’d like changed. Note that moderators will not accept edits that are total revisions; once you’ve posted, you’ve posted. But we will be happy to help with typos, mis-coding, etc.
Q: I get a lot of enjoyment out of the SDMB and would like to contribute financially to my host in some way.
A: You can be a subscribing member of the Straight Dppe Message Board. Annual subscriptions are $14.95 per year and you can subscribe for multiple years at a time. You can also purchase gift subscriptions for your friends and loved ones.
You can also purchase a Custom User Title and style yourself as something besides vanilla “Member.” We once had a store for Straight Dope merchandise but it is not operational at the present time. That may change, so stay tuned, we’ll let you know when we have merchandise available for sale.
IMPORTANT NOTE - THE SUBSCRIPTION SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY BROKEN. SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CUSTOM TITLE SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE.
Q: Why can’t I edit my own post?
A: You can edit your own post, within a time limit. There is a five-minute window after hitting the SEND button during which you can edit your own post. The EDIT button should be visible during this period; when the five minutes are up, the EDIT button vanishes.
We have imposed this time limit to avoid abuse, of people changing what they wrote after meeting opposition or hostility. In short, we don’t want people re-writing history. The five-minute window allows you to edit typos and make other minor changes. If you make a serious typo, email the Board moderators (or REPORT the post) and they’ll be happy to fix it. A “serious” typo includes errors in coding (spoiler tags, quotes, etc) and typos that lead to misunderstanding (“now” when you meant “not,” for instance.)
Q: How do I change my board settings?
A: Click on your user icon in the upper right corner of any SDMB page, then click on your user name. This will bring up your profile. You can click on the different options on the left, such as Account, Profile, Emails, etc. Each of these will bring up different options that you can choose from. For example, you can click on Interface on the left, and then select Theme to select different display themes. Make sure to save any changes by clicking on Save Changes at the bottom of the page when done.
Q: How can I add an avatar?
A: Click on your user icon in the upper right corner of any SDMB page, then click on your user name to bring up your profile. Select Account on the left, then click on the edit pencil icon next to your Profile Picture, underneath your Username. Do not use animated avatars. Do not use offensive images.
Q: How do I post a “spoiler”?
A: Use the custom vBcode tag spoiler.
Typing: [spoiler]- and it really was a kitten, after all.[/spoiler]
blurs the text and appears as - and it really was a kitten, after all. (Click on the blurred text to read the spoiler).
Q: Why does the time I see displayed for a post not match my current time?
A: Your user account is probably set to the wrong time zone. Click on your user icon in the upper right corner of any SDMB page, click on your user name to bring up your profile, click on Profile on the left, then scroll down to Timezone, then use the pull-down menu to select your time zone.
Also keep in mind that posters who are not currently logged in will always see the default time zone (GMT) no matter what.
Q: What happens when you put someone on your “Ignore” list?
A:When a person is on your ignore list, instead of their post, you see the message “This person is on your Ignore list. To read their post, click here.”, and there is a link on which you can click to read their post anyway.
If an ignored person starts a thread, you do indeed see the thread, just not the OP - unless you click on the link inside their ignored post. The thread title is unaffected.
Q: I see people using acronyms like AFAIK, IIRC, TMI. What do those mean?
A: AFAIK = As far as I know
IIRC = If I recall correctly
TMI = Too much information
For SDMB-specific abbreviations and “in-joke” terms, see Beginner’s Guide to Glossary of Terms on Straight Dope Message Boards
Q: How do I create a poll?
A: Follow these instructions.
Q: May I ask for help on my homework?
A: Yes. You may ask, but no one is obligated to do your homework for you and typically posters prefer to guide you to the proper resources so that you have the ability to do your own homework. Sometimes other posters may oblige your request.
Q: What happened to a particular thread or poster? They seem to be missing or banned without notice?
A: If you are curious about a particular thread or poster, please PM a moderator. In probably 95% of such cases, the thread or poster that vanished was an attention-seeker – a spammer , sock, or troll. They’re out for any attention, even negative attention, and we don’t want to give it to them. They disappear, as do their posts. And as do posts about them. Please do not post a public inquiry.
Q: I think I got hit by malware on the SDMB, what should I do?
A: Please post a report to About This Message Board so we can investigate. For best results, malware reports should include the following:
- Tell us specifically what happened, not just “I got hit by malware.” For example: (a) my antivirus software notified me it had blocked an attack and gave me the following report (and then post the report); (b) I got a popup saying [whatever]; (c) my system locked up and the screen turned blue, etc. It’s especially helpful for us to know the name of the suspected item of malware.
- Time/date of occurrence, your geographic location, and browser/operating system you are using.
- Whether you were looking at an SDMB page or a column archive page. These are hosted on different servers and see different ads.
- If possible, provide a screen shot of the page you were on when the incident occurred. If you can’t do this, please describe any ads or popups that were visible.
Q: I think my IP has been banned at the SDMB, what should I do?
A: Please contact EngineerCompGeek@gmail.com. In your email please list the IP address you are currently using, that will go a long way towards solving the problem. If you do not know your IP number go to this site, it will tell you: http://www.whatismyip.com/
Q: Some emails from the Straight Dope appear to have incorrect names or strange titles instead of user names. What’s going on?
A: Some of the emails will reference users by the Name instead of their Username. When the SDMB was on vBulletin, there was no Name field. When we transitioned to Discourse software, by default the user’s vBulletin name was copied into the Name field, so for most users, their Name will match their Username. However, users are free to modify their Name field, and many have changed the Name field on their profile to something different. Some users have put titles of a sort or other info (like Retired, or Semi-Retired, for example) in place of their Name. The Name also appears on the user’s profile, directly under their Username.