Where can I make a complaint about an unruly poster?

If you feel someone is trolling or spamming or breaking the rules of the forums, please feel free to post a topic in Forum Feedback. All topics are read by the moderators and if you've got a complaint, it will be reviewed and action taken if necessary.

What's up with the forum time? It says it's 5:30, but it's 2:30 where I live!

The forum clock is set to (US) Eastern time. So if you live in the Pacific time zone, that's three hours ahead of what time you think it is.

Hey! The forums were down for the last 14 hours and 23 minutes! What happened!?!?

Well, we really don't know that one either, since we aren't the tech guys. But we have faith that when the forums do go down, they'll eventually come back up, and we can all continue on with life as normal.

I think the forums would really benefit from having <insert feature here>.

Great! We'd love to hear your suggestions on ways to improve the forum.
We even have a topic for them: Forum Feedback

How do I quote someone's post?

You can click on the "Quote" link instead of clicking on Post Reply.

How do you bold/italicize/underline?

When you click "Post Reply", look directly above the text field. There are Bold [B], Italic [I] and Underline [U] buttons. Select a bit of text and click on the button of your choice.

How do you post a URL link?

Highlight the word(s) you want to make into a URL link, then click the chain link image above the text field. In the pop-up window, supply and click Insert.

How do I add smilies to my posts?

Click on the Emotions button above the reply field and select your desired smiley from the pop-up window.

I see people posting "bump" from time to time. What does that mean?

"Bump" is a post that does nothing else but recycle a topic to the top of the forum. Topics with the very latest replies go to the very top.

That being said, "bumping" is only allowed in certain cases. Frivolous "bumping" is frowned upon. This includes doing it so that your own topic moves to the top to get more replies, or doing it to someone else's with no other intention that to reposition the topic. If you want to reply to a topic, please say something to constructively add to the conversation.

What is a lock?

When a topic is locked, that means that discussion can no longer take place on that topic.

Why do threads get locked?

Topics get locked for a number of reasons. Sometimes there are off-topic or in the wrong forum. If that's the case, the moderator who locks the thread generally points you in the right direction.

Sometimes topics are redundant (meaning discussion on that topic is already taking place in another topic). Please look around a bit before posting a topic. Redundant topics get locked.

Sometimes topics are started by trolls (see below) for the purpose of stirring up trouble. These topics are locked and sometimes even deleted.

Why do you lock topics that are getting close to 10,000 posts?

Because if we don't, the topic sort of becomes a SuperInvincibleThread -- it gets nearly impossible for a mod to delete posts within the topic. Now this might sound cool, but what it means is that a troll can come in and spam your topic, and we mods will be unable to get rid of the posts. So we lock posts that get too big. The topic can then be restarted, and discussion continues as normal.

I have a thread that's getting really big. What should I do?

Normally, the mods are aware of these kinds of topics and will let the folks in the topic know that it will be locked shortly. However, if you think we don't know about the topic, feel free to post in Forum Feedback and let us know.

How do you lock?

Only moderators and administrators can lock and delete topics.

What are all of these acronyms I see? OT? TOS? SN?...

There is a long list of acronyms people use on forums to make it easier to type things we end up saying over and over again.

FF - Forum Feedback (this forum)
IM: Instant Messenger
IMHO: In My Humble Opinion
IMO: In My Opinion
JMHO: Just My Humble Opinion
LOL: Laughing out loud
NM or NVM - Nevermind.
OMG: Oh My God
OT: Off Topic
ROTFL: Rolling on the floor laughing
ROTFLMAO: Rolling on the Floor laughing my A** off
SN: Screen Name
TOS: Terms Of Service
TOU: Terms Of Use
TTYL= talk to you later
UK: United Kingdom
USA: United States of America
YGM - You Got Mail.