Difference between revisions of "Original Metachat FAQ 2005-2009"
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| Line 53: | Line 53: | ||
Note the trailing slash on the hunky dory version. | Note the trailing slash on the hunky dory version. | ||
| + | ===Why doesn't my post appear on the front page?=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | It may be because it's extra-long. Posts over a certain number of characters must be okayed first. Contact a mod to have it published, or if you don't feel like waiting, just put something like "(more inside)" at the end of the post, and put the longer part into the first comment. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===How do I break up posts with that slick, awesome <nowiki>[more:]</nowiki> tag?=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | When you've typed the first part that you want to appear on the front page, click on the <nowiki>[MI]</nowiki> button (only available on the ''New Post'' page), or hit Alt+M, to generate the marker. The remaining text will appear '''only''' inside the post. | ||
| + | |||
| + | When users see a post, if they click on the ''Read more...'', they will jump to a named anchor at the location of the <nowiki>[more:]</nowiki> marker. If they click on ''Comments'', they will jump to a named anchor below the first post. | ||
| + | ==Images== | ||
===Why does everyone link to images with the text "Click to see image"?=== | ===Why does everyone link to images with the text "Click to see image"?=== | ||
| Line 64: | Line 74: | ||
Pretty nifty eh? | Pretty nifty eh? | ||
| + | ===Direct linking: Etiquette=== | ||
| − | + | If you include an inline image from another web site (or even just make a regular link directly to the image, instead of to the page it's on), that site is getting all the hits (bandwidth drain), and usually no credit or link that might possibly make it worthwhile. This is bad image etiquette. | |
| − | + | ===Direct Linking: Danger, danger!=== | |
| − | + | If you post a photo from another web site, say "cutepic.jpg", and the site owner notices that this has happened, they may just upload say, goatse.jpg to their site, rename it "cutepic.jpg" and what you will now see on our page here is not an adorable fuzzy bunny image, but a much less adorable photo of a fuzzy gaping asshole. Or maybe they'll replace the original image with one that says something like "Bandwidth Thief!" - this is done to keep people from direct linking and teach them a lesson. | |
| − | + | ===Big Images = Slow page loading. :(=== | |
| − | + | If you post a large inline image, it slows down page loading for everyone who has "images on". Even so, this is usually not a big problem for most viewers unless it's a thread that has lots of images... then page loading can become very slow indeed, so try to avoid posting extra large images. | |
| + | |||
| + | ===The best way to post images?=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | You can avoid most problems by uploading images to your own web space, and linking them from there, or by using a free image hosting service such as [http://photobucket.com/ photobucket.com]. At Photobucket, you can upload images from your hard drive, or from a web url, and you can resize or re-name them, all in your browser. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ===Did my image get resized??=== | ||
| + | |||
| + | Overlarge images break the page layout in MetaChat in many resolutions, so our CSS gives images a "max-width" of 500 pixels (which works in browsers that recognize this property but not in IE). It's important to remember that whether you put height and width declarations in the html to make the image appear smaller, or whether the image shows up smaller because of the CSS, the page still must render the image at the original size... so even if it appears smaller, the whole image file has to load for it to appear at all. | ||
| + | |||
| + | In other words, bigbig pics are ickypoo. | ||
Revision as of 12:24, 27 January 2006
Contents
General
Who runs this thing?
Metachat was founded by taz and dodgygeezer in May 2005. The moderators are amberglow, dg, iconomy and quonsar.
Accounts
Why doesn't my account work?
- Account approval
All accounts need to be approved before they're enabled. This can take anything from five minutes to twelve hours depending on time zones / public holidays / alignment of the planets / etc. No one should have to wait longer than twelve hours at worst, but the average is four hours. It's possible you may have been forgotten about (sorry, it happens sometimes) so just email dodgygeezer and he'll sort it out for you.
- Additional accounts
If you already have an account on Metachat and want to open another one then it'll be refused in most instances.
- User imitation
Trying to imitate other users, even in jest, is a big no-no on this site. Any accounts set up for this purpose won't be enabled.
- You've been a very naughty boy/girl/crab/spaghetti monster
It's possible you've been banned. Check the e-mail account you registered with as you should've received a message about this from the mods. Failing that, contact the mods and they should be able to clear things up.
Oh yuck! My lovely username is in lowercase!!
There was a bug in the code of the profile page (which should now be fixed) that was mucking up the case. Contact dodgygeezer and he'll restore your lovely username to its former mixed-case glory.
Posts and Comments
Wow HTML is like, totally awesome! I'd love to use it in my comments and posts!
Of course you would.
Permitted tags for comments are:
<p> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <address> <blockquote> <ins> <del> <a> <span> <bdo> <br> <em> <strong> <dfn> <code> <samp> <kdb> <var> <cite> <abbr> <acronym> <q> <sub> <sup> <tt> <i> <b> <big> <small> <strike> <s> <img>
The list is the same for posts except the <img> tag is not permitted
Some tags are not permitted within other tags. Some attributes on tags are not permitted.
If you come across any exclusions that are a) unreasonable and b) potentially useful then report them to dodgygeezer and he'll change it as soon as he's finished extracting the cheese from between his toes.
I've tried those tags and it doesn't work. What's happened?
Every time you put a line break in your comment, it'll be replaced by <br /> tag. This means that if you put a line break anywhere in your img tag it'll cause an error. Remove all line breaks and it should work fine.
Here's an example.
Hunky dory:
<img src="cuddlybunny.gif" />
Bad karma:
<img src="cuddlybunny.gif" />
Note the trailing slash on the hunky dory version.
Why doesn't my post appear on the front page?
It may be because it's extra-long. Posts over a certain number of characters must be okayed first. Contact a mod to have it published, or if you don't feel like waiting, just put something like "(more inside)" at the end of the post, and put the longer part into the first comment.
How do I break up posts with that slick, awesome [more:] tag?
When you've typed the first part that you want to appear on the front page, click on the [MI] button (only available on the New Post page), or hit Alt+M, to generate the marker. The remaining text will appear only inside the post.
When users see a post, if they click on the Read more..., they will jump to a named anchor at the location of the [more:] marker. If they click on Comments, they will jump to a named anchor below the first post.
Images
Why does everyone link to images with the text "Click to see image"?
They don't.
It's come to the attention of those of us who run Metachat that many of you are accessing the site from work. Your bosses are strangely inconsistent, puritanical beasts who happily tolerate you wasting time writing nonsense on the Metachat all day, but will instantly fire you if you happen to look at an image of a naked mole rat doing squat thrusts in a bowl of custard. We don't like to see people get the sack. And certainly not because of a naked mole rat doing what comes naturally.
Because of this there are two views of the site that you can enjoy: Images On or Images Off. The default is Images Off and will result in you seeing the "Click to see image" links. If you click on Images On at the top of the page you will hence forth see images as the HTML gods intended. If the naked mole rats get too much for you you can always click on Images Off and go back how things were before.
Pretty nifty eh?
Direct linking: Etiquette
If you include an inline image from another web site (or even just make a regular link directly to the image, instead of to the page it's on), that site is getting all the hits (bandwidth drain), and usually no credit or link that might possibly make it worthwhile. This is bad image etiquette.
Direct Linking: Danger, danger!
If you post a photo from another web site, say "cutepic.jpg", and the site owner notices that this has happened, they may just upload say, goatse.jpg to their site, rename it "cutepic.jpg" and what you will now see on our page here is not an adorable fuzzy bunny image, but a much less adorable photo of a fuzzy gaping asshole. Or maybe they'll replace the original image with one that says something like "Bandwidth Thief!" - this is done to keep people from direct linking and teach them a lesson.
Big Images = Slow page loading. :(
If you post a large inline image, it slows down page loading for everyone who has "images on". Even so, this is usually not a big problem for most viewers unless it's a thread that has lots of images... then page loading can become very slow indeed, so try to avoid posting extra large images.
The best way to post images?
You can avoid most problems by uploading images to your own web space, and linking them from there, or by using a free image hosting service such as photobucket.com. At Photobucket, you can upload images from your hard drive, or from a web url, and you can resize or re-name them, all in your browser.
Did my image get resized??
Overlarge images break the page layout in MetaChat in many resolutions, so our CSS gives images a "max-width" of 500 pixels (which works in browsers that recognize this property but not in IE). It's important to remember that whether you put height and width declarations in the html to make the image appear smaller, or whether the image shows up smaller because of the CSS, the page still must render the image at the original size... so even if it appears smaller, the whole image file has to load for it to appear at all.
In other words, bigbig pics are ickypoo.
