Original Metachat FAQ 2005-2009

[Can anyone think of a better title for this page? Any suggestions for inclusion? Put them in the discussion page (link at the top)]

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 it's 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

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 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?

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.