New to online bulletin boards? Here's how this works...

How to use this online tool. Whether you should register or use anonymously. Other help topics.
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shawn
Site Admin
Posts: 344
Joined: Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:41 am
Location: Cambridge, Mass.

New to online bulletin boards? Here's how this works...

Post by shawn »

Glossary
Forum: a set of topics based on an interest, such as fuel cells, lesson plans, field trips.
Topic: A message or idea within a forum.
Post: A single writing in response to a topic or starting one.
Register: Entering your information once so that you don't have to each time you use the forum.
Log in: Letting the system know that you are browsing.

Important notes:
The system keeps track of registered users for many reasons: It can let you know which messages you have read or not, it can handle messages between users, it keeps out naughty spam-bots that would otherwise gather email addresses and post harmful topics, it lets the administrator know how many users exist and whether they're being naughty or nice.
All your passwords are kept encoded, and the encoding is one-way, so there's no way for even the administrator to find out what your password is.
You can start a new topic, or you can reply to a topic you see. Try to browse the existing topics to make sure you're not repeating an existing topic. If you're topic doesn't fit in any specific forum, try the "Open Forum"; The administrator will start a new forum if enough topics are created in the same vein.
You can send private messages and email to other users. Just click on Memberlist; you'll see a list of users. Click "pm" to send them one they'll see when they next visit the forums; or, click "email" to send one to their email address; the system will look up their address and forward it there, even if you don't know their address.
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