In-Thread Protocol

WCG-ers,

Next in our series of tutorials is the in-thread protocol. Again, this isn't meant to be from the moderating police. It is meant as a tutorial for the newbies and a refresher for the old-timers.

If there is anything else you all want me to run through, please let me know!

OPTIONS

This is pretty simple. You have three options here: hit "up," click "reply" or hit the "actions" button.

UP - If it's a really in-depth thread, it can be difficult to see who responded to who and the like. Hitting the "up" button will transport you to the original comment.

REPLY - For the love of everything holy, PLEASE hit the reply button when responding to someone! When you don't hit the reply button or simply forget to do so, your comment is left-justified. Most people can figure out who you were replying to, but if there are numerous conversations in a thread, it can get confusing.

If you can only take one thing from this tutorial, use the reply button every time. Everyone screws up once in a while, but if you're a habitual hater of the reply button (looking at you, GeoMak), it becomes a pain for all the readers to follow along.

ACTIONS - If you hit this button, you have two options: flag and recommend.

Recommend - The recommend button is pretty self-explanatory: If you think a comment is funny or incredibly insightful, recommend it. If it gets three recommends, it turns green.

Flag - This one is important. If a comment is derogatory or goes against the community guidelines, hit "flag." You may need to temporarily allow pop-ups if you have the setting on your Internet browser. Once you can allow pop-ups, a box will appear and you have three options: Spam, Troll, and Inappropriate. You all know what spam is, a troll is someone (usually from another site) trying to incite our fellows members, and hopefully anything that is inappropriate is cleared up by the site guidelines.

Please do not be afraid to flag a comment or post! If it's particularly bad, shoot one of us an email. Usually, I'm consistently around my computer on weekends, so if something comes up on the weekends, email me.

REPLYING TO A COMMENT

You hit the reply button? Good! Now let's look at what you can do once you have your text box open.

BOLD - Self-explanatory. If you want to bold some of your writing, highlight it and hit the "B" button.

ITALICS - If you want to italicize some of your writing, highlight it and hit the crooked "I" button.

STRIKETHROUGH - Usually not used except in humor situations, but I'll explain it anyways. Again, highlight your text, hit the "S" with the line through it.

BLOCK QUOTE - This one can be incredibly useful, but sometimes the formatting gets screwed up. The easiest way I've found is to paste what you have into the box, then highlight it and hit the quotations-looking thing.

LINKS - If you want to create a link embedded in the text like this, highlight the text you want to link. Click the chain-looking icon and paste the website address. If you don't want GeauxBears to have a stroke, you'll also have to click "Open in New Window."

PICTURES - This is about the only one that needs to be explained. Adding a picture in a thread is different than adding one in a FanPost.

If you have a picture that you want to use, get the URL of the link and copy or cut it. Hit the far right button (the tree), then paste the URL in there. Your picture will now show up.

If you do post a picture, MAKE SURE IT'S APPROPRIATE! We've had to take down some pictures recently, so make sure it's up to par with the community guidelines.