I just tried to direct a new member (who is posting work to be critiqued the first day ...not on the Workshop but in another thread) to the New Members Thread—which should be listed under Members, I reckon. (That's certainly where I would have looked for it, if I were just joining up.) Nope. It's gone. If it's hidden away under Rules instead, it's well hidden. Any clues? .......... Oh, just found it. Way down the list under "Information." Obviously folks are missing it. Any reason it couldn't be listed under Members, or crosstagged TO Members ...or best yet, have its own tag which is immediately visible to anybody joining the forum?
I think it used to be located to the left of "Blogs", but was moved to Information (for reasons I do not know). Anyway, all new members receive an automatic welcome PM containing links to the New Member Guide as well as other relevant information.
Oh, fair enough. I guess some people will still not either read the rules, or understand the bit about posting their own work for critique. They might think that only counts in the Workshop, and so they post their work for critique elsewhere (only a couple of paragraphs ...I should just shut up!) ...as this person I responded to to seems to have done. Sorry if I inadvertently created bother.
Also, if you want to give a link to it in a post or PM, you can type [n][/n] But it has to by just like that, no errors. Like, you can type: There's some good information in the [n][/n]. and what will pop up in your post is: There's some good information in the New Member Quick Start.
There's one for the Forum rules as well: [r][/r] Again, since it's a BBCode tag, no errors allowed or it will either not function, or create random craziness in your post.
It works with spaces in between. Code: [r] [/r] Forum Rules Code: [r] [/r] Forum Rules Or a dash: Code: [r]-[/r] Forum Rules
Yeah. I created them so that anything in between the opening and closing tag is ignored and replaced with a standardized text. The idea being to make the typing minimal. Fail to add one of the closing tags or type it wrong and create a "broken tag" and the software attempts to rectify by auto-including a functional tag at the end of whatever other text you type, not unlike when great gobs of text get included in a quote or a link when you only meant to include a small portion. The unforgiving exactitude demanded by BBCode tags and the imperative of them being paired up is something that often causes members frustration in most forums. It was easier just to say "make it this way without fail".
Yep. I'm still determined to find an easier way. I would still love it to be as simple as the texted code for smilies. MUCH less chance for wonkiness.
It happens to all of us at one point or another. I've seen members complain that the quote function seems to broken because my post is all messed up, and I'm like, nope, there's an unpaired opening tag of some flavor somewhere in there that you're missing and no matter how many times you erase the extraneous other tags the software creates, the same problem will come right back each time you edit. It's happened to me. It's a real thing. ETA: Long ago in a galaxy far, far away I worked as the Customer Service Director for a large furniture company in Central Florida. We used a piece of software called Profit Systems for everything from sales to ordering to repairs to bookkeeping. It was the worst piece of shit ever to call a silicon chip home. It was written by some tech-savvy fellahs (who I got to meet in Colorado) who couldn't be paid to care that their end users did not have I.T. degrees. The software was heavily dependent on the end user entering rather exacting strings of text in order to make things happen. Mess up the string by just a character and the sales order would just sit there, never ordering, never sending to the factory, never even telling you that it was still pending and had never sent, nothing. Customers pissed to high heaven. I became adept at spotting the errors.
