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how_to_use_the_forum_of_filth

The Forum of Filth

Ah, hello! If you're reading this page, on the wiki, you've probably already run into the Forum of Filth. The Forum of Filth is CavemanJoe's super cool club house that only the coolest kids ever find1) and only the ice-coldest ever regularly visit. In it, you will find unprecedented levels of whining discussion about the game, its mechanics, and its story. However, with that piddling amount of power comes a piddling amount of responsibility so, without further ado,2) let's discuss some community3)4) guidelines aimed at making the forum the best it can be!

How to Use the Forum of Filth

There are two things you need to know about the Forum of Filth that make it different from many other forums: It moves slowly and its search function sucks5). With that in mind, all the other guidelines make perfect sense.

Put Things in the Right Forum

If you put your topic in the right forum6), it will be easier to dig up in the future. Forums include:

  • Places
    • General
    • Programming Help
    • Feedback and Development
  • Season Two
    • Development7)
    • Feature Requests, Ideas and Feedback
  • Off-topic
    • In-Game8)
    • Out-of-Game

Do not create a topic in the Legacy forums. Also, despite what some of the forum descriptions say, bug reports are probably better suited to Petitions.

Continue Conversations Correctly

Other forums have rules against “necromancing”, posting in threads that are old. By contrast, due to the aforementioned slowness and crappy search capabilities, necromancy is encouraged in the Forum of Filth, as it's much more convenient to have all the posts on a topic in one place.

If you aren't necromancing a thread, but are continuing a conversation, or responding to something,9) please include a link to any relevant places, so that readers can find what you're responding to years in the future, when it's buried under piles of debris and detritus. If it is impossible to link to whatever it is you're talking about, please explain it in your post, even just briefly.

You Don't Usually Have to Quote

The Forum of Filth, like many other forums, includes a “quote” button so that you can quote parts of someone else's post in your post. This is usually only necessary in busy threads, or if you're responding to a post with multiple part. Otherwise, you can just address your post to the person you're responding to, and everyone will know what you mean. E.g., if I post “Rohit is the best robot” in the thread, you can usually just post something like, “Full Metal Lion, I understand where you're coming from, but Robot is the best robot.” instead of having to quote me, so long as my post isn't too far in the past. When in doubt, quote to increase clarity. You don't necessarily need to quote the entire post you're responding to, you can redact.

How to Link to a Specific Post

This process is a little more complex than it honestly should be, but here we go…

First you must find the name of the post, which is a number. You may find this either by examining the target url of the “quote” button, which will contain the name as a quoteid parameter, or by right-clicking the name of the poster of the post, and hitting “Inspect Element”. Somewhere in the gobbledygook will be something like <a name=“2”></a>, and that number is what you want.

After you have the name, append it to the url of the thread after a '#', like so: http://enquirer.improbableisland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=1#2. That will link directly to the post you wanted.

There's a very simple userscript that can do this for you.

1)
despite being prominently featured in the navigation bar at the top of every page loaded in Improbable Island
3)
Psh. One guy wrote this entire page.
4)
Yes, but anyone can edit it if they disagree.
5)
No, I'm pretty sure it's a law of nature that all forums have terrible search functions
6)
this is a confusing term, I'm afraid. The Forum of Filth is actually made of a handful of other “forums”, which act as sections, containing related topic
7)
From what we can gather, this forum was supposed to be for CMJ to make topics within, to which we would respond. An odd specialization for a forum to have, given that it sits right next to the Feedback forum. CMJ must have realized this was wacky after creating this forum, because the later-created Places forum does not have this distinction.
8)
This forum was probably supposed to be used for In-Character interactions, but mostly it just gets used to talk about the game in a way that isn't giving feedback or proposing new ideas.
9)
like a MoTD, for example
how_to_use_the_forum_of_filth.txt · Last modified: 2023/11/21 18:02 by 127.0.0.1

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