How this board works

Every board is one long list of conversations. A new topic starts at the left margin; replies are indented underneath whatever they reply to, so you can follow an argument down a branch without losing the rest of the page.

Each line shows the subject, who wrote it, and when. Click a subject to read the post and reply to it. A post marked (n/t) has no text beyond its subject line — the subject is the message.

Finding things again

The box at the top of the menu searches every post on every board you can read. All the words you type must appear somewhere in the post. Put a phrase in "quotes" to keep the words together, put a minus in front of a word to leave those posts out, and end a word with * to match anything starting with it — launch* finds launched and launching. Results can be sorted by best match or by date, and narrowed to one board or one member.

If you are signed in, the board also keeps track of what you have already seen. Posts written since your last visit are shown in gold with a small arrow, and the conversation carries a count of them. Looking at a board page counts as having seen the conversations on it — every subject line is right there. Mark all read in the menu clears the lot.

Changing a post

You can edit anything you have written, at any time — there is no deadline. Open the post and press edit.

An edited post carries a small edited note with the date, and that note is a link: anyone can follow it and read every earlier version, with who changed it and when. Nothing is quietly rewritten, and nothing is lost. This is not there because anyone is expected to misbehave; it is there so that if the question ever comes up, it is answered in five seconds instead of in an argument.

Posts in a thread a moderator has locked can no longer be edited by their authors. Moderators can edit any post, and doing so is written to the moderator log as well as the post's own history.

Posting

You need an account to post. Register with a username, an email address and a password; you will be sent a link by email to confirm the address before your first post. Reading requires no account at all.

Pictures

There are two ways to put a picture in a post. Paste the web address of a picture that already exists somewhere online — if it ends in .jpg, .png, .gif or .webp, it appears in your post as the picture itself. Or use the Pictures box on the posting form to send your own from your computer or phone; those appear underneath your message, and readers can click one to see it full size.

Pictures you upload are shrunk to a sensible size automatically, and the location data your phone camera records is stripped off before anything is stored.

Putting a picture in a particular place. Once you have chosen your pictures, each one appears under the message box with an insert here button. Put the cursor where you want the picture, choose a size, and press it — a marker like [pic1 large] goes into your message and the picture appears exactly there. Pictures you do not place stay in a strip under the message, as before.

To get	Type
your first picture, medium	[pic1]
your second picture, large	[pic2 large]
small, with the text wrapping to the left of it	[pic1 small right]
as wide as the column	[pic1 full]

Full resolution. The sizes above are how big the picture appears in the post. Separately, one picture per post may be kept at its original resolution — tick keep at full resolution under it before posting. The post still shows the ordinary web-sized copy, so nobody reading on a phone downloads ten megabytes by accident; clicking the picture opens the full one. Use it for the photograph that is worth looking at closely.

Sizes are small, medium, large and full; wrapping is left or right. On a phone every picture goes on its own line, because there is not enough width to wrap text around one.

Equations

Press Math above the message box. A panel opens with a line to type in, a palette of the usual pieces — fractions, roots, integrals, sums, Greek letters — and a preview that redraws as you type. Press Insert equation and it drops into your message.

What you type is LaTeX, the notation used in physics and astronomy papers. If you already know it, type it; if you do not, the palette buttons write it for you and you can edit what they produce.

To get	Type
an equation in a sentence	[math]E = mc^2[/math]
one on its own line, centred	[math display]int_0^infty e^{-x^2}dx[/math]
a fraction	rac{a}{b}
a power, a subscript	x^{2}, x_{i}
a square root	sqrt{x}
Greek letters	alpha, lambda, Omega

Equations are drawn by the board itself, not by anything your browser has to download, and they can be copied out as their original notation. An equation may be up to 2,000 characters.

Preview

The Preview button above the message box shows the post exactly as it will appear — pictures where you put them, equations drawn, links live. Press it again to close it. It is the same code that draws the finished post, so what you see there is what everyone else sees.

Formatting

The buttons above the message box do all of this for you — select some words and press one. If you would rather type it, the tags are:

To get	Type
bold	[b]bold[/b]
italic	[i]italic[/i]
underlined	[u]underlined[/u]
a link on chosen words	[url=https://example.com]these words[/url]
a picture from the web	[img]https://example.com/photo.jpg[/img]
a video	[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=…[/video]
an equation	[math]E = mc^2[/math]
one of your own pictures	[pic1 large]
a quotation	[quote]their words[/quote]

A web address typed on its own becomes a link with no tags needed, and one ending in .jpg, .png, .gif or .webp shows as the picture itself.

Video embeds from YouTube and Vimeo, or from a direct link to a video file. Anything else becomes an ordinary link — the board will not run a player from a site it does not recognise.

Moderators

Moderators can remove posts, lock threads and suspend accounts. If something needs their attention, say so on the Community board.