Writing on the forum and following your notifications

In short. To open a thread or reply, you need the right to write in the section. The bell in the header tells you what concerns you: a reply, a mention, a decision.

Writing a thread or a message #

The title is cleaned: line breaks and invisible characters (zero width, reversed writing direction) are removed, and at least one visible character must remain. A title made only of invisible characters is refused.

Under each thread and in a section's list, you see the number of views ("12 views"). That figure is updated in small batches: it can lag by half a minute, and robots are not counted. It is an indicator, not an exact count.

Mentioning someone #

Write @username in a message: the member is notified. At most 10 mentions per message are notified, and an unknown username is simply ignored (no error message).

The notification bell #

The bell, at the top of the page, shows the number of unread notifications. The notifications page lists them, with Mark all as read.

A few details:

• If a thread is moved to a private section you cannot read, the notification tells you so but with no link.
• When the author of a reply has deleted their account, the notification shows them as "Deleted user", as everywhere on the forum.
• If the database does not answer, the notifications page says so ("Your notifications are temporarily unreadable: it does not mean the box is empty") instead of showing "no notifications": try again in a moment.
• Reactions (👍, ❤️…) do not notify.
• Notifications are side effects: if one could not be written, your message or application is saved anyway.
• Read notifications are erased after 30 days, unread ones after 180 days, and you keep 500 at most (the most recent).

Administrators also receive admin alerts (payment to check, former member asking to come back). Only an administrator can read them: if you go back to being a regular member, or if you look at the site in player view, they show as "unavailable" and are not marked as read.