Following in the tradition of xandman's Noob Bible #1, here is a
guide to newer members of Minitokyo on the use of the forums. Note that this is
a work in progress and will be added to as time goes on.
Announcement: Removed Duplicate Threads
section because it was out of date.
. . . the report tool. . .
The report tool is not used to send a
message to the user who started a particular thread. Rather, it is a tool used
to send a message to the forum moderators to indicate to them that a particular
post is against Minitokyo
Policy, is better-suited to another forum category, or is a duplicate of an
existing thread with recent activity (see section on Duplicate Threads below).
Posts that are a breach of policy include (but are not limited to) posts that
- serve no real purpose other than perhaps increasing a user's post/reply
count
- are in an overly insulting or rude tone
- contain links to sites that contain (or condone the obtaining of) copywrited
or pirated material
- contain links to sites that are pornographic in nature
Please take time to familiarize yourself with the Minitokyo Policy, in the Support files, as repeated offenses may
lead to banning or muting of your user account.
. . . editing posts. . .
Next to the Report link, there is an Edit link under each post that allows one
to modify their existing posts, whether to change or add to what had been
written earlier, rather than to make another post.
. . . forum etiquette. . .
While not hard and fast rules, the following are a number of guidelines to keep
in mind while you wander through the forums (not following them may earn you the
ill-will of other users or even the mods in certain cases!). . .
1. Please try to be nice (or at least civil) to your fellow Minitokyo members
and refrain from being overly insulting or rude to other members. Remember,
we're all here to have fun and appreciate anime art!
2. Please do not create too many new threads, especially during the course of a
single day. While it is fine to create threads to ask a question that has not
been asked recently (see section on Duplicate Threads), nobody should have any
good reason to create multiple threads over the course of a single day.
Remember to use the Search tool
or just browse through the forums, especially the Help Forum for new members, to see if
your question or topic has already been posted.
3. Please do not post too often in your own threads. If you post so often such
that your posts constitute a significant plurality of all of the posts on a
particular thread, other users may feel that you are simply "post
harvesting" in order to gain levels. While we all understand that new
users would like to get to Level 10 in order to be able to start downloading
scans, rather than flooding the forums with threads and posts, a better way to
go about raising your level is contributing to the community by posting some
scans that are not already in the Gallery.
4. If your account was muted, or if you had a post or submission that was
deleted, rather than make a new complaint thread, you should use the Support
Inquiry Service to contact the moderators and get an issue resolved or post on
an existing thread. For example, if one of your suggestions was deleted, use
this thread: http://forum.minitokyo.net/showthread/11208/
. To use the Support Inquiry Service, click on the Support link at the top of the
Minitokyo page, select Support
Inquiry, and enter in your question.
. . . guestbooks. . .
When replying to a post in your own guestbook, rather than using the reply
function, make a post in the guestbook of the person who posted. If you post
the reply in your own guestbook, chances are that the person who posted will
never see the response.
III. A User's
Guide to the Search Tool helpful tips and techniques for searching
through Minitokyo
One of the most handy features of Minitokyo is the Search tool, which allows users to
search through the many entries in the forums and the galleries. It's useful in
particular to use the Search tool in order to avoid making duplicate threads.
However, use of the search feature requires a bit of finesse, so here are some
pointers to get you started on using it.
1. The fewer keywords, the better
The search tool does a search through the forums and the galleries in order to
find thread and submission names which contains the exact string* you indicated,
and therefore there's a higher chance to find what you're looking for by
starting with one keyword and slowly adding more to help narrow down your
search. This means that if you search for anime
ost, you'll see all of the titles that have "anime ost" in
them, but not any where there is anything in between "anime" and
"ost".
2. Search for synonyms
This should be self-evident. Think of other ways to word the topic of your
thread, and search for functional equivalents of your topic or synonyms of your
keywords.
3. Shuffle your search string
Doing a search for girl anime will return
a different set of results from anime
girl, as the former will look for thread or submission titles that have
the string "girl anime" and the latter will look for titles that have
"anime" directly preceeding "girl".
4. Look for parts of key words
If you're looking for something like "favorite games", do a search for
favorite game (without the 's') as that
will return all hits for "favorite game" and "favorite
games".
*string: (noun) a set of consecutive characters, such as a word or
phrase.
Try your hand at using the Search tool when you get a chance so you get a feel
for how it works. For example, try some of the sample searches I indicated
above. Also (as noted by Woofie), when you do make new threads or post
something to the galleries, do try to make the title as descriptive and accurate
as possible so it's easier for others to search for your contribution. If you
have any questions, feel free to post here or PM me and I'll see what I can do
to be of assistance!
If I think of more tips, I'll stick them up. Likewise, if any others have any
pointers to pass along, I'll be more than glad to include them here.
Thanks for clearing that up (particularly part 3), I was wondering how exactly
it worked - it's different to search functions I'm used to on other boards. It
just searches topic titles rather than the contents of the posts within, I
presume?
Through my experince with the Search Tool, it seems to work in other ways
too:
~ searches not only thread/post title but also the contents of starting thread
post/description by submitter
~ finds keywords in other words, for example, if you search of "shin"
(used your name ^.~), it returns results for 'Kenshin', 'shine', 'wishing',
etc
In response to Woofie's message, you should probably make a thread about
"Proper Technique of Naming Threads" (j/k)
But I think there's a problem with the search feature:
Try to type "tips search" or "tips + search" or
"tips+search"...
You'll get no topic... Which is strange since this topic is named Tips on using
the Search Tool...
It seem to only search for precise and full sentence and don't get topic with
the two word if the sentence is not exactly the same...
So most of those who try the search function may not find anything if they don't
have the same sentence which may be a problem to avoid making duplicate thread
:/
So I'm also in the idea to create a "Proper Technique of Naming Threads" as suggested
Iyasis to avoid topic with name that could be hard to find through the search
feature...
Quote by streiferI think there's a
problem with the search feature:Try to type "tips search" or
"tips + search" or "tips+search"... You'll get no topic...
Which is strange since this topic is named Tips on using the Search Tool...
You're right. . . I actually didn't notice this before, but the reason this
happens is because the search string is set to do a search for the entire string
as the user entered it. For example, a search for "tips search"
essentially is a search for
*tips search*
and not
*tips*search*
Therefore, if you did a search for "search tool", for example, you
would find this thread. To look for this thread, if you followed my steps, you
would start with one key word: "search" and narrow it down from there.
Edit: Added a clarification to the original
post.
Quote by streiferSo I'm also in the idea
to create a "Proper Technique of Naming
Threads" as suggested Iyasis to avoid topic with name that could be
hard to find through the search feature...
I don't think
this is necessary. . . I think that as long as people make their thread names
descriptive and accurate (and spelled correctly!), it should be all that can be
done to ensure that their forum threads and gallery submissions are easily
findable through the search tool.
i have done a complete overhaul of the original post (which was entitled Tips on using the Search Tool) to include more
tips on more topics and such in the fashion of xand's Noob Bible #1. Hopefully
the mods will deem it worthy of being made sticky. . .
Umm, what about the under-utilized powers of the "Edit" button? I
think it's a great way to conserve on posts. "Magtipid sa post! Gamitin ang
'Edit' button!" (Conserve your posts! Use the 'Edit' button) )as we usually
say in my country...
-dont urge noobs to make walls, as we dont want noob walls in MT, we want
quality walls only. yes tell them to upload scans.
- posting multiple threads in 1 day isnt that bad, just not 20 threads on 1
day.
- posting much isnt that bad either, if those posts dont violate the rules.
- Never urge people to PM a moderator. As
we state in our group, we are not likely to answer PM's regarding Minitokyo. Use
the Support Inquiry Service.
Gumi! (hehe, my pet name for ya! Sorry, I just need to spam this in ... I kinda
suggested this project to mel first... but he seems kinda busy... maybe it might
help in attracting more people in reading the Noob Bibles... sorry for requoting
it... ahhh! Info overload!
Quote from mel's GB:
"Hmmm... I have something in mind for some months now... about suggesting
to translate the Noob Bibles by shinsengumi and xanman into various languages
and then converting them into manga-comic form and then, if the mods agree with
this Project and if eager MT members who regulary welcome newcomers on the
Entrance Lounge are willing, making it available for download via a link or
something... I was thinking of suggesting it in the Doujinshi-Support-Club as
another project, but the MT Manga Project might be already too much for them...
so I kinda thought of letting someone adopt this baby (MT Noob Bibles
Manga/Comic Conversion Project! Cute!), lol. I got a lot of kids to feed
already, lol.... what do you think?"
Some people from Hispanime are interested in the Spanish translation... 'don't
know about the others... maybe some people from the Doujinshi-Support-Club and
UniversalMangaProyekt and some wallers might be interested in contributing
images for the downloadable stuf...
And HEY! We got a whole 80+ cache of MT Character Class drawings which, with
right permissions, can be used for the MT Noob Bible Manga/Comic Conversion
thing...
Ahhhh! I just had to let this idea out! Headache time...... can anyone adopt
this child?
Anyway, 'just unloading some crap, lol, and thanks again!
I got a suggestion! ...about the search function, could you guys make it search
more specific like to search only on forums.....this helps a lot to prevent
dupes.....because the search function now, searches all the gallery and
forums.....the results are sooo much....and browsing and checking for dupes is
dificult......well, that's only a suggestion.....
I have created a set of draft guidelines for posting to the forums; please go to
my userpage to take a look at them. Please feel free to use this thread to
comment on them (rather than cluttering up my poor guestbook!)
__________________________________________________
An additional note about posting in the forum, guestbooks, and gallery. . .
please do not use any xhtml tags, and please refrain from using the angle
brackets, as they often wreak havoc with the page formatting. For more detail,
take a look at this thread:
I learned some things here. I thought the search box looked for topic titles.
Well now I know. And knowing is half the battle! What's the other half though?
Killing those commies?
Following in the tradition of xandman's Noob Bible #1, here is a guide to newer members of Minitokyo on the use of the forums. Note that this is a work in progress and will be added to as time goes on.
Announcement: Removed Duplicate Threads section because it was out of date.
Last edited: 2005.05.06 22:45
....................begin index....................
Information on Posting to the Forums
- 1. Useful Links
- 2. Using the Report Tool
- 3. The Edit Tool
- 4. Forum Etiquette
- 5. Guestbooks
A User's Guide to the Search Tool
.....................end index.....................
I. Information on posting to the Forums and Duplicate Threads
. . . useful links. . .
- Osi's Guidelines on making New Threads
- Discussion on Duplicate Threads
- Discussion on Spam
- Formatting Forum Posts (from the Support files)
- As a general note, remember to take a look at the sticky threads (indicated in red) at the top of each forum category, as they usually contain some very useful or helpful information
. . . the report tool. . .
The report tool is not used to send a message to the user who started a particular thread. Rather, it is a tool used to send a message to the forum moderators to indicate to them that a particular post is against Minitokyo Policy, is better-suited to another forum category, or is a duplicate of an existing thread with recent activity (see section on Duplicate Threads below).
Posts that are a breach of policy include (but are not limited to) posts that
- serve no real purpose other than perhaps increasing a user's post/reply count
- are in an overly insulting or rude tone
- contain links to sites that contain (or condone the obtaining of) copywrited or pirated material
- contain links to sites that are pornographic in nature
Please take time to familiarize yourself with the Minitokyo Policy, in the Support files, as repeated offenses may lead to banning or muting of your user account.
. . . editing posts. . .
Next to the Report link, there is an Edit link under each post that allows one to modify their existing posts, whether to change or add to what had been written earlier, rather than to make another post.
. . . forum etiquette. . .
While not hard and fast rules, the following are a number of guidelines to keep in mind while you wander through the forums (not following them may earn you the ill-will of other users or even the mods in certain cases!). . .
1. Please try to be nice (or at least civil) to your fellow Minitokyo members and refrain from being overly insulting or rude to other members. Remember, we're all here to have fun and appreciate anime art!
2. Please do not create too many new threads, especially during the course of a single day. While it is fine to create threads to ask a question that has not been asked recently (see section on Duplicate Threads), nobody should have any good reason to create multiple threads over the course of a single day. Remember to use the Search tool or just browse through the forums, especially the Help Forum for new members, to see if your question or topic has already been posted.
3. Please do not post too often in your own threads. If you post so often such that your posts constitute a significant plurality of all of the posts on a particular thread, other users may feel that you are simply "post harvesting" in order to gain levels. While we all understand that new users would like to get to Level 10 in order to be able to start downloading scans, rather than flooding the forums with threads and posts, a better way to go about raising your level is contributing to the community by posting some scans that are not already in the Gallery.
4. If your account was muted, or if you had a post or submission that was deleted, rather than make a new complaint thread, you should use the Support Inquiry Service to contact the moderators and get an issue resolved or post on an existing thread. For example, if one of your suggestions was deleted, use this thread: http://forum.minitokyo.net/showthread/11208/ . To use the Support Inquiry Service, click on the Support link at the top of the Minitokyo page, select Support Inquiry, and enter in your question.
. . . guestbooks. . .
When replying to a post in your own guestbook, rather than using the reply function, make a post in the guestbook of the person who posted. If you post the reply in your own guestbook, chances are that the person who posted will never see the response.
III. A User's Guide to the Search Tool
helpful tips and techniques for searching through Minitokyo
One of the most handy features of Minitokyo is the Search tool, which allows users to search through the many entries in the forums and the galleries. It's useful in particular to use the Search tool in order to avoid making duplicate threads. However, use of the search feature requires a bit of finesse, so here are some pointers to get you started on using it.
1. The fewer keywords, the better
The search tool does a search through the forums and the galleries in order to find thread and submission names which contains the exact string* you indicated, and therefore there's a higher chance to find what you're looking for by starting with one keyword and slowly adding more to help narrow down your search. This means that if you search for anime ost, you'll see all of the titles that have "anime ost" in them, but not any where there is anything in between "anime" and "ost".
2. Search for synonyms
This should be self-evident. Think of other ways to word the topic of your thread, and search for functional equivalents of your topic or synonyms of your keywords.
3. Shuffle your search string
Doing a search for girl anime will return a different set of results from anime girl, as the former will look for thread or submission titles that have the string "girl anime" and the latter will look for titles that have "anime" directly preceeding "girl".
4. Look for parts of key words
If you're looking for something like "favorite games", do a search for favorite game (without the 's') as that will return all hits for "favorite game" and "favorite games".
*string: (noun) a set of consecutive characters, such as a word or phrase.
Try your hand at using the Search tool when you get a chance so you get a feel for how it works. For example, try some of the sample searches I indicated above. Also (as noted by Woofie), when you do make new threads or post something to the galleries, do try to make the title as descriptive and accurate as possible so it's easier for others to search for your contribution. If you have any questions, feel free to post here or PM me and I'll see what I can do to be of assistance!
If I think of more tips, I'll stick them up. Likewise, if any others have any pointers to pass along, I'll be more than glad to include them here.
Happy searching!
......................endnote......................
Thanks for helping to keep the forums clutter-free! Feel free to send me a private message if you have any questions!
Thanks for clearing that up (particularly part 3), I was wondering how exactly it worked - it's different to search functions I'm used to on other boards. It just searches topic titles rather than the contents of the posts within, I presume?
Yes. . . as of now, it only searches through the titles of posts and gallery submissions.
Let's hope people have been naming their topics well, then! XP
Through my experince with the Search Tool, it seems to work in other ways too:
~ searches not only thread/post title but also the contents of starting thread post/description by submitter
~ finds keywords in other words, for example, if you search of "shin" (used your name ^.~), it returns results for 'Kenshin', 'shine', 'wishing', etc
In response to Woofie's message, you should probably make a thread about "Proper Technique of Naming Threads" (j/k)
EDIT: Streifer......i was kidding
It should also be added in http://forum.minitokyo.net/showthread/11129/ I think...
But I think there's a problem with the search feature:
Try to type "tips search" or "tips + search" or "tips+search"...
You'll get no topic... Which is strange since this topic is named Tips on using the Search Tool...
It seem to only search for precise and full sentence and don't get topic with the two word if the sentence is not exactly the same...
So most of those who try the search function may not find anything if they don't have the same sentence which may be a problem to avoid making duplicate thread :/
So I'm also in the idea to create a "Proper Technique of Naming Threads" as suggested Iyasis to avoid topic with name that could be hard to find through the search feature...
You're right. . . I actually didn't notice this before, but the reason this happens is because the search string is set to do a search for the entire string as the user entered it. For example, a search for "tips search" essentially is a search for
*tips search*
and not
*tips*search*
Therefore, if you did a search for "search tool", for example, you would find this thread. To look for this thread, if you followed my steps, you would start with one key word: "search" and narrow it down from there.
Edit: Added a clarification to the original post.
I don't think this is necessary. . . I think that as long as people make their thread names descriptive and accurate (and spelled correctly!), it should be all that can be done to ensure that their forum threads and gallery submissions are easily findable through the search tool.
Good "string" definition. Thanks, my coders brain was not allowing me to be this concise.
The only thing I would add is, remember a space is treated as a character.
And, I'll just stop there or I will start sounding technical...
tanks for clearing that up shinsengumi, you really help out all MT members alot as well as MT itself. keep up the goodwork!
*bump*
i have done a complete overhaul of the original post (which was entitled Tips on using the Search Tool) to include more tips on more topics and such in the fashion of xand's Noob Bible #1. Hopefully the mods will deem it worthy of being made sticky. . .
Well done shinsengumi!
Its
been made sticky! You are truly turning
into [Bot]Chii's pen pal. Good job!!! 
Umm, what about the under-utilized powers of the "Edit" button? I think it's a great way to conserve on posts. "Magtipid sa post! Gamitin ang 'Edit' button!" (Conserve your posts! Use the 'Edit' button) )as we usually say in my country...
very well done. i hope this helps many people in the fututre and even now.
My $0.02
-dont urge noobs to make walls, as we dont want noob walls in MT, we want quality walls only. yes tell them to upload scans.
- posting multiple threads in 1 day isnt that bad, just not 20 threads on 1 day.
- posting much isnt that bad either, if those posts dont violate the rules.
- Never urge people to PM a moderator. As we state in our group, we are not likely to answer PM's regarding Minitokyo. Use the Support Inquiry Service.
Ya this will help alot of people
tanks for clearing that up shinsengumi, you really help out all MT members alot as well as MT itself. keep up the goodwork!
Gumi! (hehe, my pet name for ya! Sorry, I just need to spam this in ... I kinda suggested this project to mel first... but he seems kinda busy... maybe it might help in attracting more people in reading the Noob Bibles... sorry for requoting it... ahhh! Info overload!
Quote from mel's GB:
"Hmmm... I have something in mind for some months now... about suggesting to translate the Noob Bibles by shinsengumi and xanman into various languages and then converting them into manga-comic form and then, if the mods agree with this Project and if eager MT members who regulary welcome newcomers on the Entrance Lounge are willing, making it available for download via a link or something... I was thinking of suggesting it in the Doujinshi-Support-Club as another project, but the MT Manga Project might be already too much for them... so I kinda thought of letting someone adopt this baby (MT Noob Bibles Manga/Comic Conversion Project! Cute!), lol. I got a lot of kids to feed already, lol.... what do you think?"
Some people from Hispanime are interested in the Spanish translation... 'don't know about the others... maybe some people from the Doujinshi-Support-Club and UniversalMangaProyekt and some wallers might be interested in contributing images for the downloadable stuf...
And HEY! We got a whole 80+ cache of MT Character Class drawings which, with right permissions, can be used for the MT Noob Bible Manga/Comic Conversion thing...
Ahhhh! I just had to let this idea out! Headache time...... can anyone adopt this child?
Anyway, 'just unloading some crap, lol, and thanks again!
I got a suggestion! ...about the search function, could you guys make it search more specific like to search only on forums.....this helps a lot to prevent dupes.....because the search function now, searches all the gallery and forums.....the results are sooo much....and browsing and checking for dupes is dificult......well, that's only a suggestion.....
I have created a set of draft guidelines for posting to the forums; please go to my userpage to take a look at them. Please feel free to use this thread to comment on them (rather than cluttering up my poor guestbook!)
__________________________________________________
An additional note about posting in the forum, guestbooks, and gallery. . . please do not use any xhtml tags, and please refrain from using the angle brackets, as they often wreak havoc with the page formatting. For more detail, take a look at this thread:
Posts and Entry form disappear in Internet Explorer
I learned some things here. I thought the search box looked for topic titles. Well now I know. And knowing is half the battle! What's the other half though? Killing those commies?
can sum1 pls help with my userpage custimizations
pls ! ! ^^
umm... i was wondering how you posted images on the forums... like if you wanted to post an image from a quiz.
link it indirectly using something like [...img]url to pic[.../img] ...But without the periods...
ummm. how do i make a thread??