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Over time it might. Let's say a new member who wants to learn has -10 the first month, but after 6 months is a -15. They have actually improved but the reputation system says otherwise. If you want them to care about rep they would be better off opening a new account. If I see a good question but know the science is incorrect I never down vote it but some do, especially if the poster has asked a similar question before. I tend to not want to up vote it if the science is incorrect. If someone is poor mannered they are more likely to get away with it if their science is correct, so a double standard with regard to that seems to be in place. So yes, ideally they gain it back over time, but I really don't think it happens readily for those just learning. So they can carry negative rep for some time.

Why staff wouldn`t delete them? I think more space in the server will be occupied.

Humor I think is usually good as it makes the discussion less combative and more interpersonally comfortable, and I think most SFN members would concede to this. But when it's ambiguous internet sarcasm that makes a false assertion directly pertinent to the discussion, as was the case in Ophiolite's anecdotal example if I recall the contents of that thread correctly, it does not have a place besides the end of a DELETE command.

From: BAL-TORR (BALTORR) Posted: 3/11/99 5:18 AM "Ok, I read this thread (all that hadn't been arbitrarily deleted), and I thought to myself "This guy could be on to something, or he could be completely wrong, I need to hear more to be sure"...Boys and girls, that's called having an open mind. Some of you guys and gals cuffed and stuffed the man for no good reason except that what he was saayin was way out, according to your frame of reference. You know that is not right. Give things a chance. I'm not sayin the guy is right or wrong, but there is really no reason to jump on him with both feet without knowing all the facts. You wouldn't do it on the street, why on a message board? I don't know if his invention or his idea works, and I may never know. Depends on if I decide to research it or not. But I wouldn't want to go down in history as one of the first to trash Fulton, Edison, or Einstein without knowin what I was talking about. You guys know I have nothin but respect and friendship for some of you. On the other hand, I don't see how you stand by and let someone who has no qualifications, scientific or otherwise, delete messages in a string that deals with this kind of subject matter. How are we to develope an opinion or learn anythuing about a possible real breakthrough, if someone who has a closed mind and NO expertise in the sciences is allowed to delete parts of the discussion? Just another reason I don't chat in Copsonline anymore...But aside from that...you guys give new ideas a chance, maybe the guy is on to something, maybe he isn't. Neither is a reason to just shut the door. Nice to talk to y'all again..Bal-torr"

Hi, Is it possible for me to edit a topic that I created if I wish to rephrase my question? Is it possible to delete the topic so that I may just make a new one? The only reason is because I don't want to flood the forum with multiple threads of the same topic only slightly rephrased. Of course I know if its not possible then I can just add a comment, but I's much rather edit. Please help. Thanks, pyroglycerine

You can edit posts (with the Edit link in the lower right) for a few hours after you post them; after that, editing is no longer possible. You can't delete your own threads though.

Who are you sending PMs to? I don't think I've received any, and only admins can delete an account. However, account deletion is rather messy and we don't generally do it. We can make vBulletin not send any more emails to you, if that would be okay.

How do you delete your account on here?

! Moderator Note To clarify: the staff generally don't delete posts unless they break the rules concerning civility (or spamming; posters spamvertising in the forums are banned and their posts deleted). Post that are off-topic and likely to or actually hijack a discussion are often moved into new threads, especially if the member is new, but it depends on the post. The trash can is used more often for repeat hijacking offenders, when the staff start to get fed up with the rule being ignored.

I moved this. I'm a mod and just think I can run everything and rule everyone. Except that's not true; I moved this post in complete accordance with the rules — the opening is an off-topic hijack, which violates the rules, and that means I can delete it or move it. I could have moved it to the trash, where there could be no further discussion, but it warrants a response and perhaps other commentary, so I moved it here. As Ophiolite says, you do not have a right to free speech here; that right is between you and the government where you live; the government is (supposedly) limited in how they can censor you. How much depends on where you live. The price you pay for entering this forum is that you agree to follow some rules, and if you don't follow them, you might be shown the door. If you don't like that caveat, you can go somewhere else and start your own blog and then you can say what you please. THAT is how you can exercise your right to free speech.

I would like to add my voice to that. Quoting is problematic (Safari user here). I have had two problems, both specifically related to the fact that when you edit a reply the quoted text is "locked in a quote box" and I cannot seem to edit the tags: 1) sometimes I'll be trying to delete some quoted text from the top of the quote and if I accidentally backspace when the cursor is right at the beginning, then the server sends me back to the thread and I lose all my reply. (frustrating!) 2) I wanted to break up the quote into separate boxes and put some of my own text in between. It just wouldn't let me because i couldn't put the tags where I wanted them.

Just so your aware, ddos isnt the only way to bring a site down, if you edit your packet you can request a callback from the server but extend the time to like 500ms and delete the return to sender ip, if you spam enough of those kinds of packets the server will hold onto them for the full half a second and then throw them out. Basically clogging up your server with long requests rather than instant you dont need a botnet to grind a server down. You can fine tune this in the config files on the server though, i only know the theoretical side of this type of attack. Regards. (i think the packets are udp, if this helps)

If it is gone it is gone there isn't much I can do about it. The fact that it was unfinished, well it is probably just as well that it is completely gone, because I do not want half unfinished thoughts of mine just showing up somewhere. Now what I am referring to is twice maybe three times what I was working on disappeared because of what I did while the work was in progress. Once while writing a response to a post I wanted to review a statement made on a preceding page. It is apparently wrong to assume that just because there is a response box at the bottom of each page that what you are typing will follow you if you change pages. It is also wrong to assume that if you go back to the page that contained the box you were writing in, that what you were writing will still be there. Next it was just a small misspelled word, so badly misspelled that there were no suggestions listed. Seeing that there were no suggestions I clicked on the page to clear the suggestion box then decided to just retype the word. The word was supposed to be that and that is not that difficult to spell, but my fingers do not always go where I want them to go, and yes I was being lazy using the suggestion box to begin with. The problem apparently is that somehow I managed to highlight the word in grey then thinking I could just make the word go away because it was highlighted by hitting the backspace key. Wrong, wrong, wrong, everything gone, and I am on a different page. I looked up my own profile just to see if I had accidentally posted a half thought and simply could not remember which post I was responding to. Some of them do get to look alike sometimes, and I am a little tired. Nothing there thankfully. Though having now read some of my own past post it would be easily understood if someone reading what I have intentionally posted considered them to be half thought out thoughts. Okay, now that I an done howling at the moon, can someone tell me how to use the quote feature selectively? Do you have to take the whole quote, then delete everything but what you want to remain of the quote? How do I single out a single statement? I see where people have done it, while others seem satisfied with quoting the entire post. Is there a copy and paste trick?

This one nails me fairly often. If your cursor isn't in the text box, backspace means "previous page", not "delete text", so clicking in the wrong place makes your browser eat your post. Even worse, on my laptop there's no Home key, so I try to press Cmd-Left to go to the beginning of the line. Nope, that's "Back" in the browser, but "Home" in every other application I use. So I'll be halfway through a post and whoops, now it's gone.

We do use a CAPTCHA -- we use reCAPTCHA. I strongly suspect that spammers pay people a few cents to bust each CAPTCHA for them. They haven't been very effective for years. New users are also required to have a valid email address, are not permitted to have signatures, can't post status updates or connect their accounts to Facebook and Twitter, and have a rate limit on sending PMs. All of these measures were reactions to techniques used by spammers. One popular spam technique was to register an account, set its signature or "About Me" to spam, and then never post, thus never bringing the account to our attention. We've put a lot of time into nuking spam and trying to prevent it. To give you a sense of scale, there are currently 9,103 members in the database marked as spammers, and I've probably deleted the accounts of just as many. What version of IE are you using? You can use up to IE 8 on Windows XP, which should be compatible with IPB. IE 6 accounts for 0.1% of our audience, and is no longer compatible with IPB. IE 7 is 0.7% of our audience. IE in total is only 15%, as it's swamped by Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

Mate, I still end up at the person's account and the status is interspersed with their replies to threads. It's a lot tidier if a little box appeared on the home screen where we could write instant answers. Unless I am getting this wrong!

I thought that was Instagram ---- Another thing to update is your notifications settings. There's a link to it in account settings (on the right) one thing that I'm finding annoying is "new topics" is showing all new posts. So if there's six posts in that topic, I see all six, rather than just a link to the topic.

Same here. 502 error has cleared for me, but can't find signature change option anywhere now that I'm successfully into Account Settings. Perhaps it's a permissions issue and Sig edit capability must be first granted to our user group / non-staff member role?

I can't find signature between the options in account settings?

My signature link to a YT video began rendering (instead of just showing the URL) and I'd like to remove it or maybe surround it by noparse tags. Followed the outlined steps, however clicking Account Settings throws a 502 Bad Gateway error and I cannot seem to get to the sig edit screen. Anyone else seeing this error, or have an alternative path to try?

Click on your user name on the top right and go to "Account settings" in the dropdown. Signature will be one of the options. Use shift+enter to not leave a blank line between lines. Signatures should be fairly unobtrusive

Dear Administrators, This is a copy of a PM to Swansont this morning ! Sat 3rd Aug 2013 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hi swansont, I do not seem to be able to upload any Images . A little sign comes up Error and in the little foot note in brown or blue where it speaks of max [ so many megbytes ] it is overwritten with [ no uploading possible ] if I have used up some form of quota. What do I do about it? wait time, delete somewhere [old threads , messages etc ] or ask for more , or what ? Perhaps you can advise . Also can you fix it somehow please. Thanks. Oh and bye the way i would not mind , my thread on " New Mass Transport system " in speculations , unlocking. I have a Physical Model in UK for proof of concept and . I have a Paper produced by me in University for bringing back from Italy in Mid September also some new drawings of forces ( when I can Upload ,some more ) Mike ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ He says I need to talk to ADMIN so here I am trying to talk with you. Please could you fix for me to continue . Thanks Mike

We never delete anything except spam. We've always hidden posts that do nothing but increase post counts ("lol", "good post", etc.). I'll unhide it, but I don't think krash661's saying what you think he's saying.

Why did you delete the message krash661 when he says he is ok with me on this thread?? ---> http://www.sciencefo...le-mass-motion/ I need some explaination !!!

The moderation deleted an locked messages. Why did you delete the message krash661 when he says he is ok with me on this thread?? ---> http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/77511-static-density-single-mass-motion/ I need some explaination Original construct thread in google cache --> http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sKHKoAHj0YcJ:www.scienceforums.net/topic/77511-static-density-single-mass-motion/+Static+Density+Single+Mass+Motion&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr&client=firefox-a So I tell you the true, and you, you are so in the lie ..