An A2K Forum Help Primer

My life has gotten complicated and busy. Yes, I will still be in charge of Moderation/Administration. However, something's got to give and I have to step back a bit. Hence I will no longer be answering regular Forum Help requests. If I respond at all, it'll just be to link back to this topic.

Instead, three things will be happening:

1. I encourage YOU -- all of you! -- to go ahead and respond with links if you notice a question that you've seen before (and that has been answered before). There really is no need to keep reinventing the wheel. By now, lots of questions have been answered before.
   
   
2. The Administrator account will be revived to answer whatever questions are actually new. There shouldn't be that many. More than one person shares this account; it might be me answering, but it might not be. I'm not the only one who wears Administrator clothing.
   
   
3. I will be adding to this topic. It will start off with links about some help-type subjects and I'll add more as they arise. For example, if a lot of people ask about, I dunno, avatars, I may write up something on avatars (there are no guarantees that I'll cover any particular subject, no matter how much interest there is in it; my time simply does not permit me to entertain everything). The idea is to keep this topic and its posts as short and sweet as possible. So you're going to mainly just see links to the best and most accurate answers out there -- no matter who did the answering -- instead of me repeating what's out there.

I invite everyone to link to this topic whenever they see a new Forum Help topic opened up which asks about something already addressed here. You don't have to be a Mod to help, and you don't need to be a Mod to have your link posted here.

There will, of course, be older, out of date material out there -- the site continues to evolve, and it's simply too daunting to bring everything up to date. Your assumption should be that if a topic is handled here, that the treatment of it is as current and as accurate as I know. If a topic is not handled here, then it's fair to assume that whatever is my or Craven's most recent statement about it is the most accurate and current information we have on the matter.

For personal or private matters, please continue to contact the Help Desk. Please don't wait for me to address your particular issue here, as I might not get to it, even if you address me directly (sorry, but there just aren't enough hours in a day).

To keep this topic short and sweet, and make sure that everyone can find the information they need, this topic will be locked. Therefore, you cannot type "bookmark" in order to add it to your posts. Rather, if you want to follow this topic, click "email updates" in the lower right corner of the page, or add it as a favorite in your particular browser.

I'm sorry that you won't be able to ask questions in this particular topic, but experience has shown that leaving a topic like this unlocked tends to result in a meandering off-topic discussion or a topic that gets so large (even if it more or less stays true to the subject) that it becomes unreadable. I want this to be a handy reference for you.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone, past, present and future, who takes the time to seriously answer Forum Help topics. There are plenty of places to have fun on A2K, and even Forum Help isn't always 100% serious, but when people ask a question here, we on the Moderating Team have to make the assumption that the questioner wants an actual answer. One that is as accurate and up to date as possible. One that doesn't mock the questioner. One that provides information that the entire community can use.

I also want to take this opportunity to apologize for losing my patience. As we approach our fifth anniversary, this site does not get any smaller or easier to manage. Hence we ask for your cooperation so that we may serve you better. Thank you.