Help:Forums

Discussion forums allow you to collaborate with colleagues on common projects, share ideas, or discuss topics relevant to your e-Lab.

It may help you to know some of the terminology:
Each forum (you can also think of it as a room) is composed of various threads, each (ideally) devoted to the discussion of one idea or topic. Each thread is made up of a string of posts.

You can easily join the discussion by clicking one of the links below a posting, either Reply to thread or Reply to THIS post. The difference is that the first simply adds a new posting to the current thread, while the second also inserts the text of the previous post into your reply. You should trim the quoted text to just the point(s) you are responding to. To encourage you to do so you also need to change the [TRIM_THIS_quote] tag down to just "[quote]", or else the quoted material won't be shown.

To start a discussion on a new topic you can use the Create a new thread link at the top of the list of threads. Please start a new thread for a new topic, rather than changing the topic of an existing thread (though of course that can happen naturally).

You can format your postings using BBcode, a set of formatting tags which you enclose in [square brackets]. HTML is not allowed in forum posts. When creating your post there is a link at the side of the page which will pop-up this brief summary of BBcode.

As you will see, the name of the person who wrote a given post is displayed next to what they have written, along with a picture of them, if they have uploaded one.
You can upload your own "head-shot" from the Forum Preferences page. (On some forums this is called an "avatar", but in those cases it might also be drawing or cartoon character or other picture. For this site, please use a real photograph of yourself which shows your face clearly. This helps others picture the person "doing the talking".

You can also use the preferences page to set up your own signature, which is displayed at the bottom of every post you make.

Threads that contain postings you have not yet viewed will be marked in the list of threads. When you visit such a thread you will automatically jump to the first unread posting.
Some threads are marked sticky, which means that they will always be shown at the top of the list of threads. You can adjust the behavior of some of these features in your forum preferences."