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Q: What is the purpose of these Message Boards??
A: This is a rather meaty question, as there are lots of different reasons
for the Message Boards themselves. To put it simply they are designed as a
means by which to facilitate communications about UPA issues. The Official Board
was designed as a place for official business that all UPA need to be aware of,
and the Open board was designed as a chat area.
Q: Whose message board is this?
A: It was written by UPA_Daedalus as a gift to the UPA,
when the Supreme Council decided to move on and change UPA's structure, and the former chief engineer, UPA_Drewhead,
on whose webserver and domain the old HQ had been was too busy to integrate these changings.
The Automated Systems 2 where majorly based on Drewhead's concept and parts of the old HTML-code were taken, too. But the ASP-scripts all around the AS are completely new, and owned by UPA_Daedalus. The new webspace and the new domain were bought by UPA_Rockerus.
Q: What did you write this in?
A: VB-Script sitting on a MS Access Database. I had to learn ASP from scratch, but since I knew a lot about Access Databases and VBA, it wasn't too hard to learn.
Q: How long did it take?
A: Hard to say, because I was writing other parts of the AS as well at the same time. I started in February 2001, and I'd say a week. But a lot of bugfixing is still to come.
Q: Is is finished?
A: No, it is a work in progress, and hopefully will continue to change as new
things come up.
Q: Why did you write this?
A: Initially the UPA really needed a new MB system. There were lots of features that Drewhead
wanted to add. It was originally written in Perl but, when the site was moved to a NT-server, the scripts had to be rewritten from scratch.
Q: Who can post to the Official Board?
A: Any UPA pilot currently listed in the UPA pilots listing. Command staff (SC
members and Squad Leaders) are unmoderated, all other pilots are moderated.
Q: Who can post to the Open Board?
A: Any UPA pilot currently listed in the UPA pilots listing or any user who has
registered in the guest database. All UPA pilots are unmoderated, all guests
are moderated.
Q: Why are there two of them?
Actually there is only one. With the latest code roll all the MBs are a single
piece of code. Using dynamic info we create different pools of messages which can then be grouped.
Having to groups, or boards, is somewhat historical.
The basic idea is that the Official Board is for announcements.
New recruit introductions, promotions, events details, and other Official type of
business should go there. The Open Board should be used as a sort of chatting
place. The Open Board should contain discussions, interaction with externals, and
in general things of a non-official manner. One place to get to find out what's been
happening, and another to chat.
Q: What's moderated mean?
A: The message is written to a special place until a time which it can be
reviewed. Upon review it can either be approved to the board it was posted on,
deleted, or possibly moved to a more appropriate group.
Q: What is a reasonable time to have a message approved via moderation?
A: 12 hours should normally be enough time for me to get to them
on the Official and Open boards. You'll have to ask the Admins
that run the other boards how often they approve their messages.
Most will be done very quickly.
Q: I'm not UPA, can I still use it?
A: Yes. Unlike some other squads We are not locking down our Message Board and
restricting access to it. You need nothing special to view message on either
board. This is consistant with UPA's striving to be an "OPEN" club.
Q: As a non UPA can I post messages to it?
A: Yes. You need to register in our guest database so we can verify who you
are. All you need to do is pick a name and give us your email. Your password
will be e-mailed to you. You can post messages to the Open Board which will be
moderated. The Admin of other boards are responsible for making the decision
of allowing or not allowing Guest posts.
I encourage you to use email or ICQ to contact individuals and
use the board only when addressing broader issues.
Q: I feel you are restricting my First Amendment Rights by moderating my
messages.
A: You should learn about the First Amenement before shooting off at the mouth.
Furthermore you should be aware that the internet is bigger than the USA and
therfore it's laws. I will conceede that being located in the USA I am subject
to it's laws governing me, which brings us back to the point: that the First
Amenment gives you freedom of speech so long as it is in a public place or the
owner of a private property agrees with and or allows you that freedom. You are
neither in a public place nor do you have my permission until I review each
message and make that decision individually when you post to these Message
Boards. So Tough! :)
Q: How can I register in the guest database?
A: Go to http://www.upahq.org/guest_reg.asp. There is a link at the top of the Open Message Board
Page
Q: I'm a UPA, but my name isn't in the UPA Pilots listing (and therefore
database)
A: Contact your CO (Squad Leader) who should be the person who recruited you.
They are responsible for editing the user database. Their e-mails are in their Bio
which is avaiable by going to the Members listing and clicking on their name.
Q: I've forgotton/lost my password
A: No Problem, go to
http://www.upahq.org/pass_retrieve.asp. Give it your name and you
will have the option of having your password mailed to you.
Q: My assigned password is ugly and hard to remember, can I change it?
A: No Problem, go to
http://www.upahq.org/pass_change.asp. Give it your name and you
will have the option of changing your password.
Q: What Time Zones are the times in?
A: Eastern Standard Time (EST) which is GMT-5. i.e. when it's 10AM in EST, it's
3PM GMT. This is likely to change in the future. I'd like to get cookies
on the site eventually. When that happens we can pull the TZ record from a pilot,
drop it in a cookie, and then use that info to offset the times that the baord displays
to your local time zone. But this is a project for another day.
Q: What restrictions are placed on messages?
A: The following are checked for and not allowed:
- Subjects containing all caps
- Subjects longer than 60 characters
- Subjects containing 'bad words'
- Blank Subjects
- Subjects with HTML tags
- Messages containing 'bad words'
- Blank Message Bodys when the NT option isn't checked
- And info in the Message Body when the NT option is checked
- Duplicate messages
These might not all get caught by the AS yet, but I'll work on it later.
Q: What is a 'bad word'?
A: UPA strives to be an open club. Because of that we have to do a few
things that protect our members, in this case the younger ones, from behavior
that is reasonable to assume is unacceptable. Several swearing words, racial slurs,
and religious slurs have been designated as unacceptable in communcations
as a UPA member. There is always another respecful way to say something.
Please consider your audience when posting.
Q: What is the NT button for??
A: NT stands for No Text. Sometimes a pilot will only say a short statement
in response to a post. The NT button is away for that pilot to identify
such a post and display it as such on the main threa list. This enables
those reading the thread to skip over that message knowing there there is nothing
in the message body.
Q: Why is all caps bad?
A: On the internet all capital letters is considered yelling.
Q: Can I get a UPA MB?
A: In case you are a Squad Leader of a Wing Commander, then yes. Otherwise, no.
Q: How many boards are there?
A: A full list is avaiable at
http://www.upahq.org/mb_select.asp.
Q: What are emoticons and how can I use them?
A: Emoticons are Icons that represent emotions. If you want to use them in your messages, you can use the following icons by typing in certain characters:
 | :-) or :) |
 | :-( or :( |
 | ;-) or ;)
|  | 8-) |
 | :-D or :D |
 | :-p or :p or
:-P or :P or
:-b or :b |
 | :-o or :o or
:-O or :O or :-0 |
 | :\ |
 | >: |
 | :angry: |
 | :biggrin: |
 | :camper: |
 | :confused: |
 | :crazy: |
 | :cry: |
 | :beer: |
 | :drink: |
 | :eek: |
 | :fart: |
 | :flame: |
 | :help: |
 | :gun: |
 | :innocent: |
 | :jedi: |
 | :love: |
 | :nono: |
 | :pissed: |
 | :puke: |
 | :roll: |
 | :sleep: |
 | :smash: |
 | :smoke: |
 | :uzi: |
 | :weep: |
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