Joining and starting to use the forum

When you sign up, your account is reviewed by an administrator who will want to be convinced that you are not a spammer. The information you provide when you sign up is an important part of this process, so please take the time to provide relevant and meaningful data.

Do not use your email address as your username as it appears next to every post you make on the forum. If you do use an email address, an administrator might contact you and request that you choose a different username. If no response is received, your account will be automatically deleted 7 days after you created it.

Valid email addresses are required, and it is a condition of membership that you provide an email address that accepts messages from this forum. So-called "disposable" email addresses that expire after a short period of time are not allowed. If you are concerned about giving us your email address, please be assured that no personal data - including email addresses - will ever be sold or given to third parties, and you could always protect your main account by creating a (or another) free email account with a service like Gmail or Hotmail, for example. Via your user control panel, you can easily manage the emails that you receive from the forum.

Assuming that everything about your application for membership seems OK, an administrator will activate your account. You will receive an automatically generated email to inform you of this. Please be aware that it might take several hours or even a day or two before this happens – our volunteer administrators might be busy elsewhere.

At this stage, you are regarded as a “new user”. Your first few posts will be under moderation; meaning that they will only appear once an administrator or moderator has reviewed them – again, please be patient. This is another step to prevent spammers abusing our forum, but please bear in mind that this restriction might be reapplied if needed.

Note that while you are in this initial period of moderation, you will be unable to add attachments to posts. This again is an anti-spam measure, as spammers often add unwanted or distasteful images to forums. Once you have had your first few posts approved, the options to manage attachments will appear.

After you have made 15 posts, you will automatically be granted access to files in The Archive. Please familiarise yourself with our guide to using The Archive, noting particularly that you are asked not to distribute our files. Contributions are permanently welcomed.

After making your 15th post, there might be a short delay (no more than 20 minutes) before you are able to download items from The Archive. You will know when you have been promoted because your title changes from “New User” to “Technical Assistant”.

Please note that The Archive is for active forum members. Periodically, we review the member list, and if we notice users who suddenly stopped posting at roughly 15 posts, or haven't visited the forum for 12 months or more, we might remove their access to The Archive. If you find you no longer have access to The Archive, please contact a member of staff so we can review your account.

In common with all internet forums, when you make a post on this forum, you retain the copyright but are giving that content to the forum owner.

Posts are only deleted during routine maintenance, or if they violate our rules, and we generally don't accept requests to delete posts because doing so can leave threads in a confused state. Only post here if you are happy with this.

Inactive users

All user accounts with zero posts are reviewed periodically, and might be deleted after 12 months of inactivity.

Of course, if you have no posts, then deleting your account doesn't actually remove anything of use. You are very welcome to sign up again in the future, and you can use the same username if you wish.

Similarly, for members who were once active, your account might be disabled after 36 months of inactivity.

Your account status will change to "No Longer a Member", and your ability to use the forum will be limited as a result, but your posts, attachments, avatar and profile details will remain. In the future, you may rejoin the forum by simply replying to a thread or start a new thread. As any new posts from you will require moderator approval, this will alert us to the fact you wish to rejoin, so once we have approved your post, we will ensure your account is reactivated with the same access as before. Alternatively, just contact us.

To ensure your account is not deleted or disabled, you simply need to visit the forum regularly, making sure you are signed in at the time. It is not necessary to post to keep your account active, but doing so greatly reduces the chance of your account being restricted in the future.

We currently prefer to review user accounts on a case-by-case basis, but might automate the process in the future, depending on how the workload changes.

Maintenance

We periodically tidy up the forums, removing threads that are no longer needed – particularly in the trading section of the forum, and also in the News forum. If you notice a fall in your post count, this is most likely why. Of course, if this action results in your post count falling to zero, your account becomes “at risk” of deletion!

Leaving the forum

If you wish to leave the forum, please contact a member of staff. What happens depends on whether you have posted messages on the forum:

• For people who have made zero posts, your account might be deleted after 12 months as part of routine maintenance, as described above, but we are happy to delete it on request if desired.
• For those who have made posts on the forum, we will change your status to "No Longer a Member". As described above, your ability to use the forum will be limited, but your posts, attachments, avatar and profile details will remain. In the future, you may rejoin the forum by sending us an email or making a post, as described above in the "Inactive users" section.

If you were once an active forum member, we will not delete your account, nor will we delete your posts (except during routine maintenance, or unless they violate our rules). Please note that this is the norm with internet forums - deleting posts is labour-intensive and can leave threads in a confused state.