You have stumbled across the finest in WWW online chats (or at least I like to think you have)!
If you came here from an active session, use the "back" button on your browser to return to the conversation!!!
The WWW Chat Server is a place where folks from all around the world can join in reasonably intelligent conversation using only their FORM capable browser. Some of the MANY questions I receive are now answered in the FAQ below:
Q: How do I work this thing?
A: You only have one thing to remember to stay live in the
forum: keep hitting the "Chat" button or the "Get New Messages" link.
You will time out of the forum from inactivity if you don't. The new
messages will appear under the heading "New Message" on the next page.
Q: How can I get messages that I already
viewed?
A: The server can't do this for you -- you have to use your
browser's "back" button to go back to old pages with messages you
already received. Be careful not to submit messages you have already
typed, though.
Q: How come my computer gets deathly slow
after I've been chatting for a while?
A: You are probably using Netscape, which likes to cache
anything and everything it gets in memory or on disk. After a while,
this can really eat up resources (especially in Windows) with all the
new pages. You can fix this by either quitting Netscape periodically
(probably not what you want to do) or clearing your history list by
continuing your chat on a previous chat page. First, pull down your
history list, and select the lowest chat page you can find. You
should go any farther than the "Added to Forum" page. If you are on a
chat page, click on "Get New Messages" or if you are on the "Added to
Forum" page, click on "Enter xyz Forum." Your history list will be
cleared up to that point.
Q: How come the server told me I don't have
a FORM capable browser?
A: Because you either don't have a form capable browser (you
really need to upgrade) or you cancelled the transfer of a
chat page before it was done. ALL of the data in the chat page is
important to when you next submit a message.
Q: Someone is being rude...what can I do
about it?
A: There's not much you can do about it, but you'll probably
make it worse if you try to flame them for being rude. Just ignore
them and they'll leave from boredom, hopefully. I personally don't
care for rude behavior, and I like to see a good intelligent and/or
humorous conversation every once in a while!
Q: Why don't you add more forums or more
slots in the forums?
A: As much as I would LOVE to do this, the machine that the
server runs on is used for climate modeling almost 24 hours a day. I
would probably receive a bad word from my boss if things ever got out
of hand. Just be glad the BPRC provides this computer for public use
in the first place!
Q: Can I send public and private messages at
the same time?
A: Yes. Anything you type into either of the text boxes will
be submitted when you press "Chat."
Q: Does HTML work within messages?
A: Yes, but only certain tags. Every thing but boldface
(<B>text</B>), italics (<I>text</I>), anchors
(<A HREF="[unarchived-link]">text</A>), and line breaks (<BR>) have
been filtered out. Don't even try to use BLINK or H1 tags -- they
won't work. Don't try to put huge inline images in either. Trust me,
the forum is a better place without all that. Please don't forget
to CLOSE your HTML tags if you choose to use them!!
If there are any other questions you might have, mail me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Enjoy the service, but don't abuse it!