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How to Use the Forum

Thread Description
See this if you don't know where to post, or how to navigate around the forum

Volari

varishangout.com
Regular
the people advertised too have had their brain melted by the CCP so forums are too hard to comprehend.
Is he right, or is he wrong? Place your bets down to Shizu in Yearn-Finance Infrastructure Labs coins. No refunds accepted, unless you accept used furry diapers.

Forum basics and general knowledge of XenForo

Introduction

Again, welcome to Varis Hangout. You may have stumbled upon this forum by Shizu's shameless constant self-advertisement, or via Halo's consistent and repeated shilling on various sites. Before we proceed with this uncomfortably long post, please read the rules here and here.

This is a general use guide for XenForo-based forums. If you're a phpBB, vBulletin, Simple Machines Forum, or Discourse veteran or any other non-XenForo forum software user, some things may be handled differently. The way you post hopefully won't be too much of a pain to comprehend.

Your profile and its assorted public stuff

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This will be your profile's default appearance, assuming that you have a profile banner and an avatar image. I'd like to point out that your avatar image should be at least 400x400 pixels, because if it's any lower than the recommended dimensions, it'll look pixelated on most displays. If this isn't what you're going for, please keep this in mind.

As for the profile banner, it should be at least 1178x250 pixels. If it's any lower than that, it may look very pixelated. Additionally, the profile banner may look different based on your display resolution. No stretching will occur, of course, but it may appear to be oddly cut in half:
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This happens only on displays with a very wide horizontal resolution, so you might want to consider what it's going to be shown on as well.

You may have noticed two counters shown in the profile above. These are the bizarre ways of summarising what you have done on this forum; 'Grooming Attempts' shows how many posts that you have made on the forum, it does not count the amount of profile posts or private messages that you have made. 'Lolis Fucked' shows the amount of 'reaction' points that you have in total, which can be accumulated by getting a user to 'react' to your forum and profile posts.

Below these two counters, are four buttons that you could use to improve your quality of life on this forum. The Follow button will make any sort of activity that the user you have followed, show up in 'Your news feed' tab. To 'unfollow', just go back to their profile and click the Follow button which should have turned into an Unfollow button.

The Ignore button will cause all profile, forum posts and threads created by the ignored user to vanish, even in the 'Latest activity' and 'Postings' page. However, this will not have the same effect in private messages, otherwise referred to as 'conversations' by XenForo. Please note that ignoring a user will not notify them, so don't be worried if you have tensions with a user that you dislike.

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Assuming that you have ignored posts in a conversation, you will get a notification that says 'You are ignoring content by this member' above their post's contents. This can be reversed by clicking 'Show ignored content' below their last post made in the conversation, which will allow you to see every single post made in the conversation. This action can't be reversed, although refreshing the page will reverse it.

Please note that this only shows up on the ignored user's last post, as not all posts will appear and only the last post will appear. Also, you can't ignore moderators, otherwise referred to as 'Staff members' by XenForo. You could ignore the site administrators though, as they're technically not moderators.

The Start conversation button, upon clicking it, will immediately lead you to the conversations page and add the user that you have 'started a conversation with'. This is just a convenient function that allows you to add a user to a conversation, without requiring you to type their name into the conversations page. Please note that if you were to try 'stacking' this by clicking the Start conversation button on another user, it will not work and will instead, bring up a new conversation without adding the other user to the existing conversations page. Yes, it's annoying to add a user with unicode characters in their name, but unfortunately this is what we have to work with.

The Find button will show a drop-down menu that allows you to see content or threads made by the user that you're interested in. Clicking on 'Find all content by user' will show every single post that he/she has made, which are profile and forum posts, also threads created. It does not show reactions or private messages made by the user, so keep that in mind. Clicking on 'Find all threads by user' will narrow the search down to only threads created by the said user.

On the blue horizontal bar, are 'Profile posts', 'Latest activity', 'Postings', and 'About'. It's pretty self-explanatory, but there may be strange things that you'd like to know.
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First is 'Profile posts', while it is similar to a thread, it lacks the ability to contain more than 420 characters in a post. This means all profile posts are limited to that specific amount of characters, which unfortunately also includes BBcode in its limit. You can however, bypass this text limit by using screenshots filled with text if you're an avid fan of copypastas.

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Second is 'Latest activity', which shows you all content made by that user. This includes reactions, profile/forum posts, and threads created. This is the only page where you can view 'reactions' made, apart from the 'Your news feed' and 'Latest activity' page. If you like to stalk people, keep this in mind.

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Third is 'Postings', which shows you all profile and forum posts made by that user. This does not include posts in a conversation, which are private and can only be seen by users invited or are viewing that specific conversation page. I'd like to point out that there is no search function for posts made in conversations, so if you were to search for a specific post in a conversation, you would need to do it manually.

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Fourth is 'About', which shows you the user's profile bio, modes of contact, who the user is following, and her/his followers. Currently, this forum has only two additional modes of contact, which are Twitter and Skype. If none of these show up in the 'About' page, this means your only form of private contact would be a conversation.

Your account and its settings

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This'll be extremely long, so I'll try to shorten things up as much as I can. 'Your profile' simply links you to your public profile, where everyone can see it. This assumes that you allow 'All visitors' to see your profile.

Since some settings are way too vertically long for me to screencap, I'll try to explain them in words.

In 'Account details', there are many options which are very self-explanatory. These include your username, custom title, email, email options, avatar, profile banner, date of birth plus its visibility to the public, location, website, gender, about you, Skype, and your Twitter account if applicable. You can change everything with the exception of your username, as that will be decided by a moderator or a site administrator. If your username change request gets rejected, you won't get it changed. Alternatively, if you have 100 'Lolis Fucked', you can change it without a moderator or a site administrator's approval. Lastly, the custom title option doesn't show up till you have 100 'Lolis Fucked' as well.

In 'Preferences', again, many options which are still self-explanatory. These include the forum's style or theme, your timezone, email options, content options, privacy options, disable rules text, disable latest posts widget, disable watched threads widget, and the notification manager. This is where you can manage what shows up in your alert feed, such as 'Posts in a watched forum', 'Replies to a watched thread', 'Quotes your message', 'Mentions you in a message', 'Reacts to your message', 'Posts on your profile', 'Mentions you in a profile post or comment', 'Reacts to your profile post', 'Comments on your profile or status', 'Comments on your profile posts for other members', 'Also comments on a profile post', 'Reacts to your profile post comment', 'Reacts to your message in a conversation', and 'Starts following you'. Keep in mind that if any of these are tripped by an ignored user, it will not show up in your alert feed.

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The 'Alerts' page shows you what you've missed, so if you have already seen or ignored the post or reaction, they will not show up in your alert feed. The alert feed's content also depends on your account's preferences, which means if you disabled a specific notification by unticking the box in the 'Preferences' page, you will not receive an alert if a user performs an action that trips the said notification.

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The 'Bookmarks' page shows what you have bookmarked; there are no limits on the amount of bookmarks you can make as far as I know. Please keep in mind that bookmarks can only be applied to forum posts, not profile posts or posts made in conversations. Additionally, bookmarks can't be applied to threads either. If you want to 'bookmark' a thread, just bookmark the first post made in it. That's the only workaround I could think of.

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The 'Password and security' page shows your two-factor authentication status. You could also use this page to change your password.
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If you wish to enable 2FA, click the Change button and you'll be prompted to re-enter your password. Once this is done, you will be immediately redirected to a new page which shows two options: Verification code via app (on your smartphone) and Email confirmation.

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The 'Privacy' page allows you to change your public profile's visibilty to other users, and most of it is actually self-explanatory. There are some changes made to the 'Allow users to:' section, however. As guest accounts are disabled on this forum, you can't post anything on a profile and 'start a conversation' with a user without a registered account. This means 'Post messages on your profile page:' and 'Start conversations with you:' do not have 'All visitors' as an option.

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The 'Signature' page allows you to give yourself an additional block of BBcode or text below your posts. Whatever that is allowed in a forum post, will be allowed in your signature. As for limits, I don't think there are any so do you as like. Just remember not to annoy everybody with extremely long signatures, nobody likes that.

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The 'Account upgrades' page allows you to buy a banner that sits below your avatar's custom title, which is a form of thanks
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for supporting the forum. Currently, the forum uses PayPal as its payment processor. If you don't have a PayPal account and you'd like to be True and Honest, please register a PayPal account for yourself first. Please note that either option will give you the same banner shown on the right.

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The 'Connected accounts' page allows you to change and view your account's connection to a service platform. Currently, we only have Google as an option. I'd advise you to not connect it to Google, as it poses a security risk if your Google account gets hijacked.

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The 'Following' page allows you to manage users that you're following. You can follow up to 1,000 users, as far as I can remember. Also, you can't view users that are following you. You have to visit your 'About' page to see that, unfortunately.

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The 'Ignoring' page allows you to manage users that you're ignoring. You can ignore up to 1,000 users, the same as the aforementioned limit for following. Again, remember that you can't see who is ignoring who.

The last button, which has no page for itself, is the 'Log out' button. This log out button performs the same function as every log out button that you can see in the forum, there are no known differences from logging out with either button.

The top menu bar and its functions

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This is XenForo's universal menu bar that will appear on every page you visit. It will never disappear from your screen, unless there is a glitch or your browser doesn't support the necessary HTML and CSS code required for it to work. If you don't know what browser to use, I personally suggest LibreWolf or Ungoogled Chromium.

The 'Home' and the 'Forums' tab links to the same thing, the main forum list. This is not a bug of any sort, it's just Halo being really lazy.

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If you're in the 'Forums', 'What's new', and 'Members' tab, you should get an additional bar below the universal menu bar. This menu bar will not show up if you were to scroll down, as it can only be accessed if you're at the top of the page. Alternatively, you could click the arrow pointing down to bring a drop-down menu shown below.

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This is similar to the aforementioned additional bar, but is arranged vertically. Whatever you see in this drop-down menu, can be also seen in the bars shown above. Functionality-wise, there is no difference apart from its vertical arrangement and graphical representation.

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The 'New posts' sub tab will bring you to a list of unread forum posts, by default. You can remove that sorting
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filter by clicking the 'x' located right next to the 'Show only:' filter.

Additionally, you could add filters of your choice by accessing the filter drop-down menu via clicking the down arrow symbol. Saving it as default will always apply these filters on your account, it does not save it as a cookie in your browser as far as I know.

If you happen to manage a lot of alternate accounts, keep this in mind. These settings are applied based on your account, they are not based on your browser's saved cookies.

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The 'What's new' sub tab will bring you to a mixed list of forum and profile posts, which are permanently arranged according to
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the latest post made. There are no filters to speak of whatsoever, you can't apply a filter either. At the top half are the forum posts, and the bottom half are profile posts.

You may have noticed that the ability to create a thread and mark the forums read is gone, this is completely intentional and I have no idea what's the reason behind it.

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The 'New profile posts' sub tab will bring you to a list of the latest profile posts made. You can reply to profile posts, but you can't post to your own profile, unlike what you saw in the 'What's new' tab. Also, some users do not have 'All visitors' set on their profile posts, so you might not see their profile posts without logging in.

A filter is available but it only does two things: filters profile posts based on the user(s) that you are following and saving the filter's settings. Quite limited? Yes, and I'm not sure why it's made that way.

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The 'Your news feed' sub tab will bring you to a list of the latest reactions, forum and profile posts made by user(s) that you are following. If you're not following anybody, this will be completely empty with a prompt to tell you to follow somebody. If you are following and ignoring the same user, the list will be bugged and blank. It won't affect your session, but it'd just look odd.

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The 'Latest activity' sub tab will bring you to a list of the latest reactions made by every user in the forum, compared to a user's latest activity page on their profile. Please remember that ignored users will not show up in the list.

Some reactions can't be seen if you're not logged in. This is normal and is a result of setting 'Members only' for their profile posts, which prevents you from seeing their reactions.

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Next is the 'Find threads' menu, which upon clicking will bring you to the 'Your threads' sub tab. This lists all of your threads that you have made. Threads deleted by moderators or site administrators, or by yourself will not show up here. Deleted threads as far as I know, are not restorable unless they have been soft-deleted. This is the default method of deleting threads on XenForo, although moderators and site administrators can hard-delete threads, which means it can't be restored as it is permanently removed from the forum's database.

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The 'Thread with your posts' sub tab will bring you to a list of threads that contain your forum posts. However, if you had ignored a user and that user's thread contains your forum post in it, it will not be shown in this list. The only way to see it again is to unignore that user.

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The 'Unanswered threads' sub tab will bring you to a list of threads with no forum posts, excluding the first post made by the thread's creator. Please keep in mind that soft and hard-deleted forum posts are not counted as posts, which means soft-deleted forum posts in an unanswered thread can be seen. Although, only moderators and site administrators are able to view soft-deleted posts. This could be changed, however.

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The 'Watched threads' sub tab will bring you to a list of threads that you are 'watching'. Essentially, this is a bookmark for threads. You can
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also manage your watched threads in this page, disable email notifications from replies in a watched thread or stop 'watching' a thread. Please note that if you have a watched thread that was created by an ignored user, you will not see the thread in this list.

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In the 'Members' page, you will be presented with an overview of users with the most messages (Grooming Attempts), highest reaction score (Lolis Fucked), and the staff themselves. I should emphasize that site administrators are technically part of the staff, but they won't show up in that list as Halo broke something again.

You may have noticed that there isn't a complete member list of any sort, which might seem odd for you people who are familiar with phpBB and similar forum boards. This is due to the default settings of a XenForo-based forum, as far as I know. If you want this list to show up in the 'Members' page, please ask Halo to enable this feature.

Everything else should be self-explanatory, with the exception of the search function for users. To use it properly, you must type out their current name. If you were to enter their previous name(s) into the search field, it will not link their profile.

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If you have not noticed the 'Current visitors' link from the top menu bar in 'Members', you should have noticed it by now.

This is a page that tracks the current status of every registered and non-registered user visiting this forum. It can be viewed by guests, otherwise known as non-registered users and even bots, otherwise known as robots. This means anyone can see what you're doing at the moment. It may look like a security risk to you, if you're paranoid that is, but it isn't.

Unless you're being gangstalked or stalked by a very dedicated person, you don't need to worry about this. Besides, if you were to untick 'Show your online status' in your privacy settings, you won't show up in the visitors list. You can see yourself online, but others can't see you.

Forum and sub-forum navigation

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This is where you should start if you're new to the forum. All of these sub-forums are mainly used to talk about the forum itself, so if you have any questions or suggestions in mind, post them in the appropriate sub-forum.

You can create threads in any of these sub-forums, with the exception of the 'Announcements' sub-forum.

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This is where you should preferably post non-drama related stuff, with the exception of the 'Vtubers' sub-forum.

The 'Anime' sub-forum is suited for anime-related discussions, although it could also be used for aeni and donghua discussions. Strictly no American cartoons are allowed, as we have Japanophiles that might spaz out from that kind of content.

The 'Literature' sub-forum is suited for anything text-related. This means words on a book, words on a stone, words on a screen, and fan fiction as well.

The 'Vtubers' sub-forum is suited for all things Vtuber, nothing else really fits in it.

The 'Television' sub-forum is suited for western/european animations, YouTube channels, live-action shows, and advertisements. Such examples are Tom and Jerry, Miami Vice, Internet Historian, Breaking Bad, Star Trek, and Max Headroom commercials.

The 'Video Games' sub-forum is suited for all kinds of video games, including visual novels and interactive movies.

The 'Misc' sub-forum should be used for any subject that doesn't fit in the aforementioned sub-forums. Try to keep drama out of this sub-forum, as it isn't specifically made for that purpose.

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This is where you should post something in the appropriate sub-forum that is absolutely filled to the brim with shitflinging, personal attacks, online lynch mobs, BLM, politics, Twitter dogpiling, classic trolling, birdbrained journalists, flat earthers, GamerGate, LGBT infighting, censorship, airheaded furries, Neo Nazis, and other assorted dumbassery in general.

The 'General Garbage' sub-forum should be used for any subject that doesn't fit into existing sub-forums, but still contains sufficient drama to fit into this forum board.

The 'Drafts' sub-forum should be preferably used for making extremely lengthy threads. It doesn't have to be related to drama however, use it as you see fit for any subject that you wish to write about. Please keep in mind that you can't view this sub-forum if you're not a registered user.

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This is where you should post your art, or writings that you have in mind.

The 'Art' sub-forum should be used for... art. It's rather vague, but as long as it is considered art, it'll fit. Even fecal sculptures are considered art these days.

The 'Draft House' sub-forum should be used to contain your writing and stories/fiction. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it has words and isn't a schizophrenic mess, it'll fit. You could also use it to discuss about your writing capabilities, or help someone with their writing.

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This is where you should post anything related to technology itself.

The 'Software' sub-forum should be strictly about software. Examples include applications, operating systems, and UEFIs.

The 'Hardware' sub-forum should be all about the silicon that powers your software, such as the motherboard, CPU, etc.

The 'Programming' sub-forum is similar to the 'Draft House', but this time, it's all about your programming skills.

Sending private messages to other users

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You should see a mail icon on the top menu bar, which will either display a drop-
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down menu summarising the 'conversations' that you are currently in. From that drop-down menu, you can create a new 'conversation' to send private messages to a user or show all conversations that you're in. Clicking on 'Show all' or alternatively double-clicking the mail icon will bring you to the 'Conversations' page as shown on the left.

In this page, you can filter, 'star/unstar', and mark conversations read or unread. To 'remove' a conversation, you'll have to 'leave' that conversation. 'Leaving' a conversation will bring up a prompt that asks if you wish to allow or not allow future posts to bring you back into the conversation. Allowing future posts will restore the conversation that you left into your inbox, while not allowing future posts will permanently prevent that conversation from adding you back.

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If you've created a conversation and you have not left it, you can edit its title, lock or unlock it, allow or unallow everyone in the conversation to invite users to it. You can't specifically choose who is allowed to invite a user, unfortunately. Also, there is a time limit for editing your posts in a conversation. I'm not sure how long it is, but if you found out that you can't edit your posts, that's normal. Additionally, you can't delete your posts in a conversation either, so be careful regarding what you post in it.

As for privacy, you don't need to worry about this. Moderators and site administrators can't read your posts in conversations, but anyone with access to the forum's database can read them. This means Halo might be... hmmm, snooping in our conversations.

Using the forum's built-in search tool

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The search function can be accessed via the top menu bar, if you hadn't noticed
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that either. Please note that the drop-down search tool from the menu bar is actually a feature-stripped version of the original search tool, which is permanently locked to searching everything in the forum. If you need more filters, you'll have to use the original search tool, which can be accessed by double-clicking the search button on the menu bar or by clicking on the 'Advanced search...' button. This will bring you to a page dedicated for the original search tool, as seen on the left.

You can search threads, forum and profile posts made from here. Things that you can't search for are reactions made, and posts made in conversations as I've mentioned before. Additional search filters can be found in 'Search threads' and 'Search profile posts', which can be used to filter post date, number of replies, thread prefixes, which forum or sub-forum the thread is located in, etc.

Forum threads, posts and reactions

If you don't know how to use the forum's BBcode editor to make a post, have look at Shizu's guide. If you're not sure how to create a proper thread, have a look at Halo's formatting guide and archiving guide. Everything is covered there with the exception of reactions/ratings, which will be something that'll be explained here.

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To select a reaction, hover your cursor on the 'Like' text. This will bring up 11 reactions, which have different effects on a user's 'Lolis Fucked' score. Some are negative, some are positive, and some are neutral. Try not to abuse this feature by giving excessive negative or positive reactions, as having a score below 100 will disable custom titles and the ability to perform username changes without a moderator or a site administrator's approval. I'd also strongly advise against farming a high score with alternate accounts, as that will show up in the Latest activity feed and get you outed as a really big faggot.

Remember, reactions can be applied to profile posts and private posts in conversations as well. Now, I'm not secretly suggesting you to farm a high score in conversations. You can do that, but it won't actually work. It's just there for your own convenience, say if you don't want to reply and a reaction is all you'd like to make.

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Below the 'Like' text is the reactions counter for that specific post. What you are currently seeing above is the summary, which provides 3 most often picked reactions. To see all of the other reactions made, you have to click on the reactions counter.

This will display a pop-up as shown on the left. Note that you can also see when the reaction was made; probably useful for lunatics who are interested in guessing timezones based on a user's activity.

As I've mentioned before, reactions can be either negative, positive or neutral. For convenience's sake, I'll list them here along with their effects on a user's 'Lolis Fucked' score.

ReactionSuggestionEffect
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Retarded​
Use this reaction only if the post is beyond saving, or is just not comprehensible.Negative reaction; decreases your 'Lolis Fucked' score by 5 points.
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Dumb​
Use this if you think the post is plain dumb or stupid.Negative reaction; decreases your 'Lolis Fucked' score by 2 points.
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Wat
Does the post reach Florida Man levels of weird? This'll fit.Neutral reaction; no effect.
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Pain
Does the post hurt your brain cells, but not too much to fit the requirements of brain damage? Or is it simply disappointing to you? Use this if you think so.Neutral reaction; no effect.
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What
Crazy, strange, but not too Florida Man of a post? Use this, otherwise use Wat.Neutral reaction; no effect.
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Acid
Does the post contain signs of alcohol usage? Use this if you think so.Neutral reaction; no effect.
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Disgust
Does the post contain something absolutely disgusting or revolting? Use this if you think so.Neutral reaction; no effect.
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Think
Is the post thunk-provoking? Does it make you think beyond the galaxy? Use this if you think so.Neutral reaction; no effect.
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Laugh
Is this post funny, or are you affected by laughing gas? This'll fit.Neutral reaction; no effect.
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Like
Do you like the post for whatever reason? Do you think it contributes to the discussion at hand? Use this if you think so.Positive reaction; increases your 'Lolis Fucked' score by 1 point.
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Heart
Do you think the post has contributed so much to the extent that a Like isn't worth it? Or do you simply love its content? Use this if you think so.Positive reaction; increases your 'Lolis Fucked' score by 2 points.
 
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Volari

varishangout.com
Regular
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Thread links that might be of use

Got any suggestions for this guide? Post it here.

The possibly outdated moderator list can be found in this thread.

If you have any questions for the forum itself, go to this thread. For improvements for the forum, go to this thread.

The forum has a changelog if you didn't notice, which can be found in this thread.

Not sure if the forum is experiencing an outage or is crapping itself? Be sure to check this thread for more information.

Have a thread that you'd want to be shown to almost 18,900 hardcore Twitter consoomers? Let Shizu know by posting in this thread.

All forum reports will be usually posted in this thread. For banned users, have a look at this thread.

Have an idea to advertise the forum effectively? Post it in this thread.

Enjoy your stay, and please, no CP for the love of god.
 
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