Here we go again - Rules of the Road

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Welcome to the new Axis Power Craps forum. We're back sans some of the issues we had with the old board. But, of course, the new board comes with issues of its own. We'll get the bugs worked out in due time. Meanwhile, I thought I'd revisit some of the rules of the road for you old-timers and lay them out in plain English for you newbies. If you are fond of legalese then feel free to visit the "Legal Crap" forum at the bottom of the splash page of the site.

First, let's talk about how this thing works. The general public can read certain portions of the forum - portions that I don't see a problem with the public reading. However, some forums are hidden from the public. The Hook Up and Trip Report forums, for example, are locked down for members only. So is the Experts Speak forum. To gain access to these forums OR to get posting privileges on the public portions of the site you must REGISTER and be approved as a member. Yep. That's a two-step process.

When you register on the forum the system notifies me that there's a new member awaiting approval. When I get that e-mail I review your registration information and, if everything looks in order, approve the membership. Of course, I tend to get a little paranoid about who has access to the members only section of the forum, so you may find yourself in receipt of a personal e-mail asking for a bit more information on who you are and how you found the board. If you are unwilling to share that information then you probably won't want to go through the registration exercise.

Once your membership is activated you'll have full access to the forums contained on the site. You will, no doubt, notice that the forums have fairly specific subjects. Please try to keep your posts in the appropriate categories. Discussions on betting strategies belong on the betting strategy forum. Discussions on dice control belong on the dice control forum. See a trend? Help me out here, because I really don't have time to be moving posts from one forum to another.

Once you are logged on for the first time I suggest you bookmark the page and set your preferences to remember your username and password. The fucking censor is on. Obviously it doesn't work worth a flip. Please self-censor your posts and keep language appropriate. I prefer to keep the forum at a PG13 or better rating.

Those of you who remember the old Proboards Axis Power Craps site will note that there is no longer banner advertising on the website. That's because yours truly has shelled out a few bucks to make this thing work and keep it ad-free. Tokes to help offset the cost of running the forum are accepted and appreciated. I will be adding a PayPal toke box in the days to come.

There's a fairly complex terms of service agreement in the Legal Craps section of the board, but allow me to take a shot at giving it to you in plain English.

We're talking kindergarten ruless here. Be nice. Share. Don't hit. Don't steal. Don't tell lies. Pick up your toys when you're done with them. That sort of stuff. Ours is a moderated forum and we try to keep on subject. However, most of us have gotten to be pretty good friends over the years so sometimes conversations will drift off into the twilight zone. While I will cut folks some slack now and then, and may myself embark on a right wing conservative rant from time to time, we try to steer the conversations away from divisive issues like race, politics and religion. Bear with us is we wander off in that direction. It happens.

From time to time members will disagree. We try to do that without being disagreeable. I rarely "unsubscribe" members but from time to time it does happen when someone pushes it over the top and does not listen to warnings. While I frequently ask board member opinions on ideas for upcoming seminars, videos, books, or changes to the forum itself - I also point out from time to time that the board is not a democracy. Think of it as more of a benevolent dictatorship. The rules are in place for a reason so your help in observing them will be appreciated.

Other specific things I'll caution you about - please be careful about cutting and pasting information from other websites into posts on my boards. That's the "don't steal" thing I mentioned. Some people get very picky about their copyrighted material being posted on other sites and I really don't need the legal exposure. If you read something you'd like to share with others post a sentence or two from the article then link to the article. Note that I PREFER to be advised of these things in advanced as there are some sites I do not want linked to - but by and large it is not a problem. Likewise, please do not cut and paste info from my websites to other sites without getting approval first. Odds are I'll say okay if it is MY material you're posting brief snippets (properly attributed). But the board members by and large have let it be known that they don't want their personal posts cross posted onto other websites and I agree with this completely.

When posting, don't be overly critical of someone else's theories just because you don't agree with them. The exception, I think, would be when the person you are criticizing is putting him or herself forth as an expert. Particularly when that person's expertise is largely unsubstantiated by field testing. In any case, we're talking about the "don't hit" thing I mentioned. A little good-natured ribbing is one thing - personal attacks on fellow board members is something else. If someone is an idiot it is not necessary to point it out to the rest of the forum members - they'll figure it out for themselves in short order. If something goes over the top in this area I'll generally step in and address the situation before it gets too far out of hand.

If you decide to experiment with posting photos please re-size them so they fit the forums specifications in both physical size and file size. Odds are that will require a little photo editing on your part. You can upload photos to tinypic.com and link to them there. If you want to upload graphs, etc. from excel they can be saved as graphic files and uploaded to tinypic as well. Test your posts by using the "Preview" function.

A word or two on forum content. The forum subjects will look quite familiar to our former members, but to date we have been unable to access the data base for the old forum in order to recover the archival posts there. Once we get that problem solved we will make that content available through the Axis Power Craps Archives sub board. For now, that forum is fairly empty. If you are one of those people who routinely saved copies of his old post on his computer and would like to re-post any of those old threads - the Archive forum is the place to do it.

Okay, that should be enough to get you started. Questions? Feel free to PM me and I'll answer as quickly as I can.

[LeaveTheTable]

I'm new to the site, and so I am still feeling my way around. The means of displaying photos in posts through links to photos hosted at tinypic.com interested me, so I went to the website, but they say that they are no longer in business:

"Due to an inability to support a high-quality free digital service that derives 100% of its revenue from ever declining on-site revenues, TinyPic has shut down its operations. As previously announced on this website, September 16, 2019 was the last day for our users to access their accounts to download their images."

I'm sure that other means of displaying photos in posts are or will be in place, and the sad demise of tinypic.com is probably well known to others here.

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Yeah, I need to update that since tinypic is now defunct. Since we are not hosting the site ourselves instead of using third party hosting we can host the photos on site. When you want to post a pic look below the box where you're posting and you'll see a couple of tabs. One says options. The other says attachments. Click on the attachments tab and there you can upload your photos. Please RESIZE your photos before uploading them so that the width is no longer than 720 pixels. The preferred size is 640 pixels. That's so the photo fits on most computer screens without distorting the forum layout causing them to have to scroll across to read the post. Once you've uploaded the pic, put your cursor where you want the photo to appear and click there. Then click on the Place Inline button (or whatever it says similar to that) on the attachment tab. It will place a link to the photo there. If you are anal like me you can highlight that entire link and then click on the "center" button up above the text box and it will insert instructions to center the photo in your post, as below. Then hit Submit when you've completed your post and the photo should appear where you wanted it to be in your post.

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