Welcome to Negative World. If you have any question, please read the following list and click to read an answer. If your question isn't in the list or if you have a suggestion, feel free to post a reply.

To be able to add more questions/answers to the list later, your participations to this thread will eventually be deleted to make room, after they've been answered.

Donations

Currently, the site doesn't bring in much money, and it costs about $85 a year to keep up. Not a whole lot, but the owner of this site isn't particularly rich, so every bit helps. Also, the web designer spent a lot of time and work to implement skins, navigation layout, make the site work quick and neat, and implement the options you asked him, all this instead of doing a paid professional site. The more you support the site, the better it'll run and the more potential its future will have.

Now, the FAQ...

General questions

What is "Negative World"?
What are the round icons at the corners of the site?
What are XP and user levels? Why do some features seem inaccessible to me?
Can I choose the looks and features of the site?
How does the private message system work?
Does the site have social network connections?
What is the Neverending Experience Quest?

Forum

Are there specific threads I should know about?
What do the lights on the left of the forum index mean?
What are the negative numbers on the right of the forum index? On the private message page? Level 99?
What are the little grey icons on the right of the main forum page? What are "news", "roundtables", etc.?
How can I search for specific posts?
Can you flag threads to spot them more easily?
Can I embed videos, resize an image? What's "Reference"? My links don't work, etc.?
What are the Terms Of Service?
Apart from the T.O.S. is there particular netiquette to observe with post formatting?

Game Database

How do you rate games? The games I want to rate aren't in the base? How do I write reviews?
Do you have a backlog feature? Can I see who is playing what?
How can I browse Negative World's game reviews?

User profiles

What are user profile features? Can I see who's online?
How can I browse user profiles/post history? I'm looking for a specific profile?
How can I check the system codes of other Negative World users (Wii, XBL, PSN, Steam...)?
My Steam system code on my Negative World profile doesn't link to my Steam profile!

@Secret_Tunnel

lawl. I liked how the picture for Sydney was upside down .

As the vid says our timezones are screwy with DST, but doesn't quite illustrate just *how* screwy.

Normal time:



DST:



It's nuts.

Also, a bug:

I'm trying to access my Xbox Live thread and it refuses to load any posts. All I see is my avatar then blankness. I've checked it on Firefox, IE and from two different PC's. Is anyone else having this issue or is it just me?

If it helps, I was editing my OP with what I thought was an underline tag. Is it possible I've screwed something up in the HTML, because It hasn't loaded properly since.

http://www.negativeworld.org/boardreplies.php?id=6773&pagenumber=1

@stephen08

Yep. Just posted that, right above you. Glad it's not just me.

I think I might have accidentally broke it .

@ShadowlinkWell good job man.

Nobody play Xbox with this screw-up.

Is there any reason why I always have to keep re-entering my username and password on here? It's happened ever since I started coming here, and as far as I know I have cookies enabled (and specifically looked to make sure this site was on the list).

Edit: Found out that it was just because I often browse the site on my iPhone.

How exactly do I add artwork in the games database?

@DrFinkelstein

You ask Zero for the privilege. Or you ask Roykoopa or Mr_Mustache to do it for you.

Zero, can I have the privilege? Not that I'm gonna revamp all the entries but I've wanted to in the past and ignored that I couldn't. It'd be nice to be able to.

When I try to search for a reply from V_s, the search assumes I mean "Festivus" and searches for the wrong thing.

@DrFinkelstein To be honest I don't exactly know how Mustache does it, he has specific sizes and all of that yada yada. You should talk to him. As far as access, it's just one FTP account as far as I know.

Would there be a way to auto-resize images that break the page down to a width of 750 pixels?

@Secret_Tunnel I've looked into this a bit and the short answer is that the only way that I can figure out how to get the size of an image from the link using PHP requires actually downloading the entire image. Which ultimately might be worth it, but I'm not sure that I want to implement something like that. It could frustrate / confuse people who go to post a thread with a bunch of images linked and are sitting there waiting a minute or two for their post to go through without understanding why it is taking so long.

It's possible that I'm wrong and you can get the size without downloading the image, but I have not been able to find out how if so.

I always fix any photos I see that are problematic. It doesn't happen TOO often I think to where we can't just handle that task as mods. People will learn over time.

And I have a request Zero. Would there be an easy way to have a Flag button next to the search button that instantly shows your flagged threads? It would save a few steps from a normal flagged search and that would help make the site feel even more personal. I think it would look fine to have a small circle button next to that without throwing off the mojo of the various skins.

I've thought about a few quick click searches. Have to see how feasible that is. Hmm. Maybe users could even create their own. But that adds a whole other load of work.

@Zero

I figured with the Flag it at least allows us to quickly search the ones we've already established as preferred you know? Your idea of user-created search buttons would be sweet but yeah, I'm trying not to tax you too much.

I still think a quick "Reply Search"-for-your-own-name button would be handy, if kludgey.

@Anand What do you mean, just a search that shows all of your recent posts? You can look in your profile for that.

No, a search that shows where your name gets mentioned, so that you can respond. I do that all of the time.

Oh. Well, I don't know that enough people do that to bother making a special thing.

I'd love to get to the point where I'm comfortable enough in my own programming to just let people define their own quick searches. It probably wouldn't even be too tough.

But it's an essential discussion board feature! To see the threads in which you've been recently quoted or referred, so that you can respond. It would enable more real discussion and improve posting efficiency. You said that flagging referrals would be tough, right? But this is a quick, easy fix.

I'm all about band-aids. The inside of my iPod Nano is filled with, like, Scotch tape and shit.