Information about our external forum

== Introduction ==
As you have likely noticed, our old forum has now been shut down, and the wiki been updated to use the Unified Community Platform (UCP) software.
As such, in order to survive in the long run, the VS Battles, Joke Battles, and FC/OC Battles wiki communities have migrated to a new external forum.
== New Account Registrations ==
The members who joined after early May 11, 2020, will have to sign up with new accounts in our forum.
Please exactly follow these steps:
#You need to have an auto-confirmed account here in Fandom. In order to get this, you first need to register a Fandom account, then confirm an email address in your personal user settings here, and finally wait until 4 entire days have passed after the account was created.
#After this has been done, please make a few harmless edits in your user page in the VS Battles wiki (click on the preceding link to reach it), so we can later easily confirm that you are a member here before accepting your VSBW forum account. It is also fine if you post a note in your message wall instead. This step is only necessary if you have not made any other edits in this wiki previously.
#Initiate the registration process in our forum and pick an EXACTLY IDENTICAL USERNAME to the one that you have in this wiki.
#You will be asked to verify your email address.
#Once you have confirmed email verification, a random Discord handle key is generated. (This Discord handle key is different than your real Discord handle.)
#Follow these instructions to temporarily change your Discord field in Fandom to the above generated discord handle code. This is to verify that your forum account and wiki account are linked together.
#Once you have done so, return to vsbattles.com and refresh the page. The discord handle key and autoconfirmed status of your wiki account will be verified. You will then be confirmed and able to post.
#If you are not confirmed, please check all the steps and make sure you do them correctly. This message will continue to display. Feel free to contact AKM sama, Antvasima, DarkDragonMedeus, or Mr. Bambu for help if your account isn't confirmed after one or two days.
=== Possible Problems with Following these Instructions ===
* If you have spaces in your username in the wiki, you must replace them with underscores in the forum. For example, the username "Mr. Bambu" in this wiki would turn into "Mr._Bambu" in the external forum, but "Antvasima" will remain as it is.
* Other than the underscores, your usernames in our wiki and forum need to be exactly identical, and to make that possible, your Fandom wiki username should not be longer than a maximum of 40 characters, as that is the maximum that our forum allows. Also, the allowed characters are '0-9', 'A-Z', 'a-z', and '_', so please do not use any more unusual alternatives. For example, if somebody has the username "GravityFallsFan" here, they should sign up with the exact same username in the external forum, unless it isn't available.
* In the case their VS Battles wiki and forum usernames differ from each other please ask AKM sama or Antvasima to change your forum username for you, or give you instructions how to change your Fandom username.
* If you get an "email/username is already in use" error message when first attempting to sign up, please follow the second set of instructions instead. It is possible that we received our user lists at an earlier or later date than early May 11 (the date that we received our discussion thread backups).
== For Members Who Signed Up To The External Forum First ==
The members who signed up to the external forum first and their accounts were rejected because they did not have any account here on Fandom VS Battles Wiki, please follow these instructions:
#You need to create an auto-confirmed account here in Fandom with an EXACTLY IDENTICAL USERNAME to the one that you used to sign up in the external forum. In order to get this, you first need to register a Fandom account, then confirm an email address in your personal user settings here, and finally wait until 4 entire days have passed after the account was created.
#After this has been done, feel free to contact AKM sama, or Antvasima so they can approve your rejected forum account.
== Additional Safety Measures ==
* DO NOT CREATE ANY NEW ACCOUNTS IN THE EXTERNAL FORUM IF YOU HAVE AN OLDER ACCOUNT WITH EMAIL PROBLEMS. CONTACT AKM ABOUT IT, SO HE CAN HELP YOU TO ACCESS YOUR ALREADY EXISTING ACCOUNT INSTEAD.
* Also, take note that WE ONLY ALLOW REGISTERED WIKI MEMBERS TO SIGN UP TO OUR EXTERNAL FORUM, so do not try to sign up otherwise. You will be rejected in that case.
* Also, again, please remember that the spaces in your usernames here have been changed to underscores in the new forum. You have to keep this in mind when you log in.
For example: Super Saiyan God Julian in the wiki is Super_Saiyan_God_Julian in the external forum.
After you have successfully logged in to the new forum, you should visit the following information thread, and adjust your user settings according to the instructions there:
https://vsbattles.com/threads/important-user-settings-information.107536/
After that, there is a welcome thread to the new forum that you should read through, as the members who previously signed in or signed up have already asked quite a lot of questions that we have answered as well as we can:
https://vsbattles.com/threads/welcome-to-the-new-forum.107520/
Our members should also interlink their user profiles on both sites. Meaning, you should add a link to your wiki user page on your forum user page and vice-versa.
== Important Notes ==
Here are some other important issues to take note of:
* We only copied our old forum up to May 11, 2020, and the shutdown happened on October 26, 2020, so there is a big gap between the two dates.
However, in order to not lose important discussion threads, we backed up most of them to archive.today, so if you look for threads with replies posted between these dates, please see our list here:
https://vsbattles.com/threads/backup-links-for-important-lost-wiki-threads-from-our-old-forum.107887/
Content revision discussions that need to be continued in the new forum should be linked to in the first post of the restarted threads.
* We also have a smaller list of backed up versus threads from this time period:
https://vsbattles.com/threads/list-of-backed-up-concluded-versus-threads-from-our-old-forum.107891/
You can later link to these backups in separate threads within our new versus threads sub-forum, and link to these threads in turn within our character profile pages, so we get more visitor traffic.
== A Limited Number of Content Revision Threads Allowed per Verse ==
In order to avoid an unmanageable flood of content revision threads, only a very limited amount per verse should be active at a time.
Connected revisions for a certain verse can be handled in the same thread, but do not add more revisions to it after it has been started, or the threads will turn too chaotic, and nothing will get done.
We have also added a rule regarding that all content revision edits in our profile pages should always include links to the forum discussion threads in which the revisions were accepted by our staff in the edit summary boxes, in order to greatly simplify the wiki patrolling work for our staff members.
https://vsbattles.com/threads/new-important-rules-for-the-forum-and-wiki-editing-staff-only.107845/
In addition, a rule was added regarding that tags (formerly called topics) for the relevant verses and characters always need to be properly added to important discussion threads by writing them in exactly the same manner as their corresponding character profile or verse pages here in this wiki.
Again, please make certain that you always use the EXACTLY WORDED titles for the most relevant verse and profile pages when adding said tags.
For further information and guidelines, please visit our tags explanation page.
Category:Administration