The Moon Society Forum

This board is one of many which has been targeted by spammers. Spammers want to get their products and their links up in as many places as possible to raise their search engine rankings. Some of you may have noticed the "SPAM thread" in the test forum; I have elected to showcase some of the milder and sometimes entertaining posts we receive.

Unfortunately we have also been the unwilling recipients of explicit pornography from some sick personalities. As one of the goals of this board is to become a resource for students and young people seeking information on space exploration and colonization, I am forced to take action to protect this community from such vandalism. To this end, I am instituting a multi-tiered hierarchy of users and user permissions.

When you join this board, you do so as a "Registered User". This allows you to post without restriction in two forums only: The "Test Facility" and "The Commons". It allows you to post in (currently) five additional forums with the caveat that your post must be reviewed by a moderator before it will be made public. Those forums are the "Flight Director's Console", the Introductions forum, the "Spacelab module", and the two local chapter forums for Houston and St. Louis. Registered users may not use BBCode and thus may not post links, images, or attachments.

Once we have a chance to see that you are a real human being making genuine contributions to the discussions and not a spambot, you are eligible to be raised to the next level of membership as a "Validated Member". At this level you may post in all of the public forums and you may post links and images and use BBCode. When you are ready to make this step up, go to your User Control Panel (link in top right corner of the main index page) and then, in the Options box, click on "Usergroups". Select the button to the right of the "Validated Members" group and then, using the selection box, select "Join Group" and hit "Submit." As soon as your submission is reviewed and approved by any moderator or admin, you will be promoted to a "Validated Member".

Those of you who are Moon Society members may join the Moon Society Members group in the same manner. First, be sure that your full name and your Moon Society membership number are entered in your profile information. When one of the administrators has a chance to verify that information, you will be added to that group as well.

There is one more group that you should be aware of, which is "Registered COPPA Users". This is the group for children under age 13, who must have written permission from a parent or guardian before they may be allowed to post. These users may post in the Introductions and "Spacelab Module" forums as well as in the local Chapters and Outposts forums. They may read but not post in the Moon Society Project Teams forums—but with approval of the forum's moderator, we may lift that restriction on an individual basis. They are not allowed even to view "The Commons" and "The Test Forum"—remember, those are the two forums that new members may post in without restriction or review. Do not take that as license to post salacious material in those forums, however—remember that they may be viewed by any guest without logging in and that it is our goal to maintain a family-friendly atmosphere on this ENTIRE forum. Finally, pre-teen users may not send or receive private messages—if you have something to say to a pre-teen, say it in public.

Once again, I regret that these restrictions are necessary. But they are, and they will be enforced. Show yourself to be a genuine contributor and we will remove those restrictions forthwith. If you are not a genuine contributor, find some other victim to SPAM.