What are the forum rules?
Please take a moment to read our forum rulesthat apply to The Tech Report forums and comments. Each individual forum may have rules also, which you'll find in an announcement thread at the top of the forum. If you have any issues with the forum rules, please contact the board administrator.
Who is the board administrator?
The board administrator for The Tech Report Forums is Kevin. Please contact him (e-mail: [email protected]) if you have any issues with our forum that this FAQ or the phpBB FAQ doesn't resolve. Especially regarding issues with logging in to the forums.
I e-mailed the board administrator and didn't get a response!
Kevin attempts to respond to all e-mail or correspondence that requires a response, however, occasionally e-mail slips through so feel free to resend it if you didn't get a response within a few days. Also remember that Kevin gets swamped in e-mail spam on his Tech Report e-mail address so be sure to have a descriptive subject line with "TR FORUMS" in it.
What are these gerbil ranks?
These rankings are tied to your post count. As your post count increases, your rank will change. Below is a list of all the ranks for our forums with the required number of posts to reach each rank.
Gerbil in Training: 0 - 9
Gerbil: 10 - 99
Gerbil First Class: 100 - 199
Gerbil Team Leader: 200 - 299
Gerbil XP: 300 - 499
Gerbil Elite: 500 - 999
Graphmaster Gerbil: 1000-1499
Gerbil Jedi: 1500-1999
Minister of Gerbil Affairs: 2000-2999
Grand Gerbil Poohbah: 3000-3999
Maximum Gerbil: 4000-4999
Gerbil Elder: 5000-5999
Emperor Gerbilius I: 6000-6999
Darth Gerbil: 7000-7999
Lord High Gerbil: 8000-8999
Gerbil Khan: 9000-9999
Grand Admiral Gerbil: 10000-10999
Gerbilus Supremus: 11000-12499
His Holy Gerbilness: 12500-14999
Gerbil God: 15000+
What is the fascination with gerbils?
The history of gerbils on the site is long and complex. Our site founder, Damage, posted a brief history of gerbils, which is quoted here:
Damage wrote:The first gerbil was the "Anonymous Gerbil" tag used for the authors of any anonymous posts in the original TR comments system. Sander Pilon wrote the system, and he put in the AG tag as a placeholder. I thought it was funny, so we kept it. For a long time, the only gerbils we had were anonymous, which led to things like the "Don't feed the gerbils" T-shirt. Gerbil became a term of loving derision, if you will, because it referred mainly to people posting anonymously who might have something good to contribute or..... heh. Maybe not.
Eventually, anonymous gerbils gave way to non-anonymous gerbils when we installed phpBB and needed a ranking system. Then there was the Great Gerbilicide of '04, in which Anonymous Gerbils were killed off and comments system posting required registration, leaving the forum gerbils as the only remaining species. And there you have it.
What about ranks that don't have "gerbil" in them?
There are several different ranks for staff and people that run the forums.
TR Staff: These are the staff for The Tech Report.
Administrator: These are the forum administrators who run the forum.
Global Moderator: These are the global moderators who have moderating privileges in all forums
Why are some names colored and not others?
These distinguish between the various people that have moderation and administrative privileges for the forums. You can also view a list of all the members with mod and/or admin powers here.
Red: These people have administrative privileges for the forum.
Green: These are the global moderators who have moderating privileges in all forums.
Blue: These are the forum moderators. They only have moderation powers in their specific forums.
Where do I go to discuss religious or political topics?
You'll need to join the R&P Member usergroup. To do so, read this thread.
