The Museum of HP Calculators
The Museum of HP Calculators
Contents:
HP forum accounts make it easier to use the forums because you can log in once and not worry about re-entering your name, email and password each time you post, edit or delete and you can contact other people who have chosen to keep their email addresses private. Forum accounts also prevent other people from using the exact same name as you.
Because spam is increasing, the moderator of these forums may set the forums to either require accounts or to automatically send all posts made without an account to the moderators for previewing and approval. If you create an account and use it then you won't be inconvenienced if these restrictions are ever turned on. They may never be turned on, or they may already be turned on by the time you read this. It all depends on the amount of spam. Those people who create accounts and log in can also click on the "report post" link on each message to alert moderators to posts that may be offensive/spam/rude etc.
Accounts also give you the option of using a private email address. If you select this option, other users who are logged in can contact you via the forum software but they won't see your email address. (Unless you choose to respond of course.)
If you are a heavy user of the classified ads, you will need to decide whether a private email address is worth making it a little more difficult for a potential trader to contact you. Of course, scammers can still create accounts to contact you but it raises the bar for them. If you have problems with an account holder, please contact the curator with the details.
Start Here. Using your real name is strongly encouraged but not absolutely required if you're shy.
Accounts may expire after a long time without use. An account that hasn't been used for over a year or an account that was only used a few days and then not used for 6 months after that is likely to be deleted. You may create an account again if that happens.
When you create an account, your are asked for two email addresses (which may be the same.). Your "Forum email address" is the address you wish other forum members to use (and possibly see). This could be your normal email address, a hotmail account, an obscured address or it could be left blank if you wish no email contact. Your "Activation Email Address" is the address that will be used to activate the account. It will never be displayed to or used by other users. This address must be a valid non-blank non-obscured address and can't be a disposable "freemail" address such as hotmail, yahoo etc. Freemail addresses like hotmail and yahoo make it too easy to a spammers to create mail accounts to be used only for activation of spam-and-run accounts. Please use a "real" email account such as an ISP, work, or school account for your Activation email address. If you use any kind of spam blocking, please make sure you know how to find your activation email if it is blocked or "whitelist" account_robot@ hpmuseum.org before creating your account. If you can't find your activation email, you will not be able to finish creating your account. (I this happens, the never-activated account will expire in a few days and you can try again.)
Unlike the Activation email address, your forum email address can be any email address you choose to use including yahoo, hotmail etc.
You have four choices as to how to treat forum emails. Please consider carefully!
If you find that your forum email has been blanked and your "Forum email Comment:" has changed to:"Forum email deactivated by recipient", this means that the recipient at the address previously given clicked on a link to remove this address. If that wasn't you, then you entered someone else's email address. Please be careful not to do that again.
When a new account is created, the forum treats any existing posts made without an account but with the same name as being possibly owned by this account. For anyone clicking on a name field, the forum will honor the email options of the current account of that name. This means that you can hide (and/or update) the email addresses in all of your previous posts by creating an account with the same name and setting the private email option.
In order to edit or delete a post created before your account was created, your account password will need to match the password that was given when the message was saved. (In the case of the Classified ads - it is the forum email address that must match.) This prevents random people from creating accounts that match existing names and editing or deleting messages. Any NEW messages that you create are linked to your account such that you can freely change your account password and still be able to edit them. If you have an account with a different password but need to edit an old message, you can logout from your account, edit your old message the old way, and then log back in, or change your account password.
In the classified ads, old posts and posts made without and account can still be deleted by anyone who enters the email address. If you create an account, only you can edit and delete your posts.
The following only applies if you created a biography and then later created a forum account: If you have created a an account with a password that matches the password that your biography was saved with, then you will be able to edit your biography and when you exit the edit screen by saving, the Biography will be assigned to your account. (This is not as automatic as other forums because the Biographies are saved with Family Name, Given Name and there's no 100% safe programmatic way to convert.) Taking ownership of your biography will also cause your account email options (such as the private email feature.) to apply to your biography.
The forum software now sends cookies under these conditions:
Logging in to the forum: Login in is optional in most forums but you must have cookies turned on in order to do so. (One exception, once you create and account you must be logged in in order to post an advertisement, or to edit or delete an advertisement that you created with your account. The is an artifact of the way the ads section has historically worked and prevents people from removing your ads by simply entering your email address. So, if you dislike cookies, and wish to place ads, don't create an account.
Each display of the Index and Posting messages: These are simply set to maintain your list style and time preferences as well as to track the last message seen in order to update the (new) display. If you block these features then you won't see (new) and you're list style preferences won't stay "stuck" for very long.
Please note that these cookies are used ONLY in the HP forums. They are not shared with other sites or used to track you across the Internet or even in other parts of the HP museum other than the forum. (They aren't even logged anywhere.) Also note that the information contained in the cookies is the information that you normally enter to post messages and set forum options. It's just automating providing the information that you have been giving the forum software by hand all along.
Many Browsers allow you to set cookie options on a site-by-site basis. For example, in IE you can go to Tools/Internet Options/Privacy and then click the Edit... button in the Websites panel. Then enter hpmuseum.org and click Allow. This will allow the new forum features without affecting your cookie policies for other sites. (Likewise, you can go to Security and decide on which sites to allow Javascript. IE calls it "Active Scripting".) Javascript is required only to make the format buttons work.
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