Posting comments

This section is about troubleshooting when posting or editing comments throughout various sections of the site (news, forums, downloads etc.) There's a separate section for wiki related issues.

When I paste a link, it isn't correctly transformed into a clickable link

The forum has some trouble handling URLs with certain characters (most commonly spaces & parentheses), and will break at the point it meets such a character. You can fix this by replacing the troublesome characters with the corresponding percent-encoded value.

A few common examples:

There’s a bookmarklet that can help you with this as well: msx.org URL 3nc0d%6Fr.

How can I upload a picture?

Images can’t be uploaded to msx.org directly. Use a service like msx.pics or Imgur, and then paste the generated URL inside a pair of [img][/img] tags, or use the corresponding editor button. Note about msx.pics; images uploaded as guest can't be edited or removed, but when necessary you could contact the admin of the site.

It's possible to change the display dimensions of your image as follows: [img=WxH]URL[/img]. So if you for example want to display it as 300px × 200px, write: [img=300x200].

YouTube link with time position doesn't seem to work

Use a full youtube.com link instead of the youtu.be short version, and specify the URL’s time position in both minutes and seconds, like 1m52s. Links with only seconds in the URL as don’t work. Use 0m when the position is just in seconds (before the 1m mark).

Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID&t=0m20s

How can I watch/follow a thread?

You can't. There used to be an option when posting a comment, but there seem to be some issues with the functionality at the moment, so the admins disabled it (for now).

How can I link to a specific post (comment)?

By determining the comment ID of the specific post, and adding that ID to a fragment identifier of the post’s URL. This fragment identifier has the format of #comment-COMMENTID.

When linked like this, your browser will bring the post into view by jumping to the specific position on the page. If the post is near the bottom or when you have a large browser window, the post may not necessarily be shown as the first thing at the top of your browser's viewport though. The post also isn’t highlighted, so although it’s nice to point to a specific post this way, and recommended to do so when applicable, visually it may not be unambiguously clear what post you're pointing to.

A couple of ways to identify the comment id and create a direct link:

First way: Copy the link location from the post’s Reply button. There are 2 numbers in that link, the 2nd one is the comment ID. Now add this ID to the fragment identifier of the URL of the page you're linking as follows:
/forum/msx-talk/msx-resource-center/hyperlinks-within-forum-mrc#comment-322828

When the topic crosses multiple pages, there's a page query string parameter (looking like e.g. ?page=1) in the URL. Remember that the fragment identifier always comes last, after a hash (#) mark. Example:
/forum/msx-talk/general-discussion/did-you-know-msx-trivia?page=3#comment-314039

Another way to find the comment ID is by using your browser's HTML inspector developer tool, if it has any. At the top of each entry the comment ID can be found in a <a id="comment-XXX"> tag.

How do I write a < or > character?

Since the editor allows some HTML, < has a special meaning (an HTML tag opening delimiter), and thus must be escaped by writing the corresponding HTML entity: < or < Escaping > (HTML tag closing delimiter) isn't necessary per se, but it's good practice to do so.

Likewise, it might be needed to escape the [ character (BBCode tag opening delimiter) by writing [

You can refer to the table below:

You could spare yourself some trouble by using e.g. Mathias Bynens' HTML entity encoder/decoder.

How do I edit my post/comment?

First posts are always locked for editing immediately. Replies can be edited for 1 hour before they lock, edits reset the timer (does not apply to super-users). When another user replies to or quotes your comment from the respective Reply & Quote pages, it will lock your post as well. After a post is locked edits can only be requested through a moderator alert.

If you’re starting a new thread where you want to update the thread introduction message later, it can be a useful practice to keep the first post light and introductory, and put the content you may want to update in a follow-up post.

If you want to avoid locking other people’s posts, use the reply form on the thread’s page. If you wish to include a quotation, you can copy/paste it from the quote page back to the thread page’s form to also avoid the lock.

Emoticons are not always working

When your post has a link or an image in it, emoticons that follow it won’t get processed.

The issue may be worked around somewhat by reordering your post to put the links after the emoticons.

Where's the [spoiler/] tag?

Although the latest version of BBCode does support the [spoiler/] tag, it isn't available here. Please use the following markup as a workaround:

[spoiler][color=#fff1]SPOILERTXT[/color][/spoiler]

This generates a just slightly visible text. The viewer has to select the text to reveal / properly read it. If you'd rather have the text 100% invisible, use color #fff0 instead. Note: some (outdated) browsers do not support the #RGBA format, including IE 11 & Edge Legacy. On these browsers, probably, the color will simply be ignored, and will be in full white as the other text.

By using this workaround, the spoiler tags are already in place if (possibly) the system gets updated to the latest BBCode spec.

Using the wiki

I can’t log in on the wiki?

Log out (please note: following this link logs you out immediately), then log in again, and finally go back to the Wiki.

Alternatively (if above doesn't work), delete your cookies for msx.org and log in again.

When linking to a page on openmsx.org, the wiki doesn't display it as an external link

In other words: it's missing the external link icon.

Due to a bug/flaw, anything that ends with msx.org (e.g. blablamsx.org) is treated as an internal link.

YouTube link with time position not working on the wiki

There is a difference in supported parameters in YouTube’s embed client URLs. While the YouTube video page supports t=TIME_IN_SECONDS (e.g. t=5652) or even t=TIME_DURATION_IN_ISO8106 (e.g. t=1h34m12s), their embed client only supports start=TIME_IN_SECONDS. You have to edit the URL to use this format on the wiki.