These forums are run by the Australian Esperanto Association -or "AEA". You can find extensive information about the AEA in the AEA website, and you can find even more extensive information about Esperanto, the international language, in various other sites around the world.
The AEA is involved in promoting and supporting Esperanto in Australia through many different projects and strategies, including: running correspondence courses, running an online Esperanto store, organising a yearly Esperanto Summer School, supporting several local Esperanto events throughout the country, as well as giving support to several local Esperanto organisations.
You can help support our Forums, as well as helping support Esperanto in Australia (and in the world!) by becoming a member of the AEA!
For further information about the AEA, or about Esperanto in general, send an email to info@esperanto.org.au.
If you have any questions, suggestions, problems, criticisms, enquiries or praises relating to the AEA Forums, you can send a message directly to the Forum Master: forumestro@esperanto.org.au.
These Forums are run and maintained by the Australian Esperanto Association (AEA). They are intended to be a place where both AEA members and non-members should feel welcome, and where it should be safe for all to come and discuss all matters related to Esperanto - the language, the movement, the people, the culture. It is important, therefore, that all participating in these forums act in a manner which encourage continuing support of the AEA, and the participation of the Esperanto movement, and the general community at large.
The procedure for discussion moderation is as follows:
Guests - non-registered visitors - can browse and search our Forums, and enjoy all the information that is available in these pages. However, as a member you will be able to:
In order to enjoy the full benefits our Forum has to offer, you should join right now!
To become a member, just click here, and fill out our very short application form, choosing a good username and a password - you can change both later, if you want to.
Your membership application will be sent to our ForumMaster (a real person!), and processed. You are notified - usually within 1 or 2 days - that you have become a forum member. Once you are a member, you can Sign In to enter the Forum as a registered member, using your username and password - and enjoy!
Discussions page. This page shows you a list of all discussions that are taking place in our forums. Each discussion in the forums has a main topic, or title, which is what is listed on the Discussions page.
Every discussion belongs to a certain subject group, or category. When you first arrive in the Forum, the Discussions page will list all discussions, in every category - which can be a very long list. You can shorten the list, by asking the Forum to show you only the discussions that belong to a specific category. Next to the list of discussions, you have a special area in your screen - with several options, such as "Feeds" and "Categories" - called the "sidebar". In the sidebar, you will see a "Categories" menu. This menu contains the names of all discussion categories in our Forum. Select a category name from this menu to see only the discussions that belong to that category.
To read a complete description of every category in our Forum, and of the kind of discussion that each category is for, go to the Categories page, by clicking on the Categories tab - next to 'Discussions' - at the top of any page in the Forum.
Now, back at our list of discussions. Discussion titles should reflect what the discussion is about. Browse through the discussion titles, until you see one that interests you. The discussion title is a link, and if you click on it, you will enter the page for that discussion. It is here, inside the discussion, that the action happens: listed here are all the comments different people - forum members - have made in this discussion. You can read them all, and if you are a member, you can post your own.
As members post comments, these comments are added to the bottom of the discussion. So, the first comment - the one that started the discussion - always appears at the top, and the latest comment is always at the bottom. However, when you are a member, you don't have to scroll much: the forum will remember which comment was the last one you saw, and next time you enter this discussion, it will automatically take you to that comment.
To exit the discussion you are viewing, and go back to the Discussions page, you can:
You may now notice, that the discussions in the Discussions page are ordered according to "latest activity", that is, whenever anyone adds a new comment to a discussion, that discussion is put on the top of the list. So, current, active discussions are shown on the top, while discussions to which no one has added anything for a while, go to the bottom.
Note: you may not be allowed to add your own comments to every discussion in the Forum.
This may happen because:
To add your own comment to a discussion, enter the discussion's page, scroll to the bottom of it, until you see a field titled "Enter your comments". Type your comment in there.
If you'd like to see what your comment will look like in the discussion, without actually submitting it, click the "Preview Post" button below the field. When you are ready to submit your comment, click the "Add Your Comments" button. Your comments are added to the bottom of the discussion.
There are 2 things you should be aware of:
In a forum, it is usually not necessary to quote someone. Often, you will be responding to a comment that has just been made, and your comment will appear right underneath the comment you are mentioning. However, you should properly quote someone, if:
So, how do you quote, if you need to? You will notice, that next to every comment in a discussion is a small "quote" link. To quote someone else's comment in your own post, click this link. This will enter the name of the author, as well as their entire comment, into the "Enter your comments" field at the bottom of the discussion page - ready for you to type in your own comment.
You will notice that this 'quote' looks quite strange, and it has all this 'stuff' that was not part of the original post. When you look at it inside your "Enter your comments" field, the text will look something like this:
<blockquote>
<cite>Posted By: forumestro</cite>
You will notice that this 'quote' looks quite strange,
and it has all this 'code' that was not part of the original post.
It will look something like this:
</blockquote>
The extra 'bits' - the bits like "<blockquote>" and "<cite>" - are special codes, written in a language called "HTML", which tells the Forum that this is a quote, and that it needs to be displayed in a special way. The Forum won't display it like that. However, the Forum normally assumes that you will be just using plain text in your postings, not HTML. So, in order for the HTML code (and your quote) to work, you must tell the Forum that your comment contains HTML: scroll down, and below the "Enter your comments" field, select the button that says "Format comments as" - "Html". Make sure you select the "Html" button!
Presto! Now your quotes look like real quotes!
Our Forum is able to accept and display any unicode character, including all of the accented letters in Esperanto (ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ). So, if your computer can type Esperanto, just type away! But what can you do, if you do NOT have a computer capable of typing the Esperanto accented letters?
In our Forums, you can use 3 different methods to enter the Esperanto accented letters - even if you can't type them in your computer.
The first one, is the "X-Method". Just type one of the letters that can take an accent (c, g, h, j, s or u), followed by an 'x'. The letter+x pair will automagically appear in your comments as an accented Esperanto letter. For instance, if you type 'cx' in your text, it will appear as "ĉ"!
The second method is the "Circumflex Method". It is exactly the same as the "X-Method", except that instead of using an 'x', you use a circumflex. The circumflex is the 'hat' accent that the Esperanto letters often use (^), usually found above the letter 6 in English keyboards. So, for instance, to get "ĉ" you just type 'c^'!
The last method is the "Reverse Circumflex Method". It is the same as the "Circumflex Method", except that instead of placing the circumflex after the letter to be accented, you place it before. So, in this method, to get our "ĉ", you would type '^c'. The reason why some people prefer this method is that when you type the accented letters in a 'normal' keyboard or typewriter, you usually type the accent before you type the letter, so for people who are used to typing accents like that, this feels more 'natural'.
So, in summary, if you can't directly type the accented Esperanto letters in your comments, you can still get them:
A warning: these 3 systems are always in place, and substitution always happens, whether you are typing in Esperanto or not. You are not very likely to type these character combinations in normal, ordinary words, either in English or in most other latin-alphabet languages. However, there are certain words that might prove to be difficult... For instance: what happens if you want to type the word "auxiliary" ? If you type it normally, the "ux" inside the word will be substituted by "ŭ", and you will end up with "aŭiliary"!
There are not many words like that, but they do exist. So, we've made it possible for you to force the "ux" to display, if you need to: just type a full stop between the u and the x, like this: "u.x".
So, in order for the word "auxiliary" to display, you just type "au.xiliary". You can also use the full stop to force "cx", "sx", and all the other letter+x combinations to display, if you ever need to!
I hope you'll find these shortcuts useful!
You can only edit and delete your own comments. To edit or delete a comment, simply click on the "edit" or "delete" link that appears next to the comment, in the discussion.
If your comment is the last in the discussion, and no one has yet replied, added to or quoted it, then you should feel free to edit it, change it, or delete it altogether, if you wish. However, if your comment is not the last in the discussion, before you edit or delete it, please consider the golden rules of Forum 'netiquette, which are:
If all you are doing is correcting a typing mistake, or changing a word emphasis from bold to italic, well, that is certainly ok. But if you are actually replacing or deleting words, re-structuring your sentences, or thinking about deleting your entire comment, after others have already replied or added to it, then this is definitely bad form, and you should not do it.
Once you have participated in the existing discussions for a while, you may decide you want to start your own discussion. We strongly suggest that you get to know the Forums first, and do a search through the existing topics and comments, to ensure that the topic you want to start hasn't already been discussed before.
We also suggest that you get to know our discussion categories, before starting a new discussion. Every discussion has to belong to a specific category, and placing your discussion in the wrong category means that it will be either not seen by the right people, or even deleted. To read a complete description of all our categories, and the kinds of discussions suited to each, have a look at the Categores page.
To start a discussion, just click on the "Start a new discussion" link in your sidepanel!
Once you are comfortable starting your own public discussions, we suggest you also have a look at the session on Whispering - to find out how you can start Private Discussions.
In any discussion, at times you may want to 'whisper' something to a friend, so that only that friend can hear... In our Forums you can do that, too! A Whisper in our Forums is a private comment, shared between 2 members only. To send a whisper, follow the same procedure as for "Posting Your Own Comments", but before clicking the "Add your comments" button, enter the username of the member you want to whisper to, into the "Whisper your comments to" field, located above the "Enter you comments" field. Now, when you submit your comment, that comment will be a whisper.
Although the whisper is always done inside a discussion, when a comment is a whisper, only those 2 members - the one who whispered, and the one who receives it - can ever see the whisper. The whisper is not displayed to other members, when they are looking at the discussion.
If someone sends you a whisper, above the whisper you will see an option to "Reply" to it. If you reply to the whisper, your reply will automatically also be a whisper.
If you find that you and a friend are exchanging lots of private messages via whispers, you might want to start a Private Discussion. A Private Discussion is a special discussion between 2 members only. The discussion does not show on anyone else's discussion lists, and every message inside that discussion is automatically a whisper between those 2 forum members. In order to start a Private Discussion with a friend, follow the same steps as for starting a normal discussion, but make sure that you enter your friend's username in the "Whisper your comments to" field of the very first comment. If the very first comment of a discussion is a whisper, then the entire discussion will be private!
You can also choose to be automatically notified when someone sends you a whisper. Automatic notification for whispers can be turned on and off in your account preferences. For detailed instructions on how to access your account preferences, and change this and other account settings, have a look at the Personalising Your Account section.
Comments are usually entered as plain text, without any special formatting, such as bold or italics. However, if you want to, you can use HTML, a very common - and relatively easy to learn - markup language, used all over the world to design web pages.
HTML is made up of a collection of 'tags' that programmers and designers use to let your browser know which chunks of text should be bold, which should be italic, and so on. For instance, let's say that you have the following sentence in one of your comments:
There is no such thing as a loving robot.
Now, let's say you want to make the words "loving robot" appear in bold. In HTML, to make text bold, you 'mark' it as STRONG, by enclosing it in 'strong' tags, as you type, like this:
There is no such thing as a <strong>loving robot</strong>.
This will appear in your comments like this:
There is no such thing as a loving robot.
Note that you need an opening tag (<strong>) and a closing tag (</strong>) - and the closing tag always has a "/" in it!
As you can see, HTML is quite simple - it's just a matter of learning which tags you can use to 'markup' your text. There are many good HTML tutorials all over the internet, and it is way beyond the scope of this posting to teach you HTML. If you really want to make your comments stand out, then we suggest you do a 1 or 2-hour free lesson in one of these online courses. Nevertheless, here are some common HTML tags, which you may find useful straight away:
If you use HTML to format your comments, however, you have to let the Forum know! To tell the Forum that your comment is not just plain text, but HTML, you must click the "Format comment as Html" button, located under the comment field - or your formatting will not work, and your HTML tags will be displayed! Notice that this allows you to use HTML for some comments, and plain text for others, as you wish.
Each member in our Forums has an Account page, where you can change your account settings, as well as add or change details about yourself. In you Account page, you can:
In order to access your Account page, click on the Account tab at the top of any page in the Forum.
Please note, that you are not able to upload images to be used as icons or account pictures in our Forum. The images you wish to use must already exist and be available in another server, and you must have their full address.
If you find that you are returning to a discussion often, you might want to Bookmark it. To bookmark a discussion, enter it, then click on the "Bookmark This Discussion" link in your sidepanel.
Your can bookmark as many discussions as you like. If you have bookmarked discussions, you can access them all on a page of their own, by clicking the "Bookmarked Discussions" link in your sidepanel.
If you no longer wish a discussion to be in your Bookmarks, enter it, then in your sidepanel select "Unbookmark this discussion".
You can search for specific discussions, comments or users in our Forum, by using the Search page. To go to the Search page, click on the Search tab at the top of any page in the Forum. Once in the Search page, just type one or more keywords into the Search field, select "Discussions", "Comments" or Users", then click "Search"!
In your searches, if you type more than one word, the Search will look for those words independently from each other. So, if you type, for instance, loving robot, you will get results that will match the word "loving", and results that will match the word "robot". You will also get results that match "robot loving", and "loving robot". If you want to find those 2 words together and in that order, you must put them inside double quotes: "loving robot".
The Search also understands the words and & or. So, in the search field you could enter: "loving robot" or "loving cyborg" or "loving machine".
But this is only the simple Search. You can view more advanced Search options by clicking on the "Advanced" link inside the Search page. This allows you to Search, for instance, for comments by a specific member. Try it out - it is very useful.
Last of all, you might find that you are performing the same searches frequently - for instance, you might be constantly searching for comments by a specific user, or for titles that contain certain words. Instead of having to re-enter your search in the Search page every time, you can save your search, and it will appear as a clickable link in your sidepanel - saving you a lot of typing!
To save a search, start by doing your search in the Search page, as usual. Once you get your search results, you will see at the bottom of the results page, an empty field with a button next to it that says "Save Search". You can type a name for your Search here, click the Save Search button, and that Search will now be listed directly in your sidepanel. Any time you want to perform the same search again, simply click on the link in your side panel, and presto!
You may want to notice, that you can subscribe to your Search result pages using RSS or Atom! - so as others add comments to the forum, you can be alerted automatically when the results of your search change!
You will notice that almost all pages in our Forum have a section in the sidepanel that says "Feeds". RSS and Atom are ways of checking for updated information on the web, without actually having to use your web browser. Many information-heavy web sites, such as online newspapers and blogs, use an "RSS feed" or "Atom feed" to let their users know if something has been updated, without forcing the users to actually come and visit the site.
A feed usually contains only a little summary of the full new articles or postings - usually just a headline, and the first line of the article or posting. Each feed article normally contains a link to the website that generated it, and clicking on that link will take you to the web page where you can read the full posting.This makes the feeds very fast and efficient, and makes it easier for you to decide if is worth your while visiting the website, and reading further.
To receive a feed from a site that generates them, you will need a program called a news aggregator. News aggregators often collect the updated news from several feeds, several sites, and display it to you in a simple, easy-to-read layout. If you never tried one, we suggest you download one for your computer - there are many free ones available (do a search on VersionTracker).
Most of the good web browsers - such as Firefox - are also news aggregators. If you visit a page that has a feed, the browser often allows you to view the feed of the page, and also allows you to bookmark the feed itself. Check your browser's documentation for details - search for the words "RSS" or "Atom".
All our Forum discussion pages, as well as all of the search pages - including pages which are results of your saved custom searches - have automatically generated feeds. So, you can bookmark them with your favourite news aggregator, and have it check them automatically for you, for updates!
Every member in the forum has their own To-Do list. Once you become a member, whenever you log in, at the top of every page in the forum you will see a "To-Do" tab. Click on it, to access your personal list of To-Do items.
To add a personal To-Do item to your list:
Your personal To-Do can only be seen, edited or ticked off by you.
You can, however, share your To-Do with the other forum members. When you add your To-Do item, if you tick the "Member" role, then any forum participant who has the role of "Member" will be able to also see and tick off your to-do - they aren't however, able to edit it (only the original To-Do poster can edit it!). If you tick the "Estrarano de AEA" role, then you will share your To-Do with the AEA Board Members. If you tick "Administrator", then you will be sharing your To-Do with the Forum Master. To share your To-Do item with everyone, tick all roles, or click on the "All" link!