Board Features available to Registered Members
If you register a membership you will immediately gain the ability to post your thoughts on any existing thread or vote in any existing poll. As you make posts and spend more time here, additional features will become available, including:
Starting new threads and polls
Private Messages:
The ability to send short messages to other registered members.
Profile Customization:
The ability to add avatars, profile pictures, photo albums and lists of buddies to your profile.
Access to documents and images posted by other users:
Photos, maps, drawings and text documents hosted on the WS server as uploaded by our members.
Access to non-public discussion areas:
Over 75% of the content on WS is available to the general public without registration. However, we do have areas where members post their original work and research and discuss topics in more depth than on the public boards. As a registered member these sections will be available for you to read and participate.
While previously all of these features were available immediately upon registration, abuses - especially of the Private Message system - have caused us to restrict access to new members until they have had a chance to get used to how the Board works.
We're not going to say exactly how many posts you have to make or how long you have to be a member to be able to use these features, to prevent trolls from making a whole string of posts and then spamming members via PM. If you are reading and posting at an average rate you will gain these abilities very quickly. It's a shame the bad behavior of a few requires us to do this, but most bigger boards that deal with controversial subjects have these restrictions for the same reasons.
