| Understanding Topic Types |
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In addition to regular discussion topics, various other types of topics appear in each forum. Each serves its own purpose and is described below.
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| Announcements |
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Announcements contain important information that the forum administrators want you to find, easily and read.
There are two types of announcements: Board Announcements and Forum Announcements. Board Announcements always come from forum administrators and generally appear above Forum Announcements in a separate box.
Where and how announcements appear depend on how the administrator sets up defaults for the forum layout. In some situations, members can change this layout in the Preferences section of the forum (How?). The administrator can override individual member board layout preferences and might do that to ensure that announcements appear at the top of every page.
Forum announcements always come from a forum administrator or a moderator. Either way, you should read them as soon as possible, especially before you post any messages.
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| Sticky Topics (Stickies) |
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Sticky topics appear below announcements. They are displayed only on the first page of a forum. They are often quite important, and you should read them before you post a message in the forums where they appear.
Stickies are always posted by a forum administrator or moderator.
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| Polls |
Poll topics enable forum members to vote on an idea or issue and view the results of all the respondents' answers. They appear at the top of topics, above the first message. Polls consist of a question, two or more options from which members can select one answer, a Submit Vote button, and a View Results link that members can click to view a tally of responses, as shown below.
Polls can only be created in the first post of a new topic; they cannot be added to a topic in a reply message. In some areas of our forum, only administrators may create polls. In other areas, any registered member can create them.
Topics with polls are easily identified in the topic list of a forum. The Subject of the topic that has a poll is preceeded with this image: 
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| Locked Topics |
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When a topic is marked as locked, members cannot post any reply messages in them. If a poll appears at the top of the topic, no further participation in the poll is possible. Locked topics are set this way by an administrator or moderator. Topics may be locked for many reasons.
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| New Topics |
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When a topic is marked as new, the topic image will be displayed in a different color, as shown above.
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| Owned Topics |
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When a topic is marked as owned, the topic image will be displayed with a small hand on it.
This means that you have posted in this topic.
Note: You must be logged in to see whether or not you have posted (owned) in a topic.
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