This site should be a complete explanation of the MSN Messenger protocol. Most of the basic questions have been addressed, so you can probably get an answer more quickly from the site than by bothering people on the forum. If you've given up reading the site because you find it hard to read, talk to the maintainers about how to make the site better rather than asking people on the forum.

What the forum is for

The forum is mostly used for discussion of 3rd party MSN Messenger clients, bugs and features in their implementation; and research into new aspects of the MSN Messenger protocol. The aim of this page is to explain some of the rules that help keep the forum a productive environment. Despite the stern tone of this page, we're actually a very welcoming group.

Some general etiquette

Try to remain civil

Try to keep any comments you make (especially negative or personal comments) based strictly on the evidence. In particular, very few of the people on the forum hate Microsoft, and you'll only serve to alienate them if you start making unproven allegations about the company.

Know when to start a new topic

The topic of a thread always drifts over the lifetime of the thread, but please don't post replies to existing threads which have nothing to do with the thread's topic. For example, in a thread about MD5 authentication, it's okay to post a message about TWN authentication, but not to post a message about how your client has a bug in its file transfer support. If in doubt, post your message in a new topic.

Provide enough information

It's always better to post more information in a message than less. The more information you give, the easier it is for other people to diagnose a problem or understand a new feature. If you're not sure whether to include something, include it.

Forum help

The hypothetic forum is based on Phorum, with special modifications for the site made by Mike Mintz. You can insert mark-up text in forum posts with special tags put between square brackets. For example, you can make a a section of text bold [b]like this[/b]. For convenience, you can also mark hyperlinks with angle brackets, for example: <http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/>.

How do I link to web pages or images in my messages?

As mentioned above, you can use angle brackets to mark URLs. You can also use the url, url=, email, and img tags. Here are some examples:

<http://server/page.html>	http://server/page.html
[url]http://server/page.html[/url]	http://server/page.html
[url=http://server/page.html]text[/url]	text
[email]user@host[/email]	user@host
[img]1.jpg[/img]

How do I decorate text in my messages?

You can decorate text with the b, i, and u tags. Here are some examples:

[b]bold text[/b]	bold text
[i]italicised text[/i]	italicised text
[u]underlined text[/u]	underlined text

How do I format paragraphs?

You can quote a pargraph of text with the quote tag. For example, putting [quote]quoted text[/quote] in a message produces:

Quote:

Quoted paragraph

You can centralise a pargraph of text with the center tag. For example, putting [center]centralised text[/center] in a message produces:

Centred paragraph

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