Hey everyone!

I was asked to bring this up and I think it’s a great topic (pun intended) to go over as part of your Academy experience. Believe it or not, back in the day, you could not pick a topic for your post; you had to pick from a selection in a drop-down menu and, if you wanted something new, you had to ask the CO or the XO to add it for you. We’re not stuck in that world any longer, but we do ask that you take some care when you’re creating the topic for your new thread.

Exodus, the software that our system uses, depends on the topic to keep track of a particular thread so that the navigation buttons work. If you change the topic when you’re posting, you risk your new post no longer being connected to all of the old posts that came before it, which makes it really hard to read back through a thread! Please do not change the topic of a thread, even to note that it’s closed or to try to get someone’s attention (called tagging).

When you’re creating a new topic, the general recommended format is something like this:

Location - Activity

If it’s a main sim thread, you should have “Main Sim” in there somewhere so that people can easily find all of those threads to pay attention to (since everyone on a ship should always read all main sim threads!). So, if I’m going to do a main sim thread on the holodeck about eating lunch, I’d post something like this:

Main Sim - Holodeck - Eating Lunch
or
Holodeck - Eating Lunch (Main Sim)

If it isn’t a main sim thread, you can just do:

Holodeck - Eating Lunch

Personally, I sometimes add an indicator of where it falls timing-wise (e.g. pre-sim or post-sim) but that’s not necessary.

I hope this helps clarify the importance of topics when it comes to keeping track of posts in a thread! Let me know if you have any questions.

Sarah