h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If... for the sake of argument... you sneeze and accidentally click a mouse button when you're hovering over an unsubscribe button and you didn't really mean to do it (I'm also asking on behalf of a friend)...

Is there a simple, formal, non-embarrassing way to pick the conversation up again?

Well from the one at the bottom of a thread page you are taken to a confirmation page which has a link to return to the conversation. If you click that you will be back at the thread and can click on the subscribe to conversation link or post something to subscribe.

Even if you do it from your personal space list, while the confirmation page is still up you will still have the thread number in the URL in your browser window. Save this (in another window/document or on paper) and then get back to the conversation thread using it and re-subscribe as before.

Remember, there are no stupid questions. Just stupid people

If you unsubscribe from your Personal Space, you can do what SEF says, or you can press the back button on your browser and go to the conversation you unsubscribed from and subscribe to it. It's what I do

The obvious problem I can see is if this friend is on a digibox. Then, unless they've installed the special back button, they won't be able to do either the back or the URL tricks.

OK, I'm a stupid person (or maybe that's my friend), but I've done a lot since I/he made the stupid mistake, so I'm not sure I can use the back button. What I need to do is find the thread using search and rejoin as if I never left.

I think what I was looking for was an improbably intelligent undo button, which is something h2g2 should work on - a million things ago, you did something you didn't know you'd regret, but I'll remember it because you'll almost certainly want to to undo it at some point. Without staying awake through the million backward steps - unread that conversation, uninstall that trivial software you'll never find again, unshave...

This used to be a simple question. Sorry.

How about you try and remember someone else who might be subscribed to that thread (either automatically or by posting there) and you search for them (or know their U-number off by heart) and work your way through their conversation list - made easier if it wasn't too long ago, they are not very chatty or you can remember the name of the thread (and it wasn't one of the millions of [no subject] ones).

Ah, I didn't think about Digibox. Nevermind.

I knew that really, or maybe I told my friend. I found the conversation, subscribed to it, and nobody will even notice I dropped the plot. Unless they're reading this of course! My friend is going to be really mad...

Thanks

HIYA ITS DAISEY DUKE I,M NEW TO THIS SITE AND I NEED TO ASK SOME QUESTIONS THEY ARE AS FOLLOWS;

1. CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHY A FELLOW REASEARCHER SENT ME A REPLY AND WHY MY PERSONAL MESSAGE SERVICE DIDNT RECIEVE IT FOR ME? I HAD TO REPLY USING HER WEB SPACE
2. CAN YU TELL ME HOW TO SET UP MY FRIENDS LIST? AND HOW TO GET SMILEY FACES WITHIN MY POSTINGS?
DAISEY DUKE

Hello Daisey.

I'm not sure what you mean by a "personal message service". Normally if someone leaves you a new message they do that on your personal space. It appears in your message list but not necessarily in your conversation list unless you have set it up that way. So you may need to check further down your page. However, you said it was a reply. If this reply was on a thread where you had already posted then you should have seen it, unless you accidentally unsubscribed from that thread by clicking the unsubscribe link. People do this quite a lot.

You add people to your friends list by going to their personal spaces (eg by clicking on their name at the top of one of their postings) and then clicking on the link (on the top right of their page) which says "Add to Friends". If instead you want to know how to see those people who have added you to their friends list then you need to convert your personal space to GuideML mode first. Then you can add the line outside (above or below) the BODY section.

Smiley faces are easy. Many of them work just like the original text ones. So:
: - ) without the spaces becomes

Others have special codes using angle brackets:
< choc> without the space becomes