Pings and the Relay

A ping is a short public post from a member, like a status update. A reply to a ping is a pong. Sharing someone's ping to your own page is an echo. Liking a ping is an ack. The Relay is the public feed that shows what is trending and what is newest. Anyone can read pings, profiles and the Relay without an account.

Pings and attached photos are public, and they are not end-to-end encrypted. Do not post anything you want to keep private. Use direct messages or the encrypted vault for that.

Posting a ping

Open your Profile and use the post box at the top of the Pings section, or use the post box on the home page or the Relay page. You must be signed in. If the site requires a confirmed email address, you must confirm yours first (see the guide on email verification).

• A ping is plain text of up to 300 characters. The counter under the box counts characters, not bytes, so an emoji or a letter with an accent counts as one. Line breaks are kept.
• Web addresses that start with http:// or https:// become links. Other kinds of links are left as plain text. Links are marked so that search engines do not follow them.
• Write @ and a username to mention a member. The mention becomes a link to their profile. People who have blocked you cannot be mentioned by you, and the text stays plain. Only the first five mentions are linked.
• Write # and a word to add a tag, such as #retro. A tag links to a page that lists recent pings with that tag. Tags use letters, numbers and underscores, and a tag cannot be only numbers. Only the first five tags are linked.
• No other formatting is supported. Anything that looks like HTML is shown as plain text.
• You can attach one photo from your own photos. It must be approved, public and safe for work, because pings are public. Photos that are held for review, flagged or private cannot be attached. The photo is not uploaded again, and the checks it passed when you added it still apply. If a photo is later held for review or removed, the ping that carries it is hidden everywhere. If you make the photo private afterwards, the ping stays but shows no picture.
• If the site blocks your network address for uploads, such as a VPN, you see the message Please disconnect from your VPN. when you try to post with a photo. Pings without a photo are not affected.

You cannot edit a ping. If you made a mistake, delete it and post it again. Posting exactly the same text again within 10 minutes is refused, but this does not apply once the first one is deleted.

Posting is limited each hour so the Relay stays readable. Accounts in their first 24 hours have stricter limits. If you reach a limit, the message tells you how long to wait. These limits apply to posting, ponging, echoing and acking. Taking an ack back counts toward the acking limit too, so pressing the button over and over uses it up.

Pongs, echoes and acks

• Pong. Open a ping and use Reply with a pong. Pongs have the same rules as pings, without photos. They are listed in order under the ping. A pong can be answered with another pong, and the replies are shown in one list.
• Echo. Echo shows another member's ping on your page, with their name on it. You can add a comment of up to 300 characters. You cannot echo your own ping, a pong, or the same ping twice. Press Echoed (undo) to take it back.
• Ack. Ack is a like. You can ack once per ping or pong and press it again to remove it.

Only signed-in members can pong, echo and ack. If a member has blocked you, you cannot pong, echo or ack their pings. A block is one way: the member who blocked you can still react to your pings.

Deleting

You can delete your own pings, pongs and echoes. If a ping or pong has replies under it, a short note that it was deleted stays in its place so the replies still make sense. The text and the photo are removed. If there are no replies, it is deleted completely, along with its echoes. Moderators can also remove a ping or pong. In that case the note says it was removed by a moderator.

The Relay

The Relay is on the home page and at /relay. It has two tabs.

• Trending is the default. Every five minutes the site scores each ping from the last 48 hours. The score counts the different people who acked, echoed or ponged in the last 24 hours, with echoes counting for more than acks, and divides it by a number that grows as the ping gets older, so newer activity wins. Your own acks, echoes and pongs on your ping do not count, and one person doing the same thing many times counts once. Acks, echoes and pongs only count when they come from accounts that have a confirmed email and are at least 24 hours old.
• Latest lists pings, newest first.

A few things keep Trending fair. No author takes more than two of the top 20 places. Pings from accounts whose email is not confirmed, from accounts that are less than 24 hours old, and from banned accounts do not trend, although they appear in Latest unless they are hidden. A ping with several open reports from established members does not trend while the reports are open. Moderators can pin up to three pings to the top of the Relay and can hide a ping from the Relay and from tag pages. A hidden ping is still on its author's page, but search engines are asked not to list it.

Blocking and muting

On a member's profile you can block or mute them.

• Block. They can no longer pong, echo, ack or mention you. You will not see their pings in the Relay or on tag pages. Blocking works the same way in direct messages.
• Mute. Their pings are hidden from you in the Relay and on tag pages. They are not told and nothing changes for them.

You can still open a blocked or muted member's profile yourself. You can undo either from the same place.

Reporting

Every ping, pong and echo with a comment has a Report button. Choose spam, harassment, illegal content or something else, and add details if you like. A moderator sees a copy of the text. Moderators can remove the post, hide it from the Relay, or suspend the author. Reporting your own post is not possible. See the guide on reporting content.

Privacy

Pings are outside the encrypted vault and the encrypted chat. They are not scanned or fingerprinted, and your network address is not saved with a ping. The ordinary server request logs are the only place an address appears. A photo you attach has already been checked when you added it to your photos. Banned members' pings are hidden everywhere.