What should I know about chatmail?

The community's chatmail system is a system sending messages exclusively within the community. It has nothing to do with email. Neither can you send a message from the chatmail system to some email address nor can you send an email message to the chatmail mailbox of a community user.

The chatmail system mainly is supposed to give users, having "missed" each other in the chat or not being able for whatwever reason to talk to each other "live", the possibility to send each other certain messages.

Beside the mail funcionality for the users among themselves the chatmail system also is used for so-called "internal informations" which are sent automatically by the system to users, e.g. concerning
picture approval, friends list etc.
Please, read these mails as their content is important and sent to you with good reason; we cannot accept any excuses based on "i did not get this internal information" as these mails arrive always.
You can recognize internal informations in the mail overview beside the subject (mostly "INTERNAL INFORMATION", but also e.g. "FRIENDSLIST") and the fact that there is no sender displayed by the symbol with the small "i". No other chatmail has that making the internal information quasi "forgery-proof". It is true, some mean user can send you an "INTERNAL INFORMATION" in which he claims to be a SPiN-employee and request any things (maybe even your password), but you recognize the mail being a fake already by realising the mail's symbol. In addition one cannot reply to an internal information (because of that there is no "Reply" button available). These mails exclusively serve for information not communication. This makes these mails "forgery-proof" as well. In case you receive a faked mail and do not pay attention to the symbol or the sender you will recognize it by the missing "Reply" button at the latest.

Concerning behaviour the same rules of conduct as in the chat apply.

Sending mails

To mail a user you have several possibilities

• Via navigation item "Mails"->"->Send mail"
  
• Via the "Send mail" button of the corresponding user profile
  
• Via the "Send mail" button in a board posting of the corresponding user.
  In this case the title of the posting is automatically marked as a reply and pasted into the subject field as well as the text of the board posting is copied into the mailtext field, so that the posting text your mail relates to is quoted in the mail, and the mail receiver knows what it is about.

Having opened a mail form either way, in line "Username(s)" enter the corresponding nickname correctly spelled (If you are mailing "via board posting", the receiver of course is already filled in). In case you want to mail to several users at the same time, enter the nicknames separated by commas. You can mail up to 10 users at the same time.

If writing out the nicknames in full is too strenuous for you, you can use the search function for receivers. Just click on the "Search" button right beside the receiver field. A window is displayed. Enter the first letters of the desired nickname into the corresponding field and click "Submit". Afterwards you get displayed a list with all registered users, whose nicknames begin like entered. If the list is quite long and your desired nick has not been displayed yet, you can skim on with the "Next" button. Then, behind the corresponding nickname click on the "Add" button. The nickname is added into the receiver field.

You can mail users who are on your friends list by choosing the corresponding nickname from the pulldown menu below in the window and adding it to the receiver field by clicking the "Add" button.

Enter an expressive title for your mail into the subject field. Type your message into the mailtext field.

The editing and creating possibilities for a chatmail by the way are similar to those for profile pages and boards. You can insert pictures and smilies via the corresponding buttons.

Before finally sending a mail you can check it again by using the preview function. To do so click on the "Preview" button. A page opens displaying your current text version above the mailtext field. Make your desired changes in the mailtext field where your text is.
To finally send your mail click the "Submit" button.

Managing mails

Go into "Mails". In case you already have mails in your "mailbox" you will get displayed a list with the most currrent mail on top.

Deleting mails
To delete a certain message mark the corresponding line with a click onto the checkbox.
You can mark several mails the same way to delete them at the same time afterwards.
You do that by clicking the "Delete selected mails" button.

In case you want to delete all mails except for some selected ones, mark the mails you want to keep, and then click the "Toggle selection" button. Now the mails are marked you want to delete, and you can click the "Delete selected mails" button.

In case you really want to delete all your mails, click on "->Delete all mails" in the box right beside the mail overview.

Downloading mails
The chatmailbox should be cleared regularly to prevent our system from too much load caused by the mails of the thousands of users.
Before clearing your chatmailbox you can download all the mails currently being stored in there. To do so click on "->Download mails" in the box right beside the mail overview. A window appears informing you about the further proceeding, namley that you can download all your chatmailes bundled up in one HTML file. By clicking "OK" you are starting the download. Save the generated HTML file on your hard drive.
Please note, that internal informations sent by the system (e.g. concerning picture approval, friends list etc.) are not included in the automatic download process.

Concerning mail management as a VIP you have additional comfortable features at your disposal in the box right beside the mail overview:

Beside the ususal "inbox", means the mail overview when entering "Mails", you also have a "outbox", in which chatmails you have sent are saved.
In contrast to the mails in your "inbox" you cannot download mails from your "outbox". If you want to keep them anyway you have to save them by manual copy&paste.

In addition you can configure the mail overview of the corresponding folder by certain options:

• all mails - Display all mails
  
• friends only - Display only mails from friends
  
• internal info only - Display only internal informations

Finally you can search your mails for whatever with the search function.
Enter the desired keyword into the corresponding field and click the "Search" button. Depending on your settings under "Folder" and "View" the corresponding mails will be scanned in subject and mailtext, and afterwards you will get displayed a list with the hits resp. an information that no matching mails have been found.
You can leave the "View" "search results" by switching to another "View" like e.g. "all mails".