Rules & Info: (Setup by Our Own KPSZA Community)

INFO

1. Before Joining

When using an online forum, it’s important to remember that public forums can be accessed by anyone from anywhere in the world, and as such there may be some language barriers to consider when posting and replying to messages. Also, a forum will be centered around a specific topic (e.g., small businesses, online games, a hobby such as collecting, sports, and so on).

Also, be sure that when you register for and use a forum, you’re joining one where you have an interested in the designated topic. If you want to discuss your new AMD gaming rig, don’t join an “All About Intel” forum, for example. You can also spend some time reading older forum posts to get an idea of the types of discussions that take place and to see how active a forum is before joining.

2. The forum itself is an application that “holds” discussions and user-generated content that is contributed by the community of forum members. Most forums will have moderators, sometimes called mods for short, who are users that have access to remove unrelated posts, rude comments, spam messages posted to the forum or even remove unruly users themselves. They can lock threads from further discussion and generally oversee that the forum runs smoothly for all participants.

3. When using an online forum, remember they can be accessed by anyone from anywhere, and there may be language barriers to consider when posting.

Forums are an online discussion area where you can post and read messages from other users with similar interests, usually in an organized thread layout. Many Web sites today also build communities around their site by offering discussion forums where users can post messages, reply and discuss specific topics or simply introduce themselves to other forum members. These online communication spaces are frequently called online forums, discussion forums or just forums.

RULES

• Do Stay On Topic. Many people use forums for knowledge gathering as well as social interactions. Forum posts and threads can be read by hundreds or thousands of users, and as such it’s important to read the topic of a particular discussion and keep your posts related to that topic. If you are looking for general chat and comments, look in the forums for an off-topic discussion area.
• Don’t Be A Troll. A “troll” is a person who breaks netiquette on a regular basis by posted inflammatory messages (called a flame) when responding to other users in the forums. Trolls are also users who will find older flame-filled threads on a forum and reply to them just to get users worked up again.
• Do Turn That Caps Lock Key Off. When you type a post in all capital letters you are going to annoy other forum users. Capital letters are viewed as shouting when communicating online, and its considered rude to do.
• Don’t Double Post. When using Internet forums it annoys other users when you post the same message more than once, in more than on discussion thread. If you make a post and no one replies, then leave it at that. Reposting the same message or slightly edited versions of the same message will not earn you any respect from other forum users, and in fact it may earn you warnings from the moderator.
• Do Search Before Posting. Before posting a question or asking for help on a particular topic, do use the forum search option to make sure this question has not already been asked and answered by other users. Even if your question does not appear in the thread list, it may still be available as an archived topic in the forum.