I’m new to this forum. The forums I was on were shut down because of people in there were starting to be jerks. Please help me getting started with these threads. What are the rules? How do they punish you in these forums? etc.
Welcome to the boards. Please take a moment to read the forum descriptions, and also read the FAQ, which should answer most of your questions.
Thanks.
Welcome…
As Q.E.D. mentioned pay attention the the forum descriptions. It is often the most overlooked piece new people make. Even people who have been here awhile occasionally post in the wrong forum and occasionally a thread will morph in the course of discussion and get moved. It causes the Moderators to have to move the post to the appropriate forum which they’d rather not do.
The second bit of advice is to search the boards before posting a question if you think it is likely something someone may have asked before. You’ll be surprised at the breadth of questions contained here. Don’t sweat this one too much though. Other posters will often just refer you to previous threads if they exist and many times the thread will get plenty of answers anyway. You can expect hot-button and current topics to have been discussed (e.g. abortion or President Bush and Iraq). You can either jump into one of those threads or, if you feel your question is substantially different form those going on go ahead and post.
Realize that you cannot edit posts here. Once you submit your post that’s the end of it and it is out there for all to see. If you want to correct something you said you have to post again pointing out your own error (if you don’t others probably will). Rarely a Moderator may be asked to edit a post for you but it has to generally be for something profoundly wrong with the post…not because you misspelled a word (sometimes the Mods will do it on their own but again this is rare).
Finally, watch out how much you quote from other sources. This is more of a ‘feel’ thing but the SDMB does not want to get in trouble for copyright violations. You can quote portions of other people’s work but only small portions and you must cite the original author and if possible provide a link.
Enjoy! This is a great message board!
kputt,
Welcome to the SDMB. Q.E.D. and Whack-a-Mole have both given good advice. I’d suggest you lurk a bit to get the feel.
This forum is General Questions. It is the place for questions with factual answsers. If you have a question About This Message Board, we have another forum for that.
Since there is no General Question here, I’ll just close this.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator