Internet Forums
Internet Forums are a great place to learn more and share ideas about all aspects of the 40k hobby. If you aren't familiar with them, let me recommend that you check out The Millennium Gate or Warpshadow, both of which can be found on my Links page. Both of them are very friendly Forums with a lot of helpful posters. Forums, as well as Discussion lists and groups such as can be found at groups.yahoo.com are all places where people of similar interests can discuss their interests. Some of them are very broad in topic, such as all of 40k, others are more narrow, dealing only with a single race (such as Warpshadow) or only painting, for example. You will find a variety of people on most Forums and lists, and just as in everyday life, some of them are nicer or more helpful than others. I specifically mentioned the Gate and Warpshadow as being friendly and helpful. Both of them tend to go out of their way to welcome newcomers and are pretty good about checking egos at the door. Please keep in mind that not all Forums are like this.

Danger, Will Robinson!
There are quite a few Forums out there that are not friendly to newcomers. A lot of posters have big ego issues and will seize on the apparent anonymous nature of the internet to attack others to make themselves seem more important. Some will also use objectionable language or troll to start fights. Some will also type using chat shortcuts (u for You) or leetspeak, both of which can be hard to read. Many Forums are policed by Moderators, who are supposed to prevent flame wars and attacks from happening. Remember, however that the Mods are people as well. Just because they have been put in a position of authority doesn't mean they are any wiser than anyone else. I know of a few boards that simply gave out Moderatorships to their friends. That resulted in the Mods turning a blind eye to what their friends did but trying to crack down on people they didn't know. I also know of some Forums that have extremely opinionated Moderators. At one such Forum, I was subjected to a multi-page rant about how broken the rules for the new Tyranids were and how no one could beat them. When I tried to point out that they could be beaten and that the poster was incorrect about some rules the person informed me that I was arguing with a Moderator and I should watch my step. That doesn't mean that you can't learn from such a Forum, you just have to either lurk and not post much, or you have to be willing to suffer the slings and arrows of internet criticism. With all that being said, how do you find a _Good_ Forum?

Digging for Gold
How to find good forums is a bit more of an art than a science. Start by determining what you are looking for. If you are looking for information and discussion of Orks, then Imperial Guard sites won't be of much use to you. In the same vein, if you want painting advice and/or to share your expertise, that lets a lot of other Forums out. Then start following links. There are a lot of links out there, and like everything on the internet, many of them are simply crap. You can cull down your list by finding posters that you like and following their links, or simply asking if they go to other Forums. What if you don't know other posters? (Like maybe you are new to a particular Forum.) Well, first read a bunch of posts. If there is someone that you particularly like their style, start reading more of their posts to see if they are interested in some of the same things that you are looking for. Even if somebody doesn't strike you as particularly cool, they may post about topics you are interested in, and they may give good information or bring up good points in a discussion. Finally, check out the new Forums that you find. They may have some good posters, or cool graphics, but make sure they actually have what you came there for. Also check to make sure that they have recent posts about your interest. I've found several Forums that have a number of interesting posts and great ideas, but they had those discussions two years ago and the board is pretty much inactive now. (If this is the case, you may be able to contact the participants and find out if they have any recommendations for Forums that discuss your topic of interest. On the other hand, they may have since moved on to something else or no longer use that contact address, so good luck on that part.)

Post Toasties
How to be a good poster. Start by keeping your posts on topic. If there's a discussion about Tau going on, don't start talking about what happened at school today or how you have an unbeatable army. If you want to talk about your day at school or your army, make a separate post about it, don't derail the discussion at hand. Next is to make sure you provide cogent (oooh! Good Word!) discussion. Simply saying, "Railguns are teh bomb!" isn't useful. If Railguns are part of the discussion and you want to point out why they are so good, explain it. Something along the lines of Long Range letting you hit things across the board from you, S10 letting you nail the heaviest vehicles or even instakill Daemon Princes and the like, and AP1 letting you ignore the toughest armor. That's much more useful than just saying they are good. Answer other people's questions when they ask. Remember, you were new once, too. When answering questions, keep the same ideas in mind as with other posts. Don't go off about some other topic, don't simply state your opinion without backing it up with explanations why. If the question is rules-related, try to provide quotes from the rulebook and page numbers as well. If you simply say "what you know" without backing it up, the person has no reason to believe you, and you might be mis-remembering the rule. Back it up so that everybody knows that you know what you are talking about. If you are asking a question, try to keep it as simple as possible. If you ask about 2 or 3 different things, you probably won't get them all answered. If you keep to one question per post, you can get a lot better answers. Similarly with your other posts, make it easy to understand and explain the question if at all possible. The more that people know about your question, the better an answer they can provide you with.

Do it yourself!
Starting your own Forum. I've seen it happen on a number of occasions. People decide they want to start their own Forums. If this idea strikes you, remember that running a good Forum is a lot of work. In addition to setting up the look of the site and deciding how to break it down into sections, you'll need to Moderate it. Being a good Moderator means reading it frequently to prevent flaming or baiting from going on for any period of time. That means a regular (daily is best) commitment to reading all the new posts in the Forum. If posters cause problems, not only do you have to deal with the problems they cause, but you also have to deal with the posters themselves. You may need to warn them or suspend them or even ban them if they cause serious problems or are repeat offenders. If you don't do all this, your Forum will quickly either fall into anarchy or all the good posters will leave. (Or both. Imagine a board filled with just the troublemakers!) In addition, you may need to pay for hosting or upkeep of the servers, or simply for a domain name. If you are still interested, answer this question: Why do you want a Forum of your own? if you are looking for discussions of 40k, there's a number of them out there already. Discussions of your favorite race? There's generally at least one out there, even for the less-played races. If you are looking for tactics or army lists, they're out there as well. Do you really have something that Dakka, Bolter and Chainsword, Warseer, Warpshadow and The Millennium Gate don't have? Maybe you've got something new, if so go for it. Maybe you don't have something new, but you want to put it in a new format or a new atmosphere. (For example, a couple of the larger boards have very good sections and some very good posters, but they can be something of a free-for-all in terms of ego and attitude. If that's not your cup of mice, you may need to find a different board.) If such a board doesn't seem to exist and you can't start something like what you want on an existing board, you may have to do it yourself. Then you have to consider how to get more members.

More Brains!
Getting new members, especially for a Forum that is just starting up can be a daunting task. The first question to consider is whether or not you _need_ new members. Sure, new members give you more posts, so you have more going on at any given time. New members also mean you have wider influence and more people will hear about you and your Forum. New members can also mean headaches and flaming and arguments. Again, you need to consider why you want the Forum. If it's just for you and your friends to hang out and shoot the breeze, do you really need other posters? I've been on boards like that. Ostensibly they were for discussing 40k or painting or something, but mostly they were about a bunch of friends that live near each other hanging out and talking smack online. That's all well and good, but it's not particularly useful to people who aren't in your group of friends. If you want to do that but still have a generally relevant Forum, consider having a small section for local or off-topic discussion. Just make sure that's not the only section of the Forum that you post in. If you decide that you are in fact looking for new members, how do you get them? One way is to put good-looking links in the signatures of your members when they are in other Forums. If you plan on doing this, I would recommend having someone put together a nice graphic and a brief explanation of what your Forum is, then let everyone use that one. If it's hard to read, doesn't link properly, looks like crap or doesn't say what it is, most people won't bother clicking on it.

In addition, specifically ask your better posters to include it in their signatures on other Forums. Think of the good posters as being your ambassadors. I know that if I'm on a Forum and I see someone spamming up the boards with useless posts or acting like an idiot, I'm not going to visit their Forum, no matter how cool it sounds. If they are particularly bad, I may make note of their Forum so that I don't go there by mistake sometime. On the other claw, if I see someone that has consistently good posts, keeps on topic and has good style, I'll definitely check out any Forums they are linked to, in the hopes of finding more posters there like them. You can also enter your Forum on various link lists, some of which rate your site based on the number of votes you receive. That said, don't bother trying to inflate your vote count. Yes, a lot of people do it, but simply being on the list will get you noticed, and only the monkeys will flock to sites just because they are in the top slots. Trust me, you don't want the monkeys. Having large numbers of members does get you noticed and having lots of posts does the same. It also means there are a lot of different things going on so it keeps everyone busy and most people will be able to find something that they want to talk about. It can also mean that your Forum is filled with spam and crappy posts about people's egos. (Yes, I'm sure your army is the greatest and you can beat everyone easily, but do you really need to tell me about it all the time?) Having lots of new members can be far more headache than it is worth, so beware of how you get new members and how they act. You may need to have some way to keep them in line.

Fighting Chaos
Keeping new members in line. The main thing that will keep new members in line is the Moderators. The Moderators read the posts and make sure that they follow the rules and aren't trying to attack others or bait attacks to start a flame war. That is, good Moderators do that. Good Moderators also keep their friends in check and watch their own tongues as well. Just because you know that your friend, Poster X is something of a blowhard and tends to come across a bit aggressively even when he doesn't mean it, doesn't mean your new members will understand. In addition to good, active Moderators, having clear rules helps a lot. If you clearly post what is and isn't acceptable, it makes it easier for new people to understand what you are trying to achieve and how they can behave. A lot of posters may come from Forums that are more lax, meaning that they expect to be able to do whatever they want. If you have clearly posted rules, it will keep the well-meaning ones from making mistakes. I would also recommend clearly delineated punishments for breaking the rules. That will allow new members to understand that your rules are serious and that everybody is treated fairly by the Moderators. It will also help the Moderators when someone wants to know why an action is being taken or if they want to be soft on somebody. The easiest place to start with punishments is a simple warning. I would recommend putting in a private message or email first, but let the poster know that something they are doing violates the rules of the board. Some Forums have a codified number of warnings you can receive (sometimes within a certain length of time) before harder action is taken. One of the possible next steps is censoring posts. This is often done in terms of going along and cleaning up offending posts by editing them. I've also seen it done by requiring a Moderator to okay each of the member's posts before it is actually posted onto the board. This creates extra work for the Moderator team, but it can provide a good step before suspending a member. Suspending a member generally removes their posting priviledges for a certain amount of time. This is usually for repeat offenders or those who have made more serious offenses. Finally, there is banning. Banning revokes the membership of the poster, and may go as far as attempting to block their IP address to keep them from rejoining under a different name. Obviously this is a very dire punishment, and it shouldn't be used lightly.

Having the punishments codified will ensure that this is used only when necessary. In addition, you may need to give expanded Moderator powers so that they can (if it is necessary and can be justified to the site owner or head Moderator) apply punishments out of their codified frame. This isn't often necessary, but it is for those that seem to game the rules of the Forum and see how much they can get away with. Codifying this (that the Moderators have the power to make up their mind about violations if need be) prevents a lot of arguments and perception of unfair treatment. It also allows enforcement of the "spirit" of the Forum, rather than simply the rules that you have written down. Finally, I would recommend having some Guidelines and Suggestions. Write up in a simple format what you expect posts to be and provide examples. Dakka has a great version of this in their Rules section. They explain how to logically explain/defend a particular position in the rules and how to cite evidence. Keep these guidelines short and simple so people will read them. I would recommend putting them in a Frequently Asked Questions or Introduction section, but also put them at the top of each section in the Forum to remind people. While you are at it, make sure that you and your Moderators follow these guidelines as well. Lead by example. Monkey see, monkey do, right?

Why I wrote this Article
I decided to write this article because something reminded me of a Forum that I was on a long time ago. It was a small Forum and had some good posters and good discussions on it. It also had some not-so-good posters that sometimes derailed the discussions or insulted other posters or used inappropriate language. These posters were friends with the Moderators, so their activities were simply overlooked, but they made it a hostile place for everyone else. The members of this Forum talked frequently about how they wanted more members and tried to encourage everyone to help them get new members. The main plan they had seemed to be to get everyone to have a link to their Forum in their signature, join a bunch of other Forums and spam them with posts about how great their Forum was. Strangely enough, this didn't seem to work. Although I genuinely liked a few of the members there, I was so put off by the behaviour that the bad posters got away with time and again that I eventually gave up on the Forum and left. They basically did everything wrong. They didn't have clear rules, the Moderators let their friends get away with things they shouldn't have, they tried methods of getting new members in ways that encouraged people to stay away and they didn't bother trying to be welcoming to the few new members that did manage to show up. Strangely enough, the Forum didn't last very long. If you want to have your own Forum or you already do, let it serve as a lesson to you about how not to do it.

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