Many of you are young, and maybe even fairly new to the Internet. We wanted to take a few minutes and explain how to properly conduct yourself in the Forums. We'd hate for your first experience here to be getting your privileges revoked because you broke some fairly common sense "rules".

Read the other posts before starting your own new topic. We like to keep similar trains of thought in one Forum thread, so that no one misses your thoughts. If you start a new topic when something similar is already being discussed, you risk your thread getting locked or deleted ... and then no one will ever read what you posted. People frequently check threads with the most posts first anyway, so posting in one of those will get your opinion seen by more people.

Don't post in ALL CAPS. All caps is considered shouting, or at least, very rude. And you're likely to get your post deleted and yourself banned if you do it more than once.

Do your best to use proper grammar and spelling. It's just annoying for us to have to try to read your shorthand and lazy typing. Take your TIME, check your spelling (write your messages in a word processor or e-mail program, if it helps), and use full sentences. If you write a five word post with little to no relevance to the topic, it's probably going to get deleted.

Show respect to your fellow forum members. We're all gamers, and there's no excuse for insults and rudeness. Just because you're "anonymous" doesn't mean that we can't find out who you are. Ask some of the folks that have not only been banned, but have had their accounts closed with their ISPs. Unless you go through the exercise of "spoofing" your IP before you post, your IP address tells us what ISP you came from, and the timestamp tells your ISP who was using that IP. Even so, we have other tools at our disposal.

Show respect to the Moderators and NWR Staff. We have this Forum to allow Nintendo fans to talk about games. The Staff and Moderators work VERY hard to keep this a friendly place, and disrespecting them is the quickest way to get yourself banned. Especially disrespecting Rick. Rick has a low tolerance for mindless insults.

Don't post "polls." It's one thing to open a dialogue about what game people want to get. It's another thing entirely for EVERYONE to start a thread asking that same question. It's a cheap way for you to generate "interest" in your thread, and is totally unnecessary. What's a Poll? Anything that asks for an answer or list from people that is completely subjective, and is likely to incite a flamewar. If you want to know what game you should buy, Rent them. Only YOU know what games YOU like, so it would be better for you to try them. If you absolutely want to know what games others are interested in, find a constructive way to ask the question.

Don't make "Me Too" posts. If you're going to bother posting at all, have something to SAY. You don't need to tell everyone that you agree, or just post a winky face. The amount of data that needs to be downloaded when you post just a couple of words is significant. Forums allow everyone to have a voice, and to make that voice heard. That's a lot of power ... so make sure you have something to SAY if people are going to be listening. Otherwise, it'll be a case of "the boy who cried 'wolf'" where no one will listen to anything you have to say, since it was all worthless in the past.

Keep your posts on topic. We've broken up the Forum by categories to make it easier for everyone to find information and discussions on various subjects. Your message is more likely to be heard in the proper place. And it's more likely to be removed outright if it's not. You might think that posting in a highly trafficked thread is a quick way to get your message lost in the shuffle, but it's more likely to get lost when no one is looking for it where you posted it.

When making a new topic, post a CLEAR subject. In the journalism world, the rules tends to be that a good headline has as much "Who, What, When Where, Why, and How" information as possible. Posting a subject of "HELP!" is inadequate. There's nothing worse than opening a message and finding out it's not at all what you thought it was.

We'll update this Forum FAQ post everytime we think of something. Keep looking out for it.