Thanks for taking the time to read this message. Communities like this are only as strong as the people who support them. Hopefully you think this is a great idea and are willing to help out. Here are some ideas if you are willing to spend a bit of time here.

Post - Seems obvious, but if everyone reads, and nobody posts, nothing happens. Don't be shy...

Promote - Tell people about the site, invite your friends to join. Maybe you know of an expat club or organisation that would also like to use some of the facilities here? Talk to them, motivate them. Think of opportunities for cross-promotion. If you have any ideas about promoting the site then please share them with us in the forum.

Become a moderator - Would you like to help out by moderating one or more forums? Your job would be to check and control messages in certain areas to ensure that everything is running the way it should be. It might be that you will also be a very active poster in that area, so it will probably be a subject area that you have a special interest in. Running a system like this can take time, so moderators can certainly lessen the load of the administrator, as well as introducing different personalities into the team.

Link - Do you have your own site? Then link to us! The more links we get the higher the chances that people will find content posted here in search engines.

Does any of this make sense to you? Fantastic - let us know about it.

Regards,
Mark

Hey mark
thanks for the forum. as for improvements, perhaps this forum can consider better guidelines for conduct. perhaps a good example is YAHOO ANSWERS.

i think as a forum you should promote healthy and active debate. and frown upon personal attacks and slander - especially if it comes from an admin who for the time being shall reman nameless.

I tend to think the friendlier the environment and the more interesting posts will keep and increase users. otherwise it will end-up with a few select friends all agreeing with each-other.

If you think there are personal attacks and slander going on, then please send me a PM with the details.

As for conduct, we have written quite a few guidelines and policies in the announcement and forum support sections, however, those who tend to violate them don't really bother to read such things anyway. Also, in certain forums we have guidelines for the policies of that forum - for example guidelines on commercial posts, etc.

So far mostly things have worked by the law of common sense and according to the general rules of etiquette which should be followed everywhere on the internet. But if someone is making a pain of them themselves, admins and mods can sometimes be sarcastic - it gets tiring dealing with such cases day after day.

I accept that more guidelines need to be written, and as you notice I've been writing some of them. But it's a time consuming process in addition to the other forum duties.