Community Ideas: How can we make APFFN more welcoming?
I was a bit curious after the recent info posted here by Fulgers, so I decided to head out and do my own research in some randomly selected forums. As anticipated, there were a few bitter folks out there, who just had a bad experience with their visit here...(which in turn made my experience not so good at their forum
) I even got a "those people seemed cool". So it wasn't all bad. The main reason it seems, that some newcomers go without even posting, is because of alot of irrelevant off topic discussion, and also a sense that they will get ripped if they post. Now obviously not all feel this way, hence the success of the Welcome to the Machine Forum.
At first glance, I'd hope a new person gets more positive vibes than negative ones, as I'm sure all you would. Now I know when we get the occasional troublemaker that this will not be the case, which is cool. All in all, I don't mind what resentful past visitors feel about us, but it is a tool we can learn from. I mean, wouldn't it be nice to have 75 members logged in at once?
Exciting! 
So perhaps this is something we can all keep in mind when welcoming our new members. It is only natural that conversations will progress, but perhaps we could try to maintain it when not in the Just Babbling forum. What other ideas do you guys have about this? Your input is appreciated!