OOC - Things All Ongoing Worlds Members Should Know?

A comment that Writing Bug wrote in response to LargeHobbit's recent discussion post really got me thinking. There are a lot of things that I know and understand about Ongoing Worlds that I take for granted and unconsciously expect other people to know and understand as well. The thing is, many of these things that I have come to understand took me a long time to learn. There is a surprisingly steep learning curve to figuring out how to comfortably fit into the Ongoing Worlds Community, a curve that may be exacerbated by the lack of easy-to-see information about what to do.

In line with what Writing Bug mentioned, perhaps it would be nice to assemble that information into one place where Ongoing Worlds members could easily find it. The first step, then, will be to decide what exactly we believe is information that all Ongoing Worlds members should know. I'll start by listing my thoughts on things I really want people to know.

• There is a fairly small pool of writers that are active on Ongoing Worlds at any time, so any moderator worth their salt should try to help potential members figure things out instead of dismissing them.
• You can find the email address of any given member by clicking the links to their profile page. Email communication is extremely valuable here on Ongoing Worlds.
• Take a look at the game information page of any games you are interested in. This page can be found on the pull-down menu next to the game title.
• You can make comments on posts that have the "This is an OOC Post" checkbox checked. The easiest way to do this is to make a Disqus account, but you can also sign in as a guest and use a phony email if you are internet-paranoid or just don't feel like dealing with yet another account.
• Given that there are likely less than 30 different people that will look at Ongoing Worlds through the course of the average week, and most of those people are already involved in a comfortable amount of games, it is unreasonable to expect a bunch of people to join a new game the day it is created unless you have built hype for said game. Be patient, and eventually some of those thirty people will try your game out if it is worth joining.
• If you make a new game, do all of the things that appear on the "things to do list" as soon as possible. If you aren't sure how to do something, there are people on Ongoing Worlds that will be happy to help you.

Do you guys have anything to add? What kind of things have you seen people do or not do that have frustrated you? What kind of things do you remember wishing you'd known when you first joined?

I'm thinking about trying to assemble a ten bullet point list of things we Platformers believe all Ongoing World members should know, and then maybe post that list on the blog (you guys will be credited in that post if it happens).

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