Message boards have a life of their own, like any other community of living, intelligent beings. Virtually all vibrant boards have one or two very dominant contributors (who are occasionally moderators) who area very respected and who more or less control everything. These people are very prolific, very knowledgeable and extremely respected.

Good contributors have following characteristics:

- They are very prolific - They respect other contributors to board - They are polite and never flame anyone - They do not put up with other people misusing message board - They support moderator and goals of message board - They do not spam board with advertisements

Bad contributors, on other hand, do opposite.

Smart moderators support good contributors, as they understand that this is what makes a board not only survive but prosper. In fact, if a message board can get even one good contributor, it will soon have a large following of other contributors and readers.

I have seen many message boards fail when one of star contributors left scene. Even more interestingly, I've seen boards go on vacation (become idle) at exact same time as one of power contributors went on vacation. When he returned, board came back to life.

The point of all of this is if you want to be part of a web community, then find a message board which matches your interests. Then go ahead and contribute your experiences, opinions, knowledge and data. You may gain a following, and you may find others beginning to look to your for guidance. And that is a great way to spend your time on internet.

If you really want to annoy your friends, you can send emails to lots of different people using carbon copy feature. This is a common sin among newbies who don't know any better. What's problem? Well, including a list of email addresses exposes all of those addresses to everyone receiving message (and anyone it's been forwarded to). This often results in quite a bit of spam, as well as lots of useless messages being sent back and forth if anyone replies to message.

Then you find people who seem to think that banners and popups are good ideas. Don't you just hate surfing to a site which consists of dozens of mindless banners and two or more popups? And worse yet, it's not like they are advertising something useful. Most often, these silly advertisements want you to purchase something that you don't need, don't want and wouldn't give to your worst enemy on a bad day.

Oftentimes, all of these sins are result of misunderstandings as to purpose and usefulness of internet. I mean, you would probably not be likely to purchase furniture from a banner stapled to a telephone pole, so why would you buy one from a banner on a web site or based upon a spam email? Most people would not run power cables to their neighbors house to get their electricity, so why would they steal bandwidth?

How do you avoid all of these sins? By learning about internet; By understanding how to use it effectively to help meet your goals; and by acting ethically and responsibly. What does that mean? Think before doing, and don't do anything you would not like others to do to you.

It's as simple as that.

Some other articles on internet sins that you may find of interest are listed below.

Sins of internet- Bandwidth Stealing http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_bandwidth.htm

Sins of internet- Banners http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_banners.htm

Sins of internet- CopyrightInfringement http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_copyright.htm

Sins of internet- Not Using Bcc http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_notusingbcc.htm

Sins of internet- Money Making Programs http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_moneymaking.htm

Sins of internet- Pop Ups http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_popups.htm

Sins of internet- Signup Junkie http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_signupjunkie.htm

Sins of internet- Spamming Search Engines http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_searchspam.htm

Sins of internet- Webring Spammer http://www.internet-tips.net/Legal/sins_webringspam.htm

To see a list of article available for reprint, you can send an email to: mailto:article-list@internet-tips.net?subject=send_article_list or visit http://internet-tips.net/requestarticles.htm