So be very judgmental about what sites you allow into your ring. It's your ring after all! You don't have to explain to anyone why you have rejected their site, and personally, I would not do so. Just reject them saying, "does not match criteria" or some such thing, and move on.

Another strong ethical point - don't criticize sites. At best you will needlessly discourage a webmaster and at worst you will make an enemy. There is no need to do any of that.

You need to work hard to keep your ring intact. A broken webring makes it very difficult for surfers to navigate, and makes you, as ringmaster, look bad. Your first chore is to ensure that new sites add proper ring fragment to proper page on their site. You must then occasionally check those pages (either using automatic ring-checking functions or by hand) to ensure that fragment remains. It is also a good idea to check content occasionally - more than once I've allowed a good site into a ring only to find, a month later, it has become a hardcore pornographic piece of junk.

Promoting a webring is important but all ringmasters must be sure they use ethical means to advertise. Some ethical promotional activities include:

- It is generally acceptable to send a single email to a webmaster asking if they want to join. You should ensure that web site matches your criteria and email is well written. In other words, don't find email address of 10,000 webmasters and send them all same email asking them to join your ring - that's spam.

- You should include URL of your webring join page in all of your autoresponder messages from guestbooks, forms and so on.

- You might want to include URL of join page in your email signature line.

- Of course, you should advertise your webring in your own ezine.

It is also not a good idea to surf someone else's ring just for purpose of recruiting members for your own ring. That's considered unethical behavior. Find your own set of sites and recruit them yourself.

Ringmasters need to remember that they are judged, just as are webmasters and other creative people, by their creations. A webring is a creation made up of many different sites. Maintain a quality webring and you will attract quality traffic, maintain a poor quality ring, and you will not attract any traffic at all (in fact, you may turn it away).

Ensuring board remains on-topic. The best message boards stick to one or more specific topics. A major job of a good moderator is to review postings to ensure that they are of same subject as board. At very least, off-topic threads should be discouraged quickly or gently moved to other, more appropriate arenas.

Minimize flaming. Flames are critical or derogatory remarks. A flame war is kind of like a shouting match where insults are hurled between people until they all flee, exhausted and battered. Good moderators gently prod people into posting responsibly by discouraging flaming.

Eject troublemakers and spammers. As moderators read through postings, it can become obvious very quickly that there is a troublemaker in group. These troublemakers need to be handled - either by gentle persuasion or more harsh measures if necessary. In fact, moderator must be ready to eject severe troublemakers from group if these people are continually causing problems.

The best boards are good because they remain on-topic and communications between individuals is civil and useful. A good moderator works to ensure that this remains true so that everyone can benefit from community as well as contribute to discussions in an intelligent manner.

The best moderators work with board members to create an environment which is enjoyable and beneficial to all. A bad moderator can produce feeling that one is being watched by Gestapo or secret police, where every word is watched and postings are often deleted without apparent cause or need.

Members of board need to feel that their comments are desired and valued. Randomly deleting large numbers of postings for no apparent reason other than moderator disagrees will certainly cause a board to become useless and empty of life. In fact, one of things that can make a board truly outstanding is lively (not insulting or demeaning but lively) discussions about various topics.

And that's really job of a board moderator. To ensure that board remains viable, active and alive. To promote and ensure that an environment exists where people can post without threat or fear. And to be sure that disagreements do not flare into all-out warfare.