On occasion, the Administrator/Moderators of this Discussion Forum, Dodger Matt and myself, may post a lead topic in this location as a spot for announcements or any other appropriate information of importance or interest.

First, let me be the first to officially welcome you to our great new forum - The Oregon Baseball Campaign Forum!

Our community's efforts for bringing a Major League Baseball team are strong and growing, and the unveiling of Oregon Baseball Campaign and its web site is another milestone in the history of our MLB effort.

This Forum is a reflection of that renewed dedication and passion -- we are stepping up in the world of discussion forums by our choice to use one of the best forum software programs available: OpenTopic provided by Infopop. While it is a drastic change from what our "old" forum users as well as what most people in our community are used to, we are confident that all of us will find it to also be a drastic improvement over past software and, most importantly, a significantly better forum filled with relevant, interesting, "G"-rated content (or as close to that as reasonably possible).

The most significant change is that our forum has abandoned the troublesome, and sometimes troublemaking-vulnerable, "anybody can post" system that most forums still use. We have changed this to a system where, for the most part, participants must "register" in order to participate. More about that later.

Reasons for this most significant change are many, but the overall guiding principle is to guard us (as forum "owners" and presenters) and you from some of the problems that commonly occur with "anonymous-type" forums where anybody is allowed to post anything under any alias. Unfortunately, some people have abused the privelege and right of "free speech" by contributing significant amounts of "trash" to anonymous forums. Availability of many forums, and that outlet to exercise "free speech," are jeopardized when people abuse their rights.

We have decided that it is best if our forum require people to follow reasonable rules and etiquette and that can only be done if they are held accountable to follow the rules by being required to give up a certain and reasonable amount of their anonymity to the presenters of this outlet. In short, we will allow anybody to say virtually anything as long as it is relevant and follows appropriate levels of decency for ALL viewers, but they must register so they can be held accountable to the reasonable rules that govern participation. Registration with this Forum is a reasonable method of maintaining accountability, and participants can still maintain significant privacy by using an alias and by not being required to provide the Forum with your name, address, or other private information they wish to keep confidential.

While some people may find mandatory registration to be slightly inconvenient to begin, we are EXTREMELY confident that ALL participants will quickly see the many benefits to this system, and will soon see just how valuable it is to the quality and accuracy of the content presented here. We have seen this to be the case at the largest and best forums in the world, and we believe that many of us will soon wonder why every forum does not switch to this system immediately.

Whether you have registered yet or not, before diving into participation, take a few moments to look all around the forum - all pages and all content therein from top to bottom. Familiarize yourself with some of the features and structure of the discussion. You will see that there are TONS of features most people aren't familiar with from other forums. Most of these features are ONLY possible because of mandatory registration.

Move your mouse pointer around all of the links, icons and other graphical features on the pages...a small "description flag" should pop up to give a description of what that feature is, just in case the graphic itself doesn't make that clear. You, as users (participants), have all sorts of features at your fingertips; from editing features to whimsical icons you can add to specific spots in your postings to highlight your message.

If you post a message and find you made a mistake, in most cases you will have a full 2 weeks to edit that message any number of times (although, don't abuse that feature by going back to change something in the effort to deceive someone...you will get caught and be held accountable). This is just one of the many features available to you.

When browsing each page, take notice of the area at the bottom of each page called "Forum Rules." We use several "rules configurations" to govern the content and participation in different areas of the site. For example, in "Suggestions," we have that forum available to the general public - even unregistered people - as a spot they can provide suggestions to us about any subject; but we will edit and delete messages to disallow any people trying to discuss irrelevant subjects that belong in other areas of the Forum. Another example is "Polls," where only specific people can start a topic (also known as a "thread") but any registered person can participate and respond to those threads. Another example is "Professional Baseball in Oregon," where ANY registered user may start new threads and respond to threads.

Just a quick introdution to one other feature: "UBB Code" is a way to insert "code" into your messages so you can do many things with them, whether you want to italicize words, make some words bold, make a link to something, make a funny face or whatever, UBB Code will help you to do that. Following the linked words I just typed will take you to the UBB Code page where you can learn more about that or look for the linked words "UBB Code" throughout the site.

There are many other features that are just too hard and lengthy to outline for you here...you'll just have to discover them for yourself and feel very free to experiment with them. You'll find that even if you make a "mistake," people WON'T criticize you and they will be VERY willing to help...because if it isn't for other people here like you, they won't have anybody with whom to communicate about the subjects at-hand.

So, as you can see, this is a full-featured Forum and should be a lot of fun and very informative to participate in.

To get started, go ahead and Register! Then hop right on in and join the discussion!

To actually start posting, look for the "button"-like graphics labeled "New Topic" and "Post Reply." Some folks may get confused by that...

Generally, if you want to start a completely new topic and be the first person in a "thread" (also called a "topic"), click on "New Topic" and a form will pop up for you to fill out. With New Topics, you must type both a Subject and the first response to the subject...look for the asterisks (*) to know what you are required to fill out. If you want to reply in a thread, click on "Post Reply;" a similar form will pop up and you are only required to enter your response (again, look for the asterisk).

So - go ahead and start by registering! We are anxious to read what you have to say! Most important of all: have fun and use this as an opportunity to learn and grow!

_______________________
Pokey (aka: Tim Marttala)
Director of Operations
Oregon Baseball Campaign

[This message was edited by Pokey on APR-02-01 at 12:12 AM.]

I dug this up as a historical reference to the site here. This shows you how long the effort has been in place, and the key individual that started the site along with Dodger Matt.

"PLAY BALL!"

And just so you know, just about all of Pokey's posts were this long....

--Tim Chamberlin--
--OSC Volunteer Coordinator--