Hi,

    Hit ASP.net --> Forums and what do you see?  I see mostly stuff that belongs there - from a usablity and practicality standpoint.  There's a clear designation of where you are, through the logo and menu bar that gives easy access to the rest of the ASP.net site.  Below that, a small bit of ad space - pay a few bills, but not obtrusive.  To the right, shortcuts and contributor recognition program section - a reasonable choice.

    Where I think you might make better use of the real estate, is below the advertizing section in the discussions section that begins a long list of forum choices.  Obviously, it is of prime importance to get members to the forum they want quickly, and provide users with a listing of the available forums; but if there was another way to do this, and free up some space in its current location, that space could be used for forum use guidance.

   The objective is to make life easier for the administrators and moderators here, get better results for members asking questions, and limit misuse, abuse and wasted time all around.  If it will work, it has to work from a number of perspectives.  First off, I'd guess a high percentage of posts are from people wanting a specific answer to a pressing problem, and have come across the ASP.net forums.  They are deperate to get an answer, and feel the best way to do that is to get get their post in ASAP - probably with the subject line "PLEASE HELP!!!"  Ok, for these, anything less than a series of check points harder to get past than those gaurding the Green Zone in Baghdad wouldn't slow them down enough to look at some guidlines; but, many will likely return to the forums in a less frantic mode later on.  Then there are those that may have used the forums for some time, and are generally good in their habits (hope I'm in this lot), but somehow have missed some important principle, best practice or feature.  These (we), are not likely to re-read, or even look to read through a long article or scan a long list of guidlines - but we might notice something new to them, if it were part of the Forum main page, and if there were just a couple of "Tip of the day" type entries that would rotate through on each page load.

   That's my suggestion: make some space below the ads, and above the forums list for a rotating list of forum use guilines, with links for a more complete treatment of a listed guidline, and links for a complete list of available guidline items.

  Didn't see anything like this in the search I did (but I'm not the searcher), but did see a related thread from 2005 - 896005.  BRN..