Most forums have them, Introduce Yourself Threads. I was about to add one to my forum but I could not see the benefit of it. Nobody would really read them as there is no valuable information there. And nobody would really introduce themselves anyway. Most post are like, “ Hay everybody, nice to be here nice forum†or something along that line. Even though I have not added introduce yourself section to my forum people still post messages mentioned above so maybe I should start one just to keep all the introductions in one place.
I usually go through the introduction section and tag the thread with the members state or country. That makes it easy to search through the tags if your looking for someone close to your location. If someone joins the forum and thier looking for members close to their area, I'll post a link to the tag. So it can make members easier to find.
While not every member uses it, a handful still do, at least from my experiences with my own forums and other ones I've been on (especially smaller forums).
The introductions section is probably one of the more important forums! Its a safe place for new members to make their first post and be welcomed! Its an important first step in nurturing them into be being a regular poster. All my mods spend a lot of time welcoming people, asking them questions, encouraging....its all about community development. I even have a special team designated as the 'Welcome Committee" - they not mods, but have that designation as their user group. The whole aim is to make new posters come back and post a second time. The welcome PM and email to all new member has a link to the Intro forum and encourages them to make a post.
There are always going to be people who want to formally introduce themselves, that's just how they were raised. Having a single thread, or even an introductions forum, is more or less a way to give moderators a place to put these types of posts so the posts don't clutter up any of the other forums when you get the spouts where it seems everyone and their uncle wants to introduce themself at the same time (which will happen occasionally) and so that moderators don't have to risk being called Nazis when they try to clean things up. It's just one of those Common Courtesy things that really can't hurt to have, but could set you up for bad publicity if you don't have it.
Its a good way to 'break the ice'. And to be honest, its a good way (for me) to judge how friendly a forum is- if someone posts with no response...its a bit of a let down for me.
...Few days gap, but I feel like weighing in The Introductions area is indeed one of the most important sections of a site. I'll take myself as an example, I only just registered here... This site is so huge with so many sections, despite me being a very internet savvy person and a long-time user of many forums, it was actually fairly daunting... "Where do I start?", "What should I say?"... I might have just signed on, read what I needed to read and logged off for the night... But I figured it was worth my time to at least say hello! A LOT of - if not, all of - members think this way and it's always a great section to have "just because". If you're at all worried about spam, just disable post counts in the section and you should be all set! ...Now think about this: After everything we've all said about the Introduction section, what's the harm is having one?
Thank you for all of your replies You have manage to convince me to have New Member Introduction section so I have started one. And as I said at fist that I did not see the point of having it, now I can see the usefulness of it. Thank you for convincing me
It gives the forum a warmer feeling. I have "Introduce Yourself" boards on all my forums. I may even force people to post there before being able to post in other boards.