We at Bruins Nation would like to take the time to welcome our new members - many of you signing up in the last two weeks after the debacle in the desert.   We appreciate all the new ideas, commentary, and general banter going back and forth with all our members and it shows how proud all of us are with UCLA and athletics is just one of the many areas in which we feel connected.

We wanted to go over the rules of the site and some basic information to welcome you.

• FanPosts need to be more than one line. In fact, they should be more than one paragraph or at least 75 words.
• FanPost entries need to deal with something of substance.
• DO NO CUT AND PASTE ENTIRE ARTICLES.
• Make sure to link to any article on the web that you want to quote. We want to give everyone their due.
• If you are going to excerpt content from another source please provide a link or a specific citation.
• Do not post subscription based content from another source without permission.
• If you post pictures/images please provide either a link or citation to where you got the picture from
• Before posting excerpt of an article, a link or bringing up a news story, please skim through the main page posts, FanPosts and FanShots to see someone else has already linked it. If someone has already linked it put up your post only if it adds a different perspective the ongoing discussion. Otherwise repetitive posts (and comments) will be deleted.

A few other quick points:

• Respect each other.  We all have one thing in common here, which brings people together.
  
• Respect the moderators.  Attacks on the moderators will result in warnings, deletions, or the falling of the ban hammer.
• Relentless negativity will not be tolerated.  Provide reasoning or solutions behind your comments, and not just "we suck."
• Insulting UCLA or anyone associated with UCLA can result in the ban hammer.  I haven't broken in my ban hammer yet, so don't be my first victim.
  

As for some other helpful hints, definitely check out BN 101 - An Overview of Posting and Commenting.

I also highly recommend perusing the Bruins Nation Lexicon.  It has explanations of the initials that have been handed out, some of our favorite acronyms (SPTR!) and what we use to call USC (Trogans, Ballroom Dancers, Senora Ross... etc.)

If you'd also like to learn more about the community, please look on the left side of the home page under the "About Us" menu.  We have some stories about why we bleed Blue and Gold, What the Four Letters mean to us, things we Bruins hold dear (I make everyone skip the 6th step at Janss),  and so much more.

Once again, welcome to Bruins Nation, thank you for joining, and we hope to have many thought provoking, interesting and fun discussions in the year to come.