All of the Baby-Gaga forums are self-moderating. This means that the fights and spam are removed by the collective votes of all it’s members.

We have designed a brand new sort of forum where every member’s trust levels will increase and decrease according to their behaviors and interactions with other members. Those members with high levels of trust will have more impact when they vote to move something to the Drama Corner, mark something as Spam, or report an image, as they have proven their reliability as a moderator and member of the site.

In a sense, every member has the ability to be a moderator if they act concientiously

Follow these basic steps:

1. Assuming you already know what you want to say as you’ve either:
   • read a post and want to reply
   • want to start a new topic in a relevant forum (e.g. Pregnancy Issues or Free For All etc.)
2. Click on the link at the bottom of a page “post a reply” if you’re replying to a thread or the link “post topic” at the top of any board.
3. Enter your reply or new topic using the text editor and when you're satisfied with your repsonse click on "post topic" or "post reply"
4. If you want to edit or delete your post, click on the corresponding "edit" or "delete" text links that show up at the top of your post after it has been posted.

There should only be one of two reasons why you would be unable to post in the forum:

• You aren’t logged in
• You are logged in but you haven’t filled in your “about me” on your profile (which is required to prevent spam and introduce you to the boards). To do this, go to your home profile view, and click on your “edit my profile” link on your member menu. From there, simply click on the tab that says “about me” and let us know a little bit about yourself!

Follow these basic steps:

1. Highlight the words, phrase, or URL you’d like to have functioning as a link (e.g. “Isaiah’s baby website” or http://forum.baby-gaga.com/)
2. Click on the “link” button above your entered text.
3. Copy and paste the entire URL (website address) of your desired link and click “OK”
4. Finish whatever you’re posting and click on “Post Reply”. If you want to post multiple links, just follow steps 1 – 3 for each link.

Follow these basic steps:

1. Make sure to click within the text editor field (the area where you post your text)
2. Click on the “image” button above the text editor field
3. Copy and paste the entire photo or image URL (the website address of a photo-hosting website e.g.: http://123.photobucket.com/albums/c201/mybaby.jpg jpg ) of your desired image or photo and then click “add image”
4. Finish whatever you’re posting and click on “Post Reply”. If you want to post multiple photos, just follow steps 1 – 3 for item.

*Note: Currently, only youtube videos will play directly from the forum. Other video sites can be accessed but only as clickable text links (see FAQ topic: Posting a website link for directions).

To post a youtube video directly into a forum post, follow these basic steps:

1. Copy the video url from the page the video plays from (e.g. http://youtube.com/watch?v=PPsUmhqncAg )
2. Paste this URL directly into the text editor (where you’re writing your post)
3. Copy and paste the entire photo or image URL (the website address of a photo-hosting website e.g.: http://123.photobucket.com/albums/c201/mybaby.jpg jpg ) of your desired image or photo and then click “add image”
4. When you’re finished with your post, click “post topic”. *Note: You won’t be able to see the video until you’ve posted the topic on the forum.
5. If you want to post multiple videos within a single post, just follow steps 1 – 3 for each item.

When you post in the forums or edit your "about me" from your profile, you will see the text editor has a "code" option. This allows you to paste in valid HTML code that you find on the web. At the moment, we do not allow some tags and attributes. When you try to post using illegal tags you will see an error message at the time of posting. If this happens and you have a working knowledge of HTML, you can tidy up the code to remove the offending tags using the "show html" mode of the text editor.

Simply click on your “edit my profile” link when you’re logged into your Baby-Gaga account and then click on the “about me” tab at the top. Your signature is the same piece of information as your “about me” on your profile.

You are only able to add a poll if you are posting an original topic. When you choose to post a topic, you will notice a box to check that says “add poll”. Simply check this box and the poll fields will open up above the text fields. Your poll question will also be the subject of the topic you are posting.

Go to your home-profile member menu and click on the link “my topic replies” or click on the top bulletin board labeled “replies to my latest posts”. If the post you’re interested in tracking is older, simply click on ALL to see the full list of topics you’ve posted and their subsequent replies.

The “flag for Drama” button at the end of every thread is there to allow members to vote on a thread they may think has degenerated into a fight and should be move out of the normal forums and into the Drama Corner.

Because we don’t believe in censoring conversations or online behavior (outside of spam and faked identities) we give our members the right to resolve their online conflicts as they see fit. This is why we invented the Drama Corner (TDC). Basically, this is the spot that all the fights and bickering end up.

Apparently, given a certain level of tolerance, there is this mysterious phenomenon that takes place on a public forum: many members take advantage of the anonymity of the internet to act like crazy people and start name-calling and insult-hurling to the point that the discussion is no longer actually useful for anything besides the voyeuristic enjoyment of a bitch-slapping contest. If you enjoy that, you should definitely drop into TDC and check it out every now and again.

The other forums are for members to seek support, give advice, and generally carry on civil conversations with one another.

As we all know, busy forums with lots of traffic tend to be spam magnets. So any post made by a new member will contain the “report spam” button until the member is established as a genuine community member. By clicking on the “report spam” you are entering a vote to say you believe the post IS a spam posting. With enough votes the posting will be automatically deleted and the poster will receive negative trust points and be under observation as a potential spammer.

Baby-Gaga’s profanity policy is based on concepts of tolerance and freedom of speech. If people decide to use profanity, this is their decision and will quickly color the way others view them and their chosen forms of communication. Unfortunately, some people prefer to use profanity ALL of the time… this is just one of the many reasons we created the “Ignore” button.