Welcome to the Round Table!

[james_uk@ebay.com]

We hope you will join in and feel part of the community; it can be a great source of advice and fun, plus you get to meet lots of other eBayers!

The below advice has been compiled by members of the eBay Community to help you get the most out of these Discussion Boards. This board is the best place for you to talk about general stuff: eBay and everything else under the sun.

A list of eBay UK boards can be found here: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/community/chat/

To keep the discussions friendly and fun we have in place a usage policy for all members. It can be found here: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/everyone-boards.html

As always happens with these things, a sort of jargon has developed... here are some of the more common terms used:

Newbie: someone who is new to eBay or the boards. Pinks: when an eBay employee posts to the boards their post is highlighted in pink. Thus eBay employees on the boards are called Pinks or Pinkies. Slap/Pink-slap: if you break the usage policy you will get a pink-slap. They smart only a little, but take note as breaking the rules can lead to you being banned from the boards. Read the board usage policy and avoid using swear words (even if you replace letters with *) as these often lead to a slap.

Please note that referring to a removed post can lead to further removals.

Troll: a user who is seeking to cause trouble. They should be ignored. Make sure you don’t get seen as a troll by ensuring you disagree with people’s views without resorting to personal insults.

Numpty: someone who might be a "little confused" Lurker: someone who reads the boards but doesn't post

Posting: writing a message on the board. Each numbered comment is referred to as a post.

Thread: A topic on the board under a single heading. The original post that starts a thread is referred to as the OP.

Sniping: Bidding at the very last minute. (On the boards “number sniping” is trying to time your post so that you get particular numbers, eg multiples of 100).

And other general acronyms:

LOL: Laughing Out Loud or sometimes Lots of Love IMHO: In My Honest (or Humble) Opinion

ROFL: Roll On Floor Laughing ROTFLMAO: Roll on Floor Laughing (but with more vigour)

PMSL: very vigorous laughing

NARU: Not a Registered User (an eBay member who has been suspended)

If you see a discussion you are interested in, feel free to join in and give your view. If you are signed in you can see which threads are updated by the little “u” logo to the left of them, the post numbers will also rise in active threads. This thread and others at the top of the board are locked threads, blu-tacked to the top, but might not have people on them at the time you post, so you might need to check back later to see if anyone has replied. People will not see your question if you ask it on the end of a thread on another topic, so it is better to start a new thread. If you want to start a new conversation then you will need to click “add discussion” at the bottom of the index page and start a new thread.

You might want to use the search to see if the same topic has already been discussed to prevent duplication. When you type please make sure you don’t have CAPS on as capitals are hard to read and are considered to be “shouting”. Try and include punctuation and normal types of formatting where possible. Text Speak is hard to read if there's a lot of it and some meaning could be missed.

If threads are active it can be hard to keep up, so you might want to click a post number to get the thread updated from that point. If you use images, try to keep them small, and do not include any adult images or things that could cause offence.

If you don't yet have any feedback or are new to the board please don’t be surprised if some people don't respond to you and try not to take it personally if your comments seem to go unnoticed.

Just as in the real world people tend to chat more with people they know, until you are familiar. In the mad flood of postings it can seem like you're being ignored sometimes, but please don’t let that put you off.

Some thoughts on posting: Remember that the views expressed aren't necessarily the views of eBay, the RT community, and may not even be those of the OP. There will inevitably be some disagreements at times, but there is also friendliness, humour, moral support, advice, information, discussion, debate and lots of fun to be had here.

Do not share too much personal information, as you don’t know who is reading it. Anyone can say anything on here, so be warier than you would be in real life, and take sensible precautions if you share information or arrange to meet anyone you talk to online.

Finally, RT can be addictive, so unless you think it is perfectly normal to be online 25 hours per day, 8 days per week our advice is to get good quality piccies of your nearest and dearest, tape them to the monitor, with a brief description of who they are, and what they mean to you. Then when a strange face comes between you and the computer screen, you can have a quick check on who they are, and what they might want.

-- Edited by james_uk@ebay.com at Sep 26, 2011 4:56 PM BST