Alright this is a work in progress, the guide is going to be a way for those who are seeing BrainMeta for the
first time to those who have been here for a while but havent caught on to everything yet. It includes general
tips, tricks and things you can do to get along well with the BrainMeta community. I am expecting to get some feedback on the guide and I will modify it accordingly based on the replies, anyways on with the guide.

A few questions newcomers might have

What is BrainMeta? BrainMeta is a meeting of the minds with no prejudice to any single idea or ideology, nothing is sacred on BM (short for BrainMeta). People are free to talk about any subject they desire although most of the topics are geared towards Science, Philosophy, Technology, Politics and the Arts (especially poetry).

Who is apart of BrainMeta? People who are in BM are from all walks of life, they could be a 13 year old kid learning about philosophy for the first time to a 60 year old well seasoned scientist.

Proper Etiquite on BrainMeta

1. All topics and posts should have thought put into them, there are many ways and styles of presenting information on BrainMeta, try to be clear when you are conveying youre thoughts and people will probably understand you better. Most of BrainMetas discussion is written in a fairly relaxed way, sometimes in heated debates they can begin to sound like another language, this is often because they will refer to philosophical or scientific terms or ideas that you are not yet familiar with. If you are confused with what somone is referring to or saying in a discussion, youre best bet is to post and ask for someone to clarify things for you or to PM a moderator and ask them. I myself have clarified things many times and most people on BrainMeta are more than happy to explain things for you.

2. Try and see other points of view, debating is almost second nature on BrainMeta and when you are in a debate it is always good to keep an open mind on both sides. Even if you dont agree with the point, you will find it is much easier to discuss things when you understand their view.

3. Content is King on BrainMeta, you will find people will give you far more respect on BrainMeta if you write good, high quality posts rather than make large amounts of posts. The same goes for topics, making one good.. well thought out topic is of far greater value in the eyes of those on BrainMeta. Some of those who are new to BrainMeta go and think that by making lots of posts and topics very quickly they will gain more respect from those on BM, the opposite tends to happen. If you post and think about what your posting, you will instantly gain more respect than making hordes of posts and topics.

Example: I personally give what Life Mirage says, the most weight when it comes to cognitive enhancers and nootropics ect. than some other people who have more posts than him says, why? because when he writes something it is coming from a trusted source who has consistently proven himself to be the one to turn to for advice. There are many people that I give more weight to when they post, I chose Life Mirage because he doesnt have massive amounts of posts yet he is the first person to turn to about advice on Cognitive Enhancers ect. On the exact opposite side, we all remember DattaSwami who was the most preaching, spamming bastard known to BrainMeta, he probably posted 10-20 topics a day.. again, Quality over Quantity on BrainMeta, those who have 1000's of posts have been posting high quality posts for years now, the people of BM are concerned about Ideas not Numbers.

Its late so I will stop for now, im sure a few of you will have some good things to add to this guide so by all means post away.

great job, maximus. Seems like this should be pinned in the FAQ or announcements boards

I also think this is a good job. But maybe you should present this suggestion formally to Shawn before it goes anywhere else. After all, he has his own introductory material and he is the boss here.

I like it. Concerning etiquette, I would tend to be more liberal in this regard. Yes, it's nice when people employ logic and courtesy in their posts, but this is not necessary for conveying important thoughts. One persons notion of etiquette is not necessarily the same as anothers. Granted, most don't like being preached to, but the content of the preaching can sometimes justify its mode of delivery, and we are free to chastise the preacher for his style of presentation if we wish. The idea behind the BrainMeta forum is that it should be a meeting of the minds with as few constraints as possible in order to facilitate exchange of ideas and introduction to new viewpoints. Some of us may get offended on occasion at someone elses post, but I don't necessarily see a problem with that. Checks have to be put into place to avoid abuse, but these checks have rarely been employed. Moderators have a responsibility for enforcing quality control; different moderators may have different criteria for what counts as quality and in what direction they want to take their boards, in which case more than one board can be created to facilitate the diversity and different criteria of different moderators. This forum is big enough to accommodate differing viewpoints.

Yeah, thats true enough Shawn, thats whats great about BrainMeta, you can talk about anything.

One suggestion I can think of:
Find a way to lead the newcomer to the definition of Singularity, and most importantly, the distinction between the various Singularities refered to in this forum. So many misinformed sentients out there who come to this website to either learn about the Singularity or post their thought about it and right off the bat they take a path down the wrong way. Eventually they end-up posting either the wrong thing about the right subject or vice-versa. Those of us who've been here long enough know that this is happening. Unfortunatelly, in my opinion, this is leading to misinformation. And this affects all of us. For example, I just read a post by Godconsciousness (a new member) which is clearly referring (I think) to the Technological Singularity. But the signals are so mixed, that I believe he/she was trying to refer to the Consciousness Singularity. This leaves us all (the poster and us the readers) out in the cold, confused and misinformed. If the Singularity is one of BrainMeta's favorite topic of discussion, as I've been lead to believe, then we should do a better job at informing the public about it, its meaning and its different definitions and/or its potential dimensions.

Good Idea CB, I suppose we should start out with some material about Singularity, any good topics to recommend? (there are of course so many on singularity and most are the same as the last one, except a few that talk about the real concepts.)