Why did you join *this* forum?

[BDMK]

i'll start with myself...

i've been playing poker for almost a year and have sampled memberships in a bunch of forums since. to me, it's kind of like being a member of, say, yahoo sports or espn.com, if you're sports fan. in other words, you need a platform of a kind where you get news/info on the game/sport/hobby you're interested in or actively participating in yourself...

so, this is what i am/have been looking for in a forum:

1) active/hands-on owner/ops/mods knowledgeable in poker; courteous to others, but in the same token willing to immediately ban any obvious troublemakers (and we all know who they are)...ive alas been to forums where owners have openly declared themselves to be 'fish' and made it a point to be proud of...lol...okay...or other places yet where absentee owners appointed rather unsavory characters to run the show day-to-day resulting in expected childish behavior...or yet others where owner/mods were soft to offenders to the point where total mayhem ensued, with chaos on the boards and pvt events hijacked by pass leakers, etc etc. being polite is one thing; being a mushy pushover who's taken advantage of to everyone's detriment is something quite different.

2) owner/mods/ops actively promoting healthy exchange of info and ideas; frowning on, what is to me at least, unethical behavior such as freeroll pass swapping (even if from other forums), ad hominem attacks, and other such nonsense. mind u, im not in the least bit a moralist nor preaching to others what to do. i just like what i like and, in this case, here it is...

3) forum topics/subforums organized in a logical hierarchy covering all/most general topics

4) it doesn't hurt if the underlying platform/forum software is pleasing to the eye with useful/logical user features (vbulletin happens to be my favorite)

5) pvt events/league on pokerstars. thats right, im honest about it, so sue me. to me, stars is like the yankees of (online) poker (oh, and yankee-haters, please be quiet, noone cares). its the best, most successful poker site with some of the best players, online or off-, found anywhere. and if a forum needs to be taken seriously, IMHO it must have something regular/recurring there. it also shows me that the owners/mods/ops/regular forum members are definitely good, serious poker players/enthusiasts not afraid to play against some of the best there is.

6) last but not least...QUALITY OVER QUANTITY. take it anyway you want.

ok, thats it from me...what about the rest of you guys?