A few notes to observe when speaking to new people on the forums, or prospective members anywhere on the internet:

• Be polite. If someone you don't know enters the chat, don't act confused or bothered about it, nor act like it's anything strange. Try "Hello" instead of "...?"
• At the same time, don't overdo it. Don't jump all over them with an eerie obsequiousness. That can come across as creepy or desperate for members. Just be yourself. You're not here to "sell" our group.
• Don't blurt "OMG NEW PERSON" when someone comes in IRC. You will be kicked straight out of the channel. I'm not even kidding. Just don't do it. Treat them like people, not meat.
• When recruiting or answering questions off-site, be selective. I don't know how to say this politely, but, please don't direct weirdos or conflict-prone jerkasses here, nor go out of your way to answer their questions about anything. If the person can't spell his or her own name, or if the individual's dA gallery consists largely of porn, I don't really want to have to deal with him. Spare me the headache, and him the embarrassment of rejection.
• When advertising for the RP, always use http://sonic.spindash.net. Please don't link anywhere but there. We want all new people to get funneled through the "About Us" page, without exception.
• When answering questions for prospective members off-site, never, ever, ever link directly to RP threads. This is bad juju, for real. We have threads that can be used for information. Those include the Story Updates thread, recent threads from the Announcements section, and others. Why? RP threads are overwhelming and uninformative, and will probably just disorient new people. Furthermore, if posted in a public place, someone else you weren't talking to may follow the link and immediately be turned off by one or two bad posts that happen to be in the thread.
• When interacting on our site's dA group, if people ask to join, do not dead-end them with "this is for SSRP members only." Explain that it's a group for members of http://sonic.spindash.net, and that they come here to join. One major reason the dA group exists is to help advertise.
• Don't act like you're a mod if you aren't. If you want to be a mod, ask, and we'll talk about it. It's easy to project an air of authority (being bossy or critical), intentionally or not, but please avoid it. By all means, it's awesome when members help out, answer questions, and advise people, and it makes everyone's lives easier, but if you carry yourself like you run the show, criticizing people, etc., we will have words.

This isn't being posted because of any recent event, so don't go sniffing for scandal or whatever. It's just something we needed to put up a long time ago, but didn't. Usually, it's new people who are the worst about treating their fellow new people strangely (or just outright badly), so if you've been here for a while, you hopefully already know all of the above as common sense.