Without a Guide to answer users' posts and to moderate and mediate the discussions in the Forums for the past year or so many users stopped visiting the Forums or using it as a resource for asking questions and gaining knowledge. The lack of organization within the Forums also made it difficult to navigate to find answers to questions that may have already been asked and answered previously.
I have created separate folders to segregate topics to help organize the discussions better. Rather than everything going into a folder called "General" there are now folders for each of the following topics:
I am continuing to go through the existing threads within General and Archive to move them to more appropriate folders if possible. This way even the existing legacy discussions can be searched and navigated easier by new users who are looking for answers.
I will also continue to add or modify the folders to provide the best organization possible of the various discussion threads. If you see any topics you feel should have a separate folder devoted to them or have any other suggestions, feel free to post your ideas in the Forum & Site Suggestions folder within the Forums or just send me an email
If you have a question on any computer or network security issue or topic the Forums are a great place to visit to find your answers. Not only will I read and respond to your questions, but there are many members of the Internet / Network Security community with knowledge and experience in a vast array of topics that can also help guide you.
If you have a question about a specific software firewall program for instance, I may be able to answer you from a theoretical perspective about how it should work or what information I can dig up. But, there may be users in our community with the exact same program who have already gone through the same problem you're having and can provide real-world experience and answers to help you out.
I have also modified some of the settings for the Forums. Each post now contains a rating. Using the rating system the community can help police itself. If you find a post particularly valuable you can rank it with 5 stars. If you find the post wrong, useless or if its spam or offensive in some way you can rank it with 1 star. If its somewhere between those extremese you can give it 2, 3 or 4 stars. As users in the community rank the posts it will help direct other users to the posts with the more valuable insights and information.
If you run into a problem or just want more information on an Internet / Network Security topic I suggest you search About.com and search Google to find what resources and information may already be available. However, if you still have issues or questions that you can't find existing answers for, by all means visit the Internet / Network Security Forums and post your question and let the community help you out.