A community is made up of all types of personalities. Online communities are no different, with the possible exception that the community members are drawn together by more sharply defined shared interests.
The Moderators do an excellent job at policing particularly aggregious violations of community standards. However, one cannot legislate or enforce away the perception of being unwelcome.
The TalkBoard, as representatives of the userbase at large, can however work to create a more welcoming and enabling environment for the users - present and future. This can be done by many means - encouraging better mixing of ideas together with a more stategically viewed diversity of forums.
As an example, is the broader regional tone of threads in forums like Air Canada or Qantas welcoming to those who are not Canadian or Australian respectively? Could off-topic but regionally relevant threads be better served in a sub-forum structure? Would a new user seeking information from, or better still, seeking to provide information to a forum be more likely to focus his participation in a forum with wider or narrower scope? Is the everyone-knows-everyone attitude that many forums promote as strong community spirit actually a deterrant to new users who will initially feel like outsiders?
These are the kind of questions that TalkBoard needs to debate. The right decisions can really make a difference in setting a welcoming tone for both new and existing members.