Report problems to the authorities. If a participant contacts you privately with abusive, scary, or inappropriate messages, let the community manager know. Don t let your kids participate without knowing some ground rules. If kids join online communities, they need to know not to reveal identifying information, not to believe everything they hear, not to type their password, and not to agree to meet people by phone or in person without your approval. They also need to know that if what they read online makes them uncomfortable, they should leave the conversation and talk to you.
Smileys are little faces created by characters.
To understand them, tip your head to the left. It s easy to overuse acronyms and smileys, but in informal discussions they can save lots of typing. Other Ideas Don t join too many communities at one time. It takes time to get to know the style of a community online or in real life as well as the people in the community. You ll spend many hours exchanging messages with community members before you truly feel a part of the group.