It's been about two weeks since the SBN/Yahoo partnership was announced, and I know there have been some new users here who have signed up through the Yahoo portal.

To make new readers feel comfortable here and in the hope that many will join in the discussion, I thought I'd make this post this morning which has links to various features which will explain to people who are new here what BCB is all about.

Start with BCB's Community Guidelines. Please read them over carefully (even longtime readers might want to check them out, as I have made changes within the last few months), but particularly this paragraph, which everyone who signs up has to agree to when first creating a username:

When posting at this blog, please follow this one simple rule: Before hitting "post" to post your remarks, ask yourself: "Would I be embarrassed to say this in front of strangers who were physically present in the room with me and could respond to my face?" If the answer is "yes," then don't post. BCB encourages and welcomes all opinions, no matter how strong; however, personal attacks, vulgarity, and other uncivilized forms of expression are not welcome. Also, to avoid trolling and spam posts, there is a 48-hour waiting period before you can make your first post after signing up. Thanks for understanding.

Basically, just be nice to each other. We can have different opinions without being nasty. That's all I ask. As noted in the quote box above, there is a 48-hour waiting period before your first post or comment if you are a new reader -- that's to give you a chance to check out the site, see how things are done, etc. before you dive in.

Now, on to a bit of "how to". A couple of weeks ago -- just before the Yahoo deal was announced -- I posted this summary of how to post comments, FanPosts and FanShots. That's also worth a review even if you've been here a while.

Another thing about posting that I'd like to remind everyone about: it is a copyright violation to copy/paste the entire text of an article from another site here. You are, of course, welcome and encouraged to post links to relevant articles from other sites -- it's how we get information to discuss here. But please don't post more than a couple of the most important sentences or paragraphs from another site. You can do that by highlighting the text you want to copy and hitting the quote mark at the top of the posting box. Thanks.

Finally, for new people, there are some things sometimes expressed in shorthand or by acronyms here that you might not understand. Some BCB readers have helpfully created a "BCB Dictionary" -- you can find the two parts of that here and here. These can be found under "BCB Specials" on the right sidebar, along with "Why Are We Here?", a post where people tell their stories about how they became a Cubs fan; "What Do You Do For A Living", self-explanatory, and BCB Reader Guides to Arizona spring training and being a tourist in Chicago. I have reopened comments on all of these posts for 21 days -- so anyone who'd like to add their thoughts to any of them, feel free.

Anyway, welcome, whether you're new here or have been around for a while. Today's game preview/thread will be posted at 1 pm CDT -- remember, spring day game times are now 3 pm CDT.