How Groups work

When you first sign up and verify your account, you can only see the "General" forums and you are only in the "General" group. Each forum has a group associated with it, and only members of that group can see the forum. It is up to the Moderator of each group to accept anybody that requests to join. Hiding forums is only for organizational purposes, and to allow the user to only see what he/she wants. It would get very cluttered if you were able to see all forums at once.

SO, you have signed up, and you want to see some new forums? Ok, first, take a look at the "Group List" sticky. Each group has it's own keywords that are placed next to it (ctrl+f is your friend) so they can be easily found by new members or people wanting to join the group. If there is not a group for the subject/topic you would like, you may make a topic requesting the creation of a group. You must provide at least 5 keywords for the group, and you must give a small explanation of what the topic is. Once a group reaches a certain number of members (Right now, it is 2 people) Admin will create a forum that you will be able to access. We will have a global mod be the moderator for the forum until the group reaches ten people. At which point, I will study the forum, and decide on candidates for a localized moderator. Note that you will have to grant access to the group to anybody that wants in. If no moderator is found, I will allow the global mod to continue moderating until there is one found. I will also allow registration to be a moderator of that forum. If somebody understands this, and can reword it to be a little more clear, please do so, and I'll accept it and give credit.

To request to join a group, you have to go to "Usergroups" and choose to join a group. After you are accepted, you will be able to see the forums corresponding with that group.