Hi, [[troper]], welcome to Yack Fest! I'm GastonRabbit and I'll be your friendly neighborhood herald for this subforum.

What goes on here...?

A little bit of everything, really. Yack Fest is just that, yakking in a relaxed environment. Over here, the threads and discussions go over the whole spectrum of sane and inane, serious and silly, and you get the idea. Almost everything here is pretty casual and threads may go off-topic from time to time. Derails just seem to be a a part of Yack Fest.

A bit of a tour is in order. You'll see Yack Fest has three stickied threads, with the Meet the Tropers: newbie thread/introductions introduction thread probably being the first one you posted in after joining. These will always be up there for easy access. The megathreads are also something you should note. These threads aren't stickied, but they tend to stay at the top of the board because they have very general topics: TV Tropes meta thread, Avatars, and Absent people are self-explanatory. Others, like Troper Updates II, Part II have weird names but this, Hangout Thread, and Post your random thoughts are basically the general yakking threads of the general yakking board. Having knowledge of what is being discussed is a good idea but not required, you can just jump right in and contribute or post whatever is going on with you currently and see if it takes off from there!

The Rules

As with every board on the forum, knowing THE FORUM RULES will go a long way in explaining what is and isn't allowed. A few more specific guidelines concerning Yack Fest would be:

1. Stay cool; don't let trolls or jerks rile you up. Instead of being a jerk back, Holler for a mod by sending a message via this button◊ at the top right of the offending post.
2. While conversations being derailed is a natural part of this subforum, don't deliberately go about changing the topic of discussion. Don't go in the Baking thread while they are trading recipes and go, "This thread is now about turtles!"
3. Snowclones — threads extremely similar to one already existing made for no purpose other then a quick laugh — are a no-go, as they have clogged up the board too often in the past.

Wrapping Up

You'll notice there is another general discussion board here, On-Topic Conversations. That's where you want to go if you want the talk to be super serious. Think of that as the Debate Club while Yack Fest is the Ping Pong Club. We can be serious too when our game is on, but most of the time we're here to have fun, eat snacks, and put off doing our homework. So, once again, welcome! If you have any questions concerning anything in Yack Fest feel free to PM me or another member of the staff and we'll help you as soon as we can.