The Royal Forums

The Royal Forums (or simply TRF) is an online discussion forum and resource for topics about royalty, including ruling and nonruling royal families and their members, royal history, royal traditions and protocol, discussions of relevancy to monarchies, information and synopses about movies and books related to royalty, and a wide range of other royalty-related topics.
The Royal Forums is one of the largest internet forums dedicated solely to royalty. It has nearly 30,000 members (as of February 2009) and is growing rapidly, with about 20 new registrations daily. Unlike some other royalty forums, which focus on European royalty, TRF has a wide-ranging coverage that includes royal families from all over the world.
The site is divided into sections. The current sections are Community Forums, TRF Special Features, Reigning Houses, Non-Reigning Houses, Other Things Royal, and Members' Corner. There is an offsite section of the forum, The Royal Articles, where TRF members write formal articles about any aspect of royalty that interests them. The newest feature of the site is a group blog, The Royal Forums Blog, located on the forum front page.
History
TRF was originally called LesTribunesRoyales.com. Its original owner was one of the members, called Bear. Although the original ‘birthday’ of the board is not known for sure, 4 October 2002 is usually credited to be the day the site was officially launched. In 2004, the owner decided to close the forum in order to free up server space for another forum he owned. A few days before the forum was due to shut down for good, it was bought by its current owner, Andrew P. Robinowitz, the owner of Social Knowledge LLC, who goes by the username Andy R at the forum. Shortly thereafter, the name of the forum was changed to The Royal Forums.
If by the end of 2002 TRF had slightly more than 5,000 posts, the current post count (as of February 2009) is well over 700,000 posts.
Citations in the Press and on the Web
Because of the size and scope of TRF, it is considered by some journalists to be representative of the worldwide royal-watching community, and as such it has been mentioned in newspapers and magazines several times over the years. The Danish magazine BT had a close look at the discussions at TRF (under its previous name, LesTribunesRoyales) prior to the marriage of Crown Prince Frederik and Mary Donaldson. The Italian magazine NOVELLA 2000 cited The Royal Forums in its May 2007 issue as the source of information about Charlotte Casiraghi. The popular magazine Point de Vue occasionally gets inspiration from TRF. In 2006 The Royal Forums was mentioned in a short article about Prince Christian of Denmark in the Australian newspaper The Age. The Times wrote about the decision of The Royal Forums’ Administrative Team to forbid speculations about the identity of the minor royal engaged in the blackmail scandal in October 2007. And most recently, mentioned TRF as a source of information and photos on the possible Argentinian farm purchase by the Prince and Princess of Orange.
The administration team regularly receive requests from journalists to put them in touch with members to provide information for articles being written for newspapers and magazines, and several professional journalists and photographers are members of the forum.
Discussions and other resources from The Royal Forums have often been copied or cited by royalty enthusiasts in their own blogs and websites, as well as at other discussion forums.
Forum Content
Community Forums
The Community Forums consist of the following sub-sections:

Announcements - Administrators post in the section Important news and special announcements regarding TheRoyalForums.
Forum Support and Feedback - This section is used to report problems, post comments or suggestions to make the Royal Forums a better place.
TRF Special Features
Monthly Newsletter - every month the Newsletter Editor and Assistant Newsletter Editors write a newsletter. The newsletters give a short overview of the featured theme of the month. Some of the past newsletters included Movies about Royals, Royal Patronages, Coronation Jewels, Notable Royal Women in History, Male Consorts, Brazilian Royals, Queen Victoria and King Christian IX’s descendants, Royals and Olympics, and extensive A to Z newsletter, a vocabulary-like basics about Royals, Palaces and other royalty-connected things. At the end of each year, a special newsletter is presented, which summarizes the most important things that happened during the year.
Picture of the Month - Every month, Picture of the Month Representatives for each country and their Committee team members choose the best picture of a given Royal Family. The chosen pictures compete in the monthly poll. Each member of TheRoyalForums can vote for the picture they like best. The winner pictures of all 12 months compete in the End-of-the-Year Grand Poll to decide the Picture of the Year.
Apart from Monthly or Official Polls, there are also Themed Polls that take place every 3 months. The themed polls include 2 Informal Polls, which focus on the less formal aspects of the Royal Life, a Historical Picture Poll, and a Portrait Poll.
The Royal Forums Blog - This forum contains a calendar of major royal events, along with links to blog posts and TRF threads about those events. As the blog grows, so will the content of this forum.
The Royal Articles - This is a new section which gives information about the articles posted at TheRoyalArticles and contains threads where each article may be discussed.
Reigning Houses
There are 14 main Forums in the Reigning Houses section. The forums have subforums for the monarch, the heir, the country's royal history, and sometimes other topics depending on the size of the forum and the popularity of the different topics. For example, the British Forum has subforums for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh; The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall; The Duke of Cambridge and the Duchess of Cambridge; Prince William and Prince Harry; The Duke of York, Sarah Duchess of York, and Family; The Earl and Countess of Wessex and Family; The Princess Royal and Family; Diana, Princess of Wales; British Royal Residences; and British royal history. There is also a Current Events Archive, where older threads about the day-to-day activities of the royal family members are stored; the main forum contains threads about more junior members of the royal family and general discussions of British royalty.

Some of the forums have subforums for separate royal houses. The subforum for the Ruling Families of the United Arab Emirates includes subforums for The Royal Family of Dubai and The Royal Family of Abu Dhabi; the main forum is the place to discuss other royal families of the United Arab Emirates.
Other Reigning Houses includes subforums for The Royal Family of Brunei, Princely Family of Liechtenstein, Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, and Royal Family of Thailand. Other reigning houses which don’t have separate subforums are discussed in the main Other Reigning Houses forum.
Non-Reigning Houses
There are seven forums in the Non-Reigning Houses
Other Things Royal
Other Things Royal is a place to discuss royalty-related topics that would not fit in other places.
Other Things Royal includes:
Royal Chit Chat forum (with Royal Genealogy, Royal Life and Lfestyle, Royal Ceremony and Protocol, Royalty: Past Present and Future, and Polls, Games and Quizzes sub-forums) is the place to discuss general royalty-related topics that don’t fit anywhere else.
Royal Weddings forum (with Royal Weddings Chit Chat sub-forum) is the place where members normally discuss royal and noble engagements and weddings, as well as everything connected with the engagements and weddings.
Royal Jewels forum (with Royal Jewels Chit Chat sub-forum) is the place where the members discuss and identify the jewels (past and present) of the royal families around the world.
Royal House of Fashion (with Royal Style File sub-forum) is a celebration of royal fashion and style, where people share their opinions about recent and historical fashion trends, or simply outfits, worn by members of the Royal or Noble families.
Royal Library is a media centre for discussions about royal books, magazines, movies, TV programmes, DVDs, etc.
Members' Corner
Members' Corner is a forum for TRF members and is only visible to members who are logged into TRF. At Members' Corner, TRF members have a chance to get to know each other. It is also a place for members’ input on non-royal-related questions and discussions.

Apart from these forums, there are also private forums for Administrators, Forum Moderators, Authors, and Picture of the Month Representatives.
Forum Organization and Leaders
TheRoyalForums has a set of Rules and FAQs that are required to be followed. The rules are especially strict when it comes to posting of photos and other coyprighted content. TRF recognizes the hard work of photographers, authors, photo agencies, and publishers in creating and publishing their photos and manuscripts, and therefore it now forbids posting copyrighted pictures or other copyrighted content in the forums. All content posted on the forum must be in compliance with the US copyright law. Similar strict measures are taken against solicitations, advertisements, vulgar or offensive language, and insults of fellow members or royals.
Administrators and Forum Moderators
The leaders of TheRoyalForums are unpaid volunteers, who dedicate their free time to make the Board run smoothly. Those volunteers are divided into Moderators, Super Moderators and Administrators.

The Moderation Team changes (mostly expands) quite often, as the Administrators are on constant lookout for potential Forum Moderators. Members can apply for the job of Forum Moderators themselves as well.
Each Moderator is responsible for a separate Forum (or Forums) and one Forum usually has no fewer than 3 Moderators.
Being a Forum moderator involves taking a leadership position in the forum. Specifically this involves tasks like opening and closing threads, deleting or fixing broken links, deleting "empty" posts, merging or splitting threads, and so on.
It also involves keeping threads on topic, helping newcomers who have questions, mediating disputes in the threads, and generally leading by example.

The main difference between Moderators and SuperModerators is that the former are responsible mainly for their forums-only, while the latter have access to moderator features in all forums and can intervene there as required, if moderators of the specific forum are unavailable.
Administrators are responsible for the running of the whole Board. Apart from doing the regular job of moderators, they have also a wide range of other responsibilities, including approving all new registrations.
Other Positions
Apart from Forum Moderators and Administrators, there are also a number of other position that require responsibility.

Newsletter Editor and Assistant Newsletter Editors are responsible for writing and publishing the monthly newsletters, as well as choosing topics for the future newsletters.
Picture of the Month Representatives and Picture of the Month Committee Members choose pictures that represent given Royal Family best during the past month and submit it for the poll. They also choose pictures for the Themed Polls.
Picture of the Month Supervisor and Picture of the Month Coordinators take care of the Monthly Polls, making sure the chosen pictures are in accordance with the guidelines and formats of the polls, both regular and themed.
TRF Authors write royalty-related articles for The Royal Articles.
Article Editors and Assistant Article Editors edit, proofread, help write and give a final form to the articles written by TRF Authors.
The Royal Bloggers contribute to the blog on the forum front page.
Blog Coordinators and Blog Editors maintain the blog and work with the bloggers to provide content for the blog.
The TechAdmin looks after the technical side of the forum.

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