Check our archive of profiles to learn more about our FEATURED ASSOCIATES
If you run an online message board community and are interested in adding some new content to your board, promoting greater activity, and getting some free advertising, please consider joining our Associates program here at ARWZ. It's free to join, and requires no work from you (apart from running your online community as usual). ARWZ Editors take a personal interest in Associate boards, helping Associate webmasters to keep boards active and find new members. The Associates program is a mutually beneficial affliation between ARWZ Magazine and your page. If you're curious about the Associates program, and think your board might benefit from Associateship, please read on to learn about this program in detail.


What are the benefits for Associate pages?

1) ARWZ Editors will add new content to your page, without your having to lift a finger. We take care of all the details of organizing large-scale projects, such as the Top Ten lists and (optionally) our multi-board Book Club. You and your members get to participate without having to go to any of the trouble of organizing projects and events.

2) ARWZ Editors take a personal interest in your message board community. The Associates program is a mutually beneficial professional relationship. The voters for our Top Ten Projects come from YOUR pages, and so we want to get to know your members and base future projects on their interests and tastes. We will personally visit your page on roughly a weekly basis to join in the discussion on your page.

3) Associate pages also receive free advertising on ARWZ Magazine. Here's how:

a) All Associate pages receive a fixed link for the duration of their participation as Associates on our main Associates Page.

b) Actively participating Associate pages get profiled on the magazine. ARWZ Editors invite active Associates to help put together a profile of their board to be featured on ARWZ. Profiles are showcased through a link from our front page announcement box.

c) Finally, all Associate pages are eligible for one month per year of full-site (packages #1, #2 or #3) advertising on ARWZ, free of charge! For more information, check out our advertising packages, and when you're ready to schedule your free month, drop Vio an email at [email protected].

4) Associate pages may also use the ARWZ Community Forums to promote specific events and projects on their own pages. Prior to the opening of the event or project, Associate page administrators should write to our webmaster to discuss the event. The webmaster will indicate which of our forums (it will always be one of the top three) will give your event the best exposure, and also will know to expect your posting so that we can sticky-topic it for the first week after its posting.


What do pages need to join?

1) First and foremost, your page must have an online discussion board that is, at least, minimally active. By "minimally active" we mean that the board must have at least a few members who will visit on a weekly basis. ARWZ Editors will visit your board at least once a week, and so we expect to have at least some new topics and/or some response to our postings during that week's time. The ARWZ Associates program is based on interactive discussion, so a message board is a must. If you run a page that does not have a message board, and you would like to set up some sort of affliation with ARWZ, please contact our webmaster, but the Associates program is for interactive forums only.

2) Your message board must have some sort of General or Off-Topic forum. We will visit this forum to participate in discussions. This forum can be a general book forum, a general chat forum, a genre-specific discussion forum, etc. Please indicate to ARWZ Editors on your application which forum they should visit. It should be a forum where visitors come to discuss topics about books, film, etc. This will be the forum we visit regularly, and also the forum where we post topics regarding the Top 10 lists.

3) Your message board must be related, in a general sense, to the themes of ARWZ Magazine. Boards related to alternative reality fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, historical, etc.) are the most obvious candidates for our program, whether your board is generally about one of these types of fiction, or specifically about a particular film, author, tv show, etc. RPG forums are welcome, as long as there is an Off-Topic or Out-of-Character forum. We're also very happy to accept boards on general book discussion (i.e. not specific to alternative reality fiction) or general chat, as long as there is a forum where our Top 10 lists will find a good reception. Most of our topics are not specific to alternative reality fiction.


What are the obligations of the webmaster and Associate page?

1) All Associate pages MUST participate in the ARWZ Magazine Top Ten Projects. This is the only ARWZ project in which Associate participation is mandatory. The impetus, on the part of ARWZ Editors, for starting the Associates program was to widen the pool of voters for the Top Ten Projects, so to get a more accurate result in the Top Ten lists. By joining our Associate program, you agree to let ARWZ Editors visit your indicated General Discussion forum to invite your members to participate in our Top Ten Projects. We run a new top ten project once a year. We will come to your page when it opens to post a topic inviting your members to vote on ARWZ (all official votes must be placed through our Top 10 Page whether using the email form, or our online forums), to discuss the list topic on your forum, and to cross-post their lists onto your forum. While the list project does require us to provide links back to ARWZ within these topics, we will make every effort to use the lists to promote discussion on YOUR page. We will also ask your board members for input on what list topics to do in the future, we will ask them to vote (at a centralized poll on ARWZ) for our immediately successive list projects, and we will post reminders of voting deadlines. We will also post a topic with the final 10, once the list is tabulated, on your board so that your members can read it and discuss it in your forums. Your obligation as a webmaster is simply to allow us to post these topics about the Top Ten Lists. Though, of course, you are certainly welcome to participate in the lists, yourself, by voting or encouraging your members to vote. Your board and members will be credited with helping to compile the list.

2) Webmasters of Associate pages must provide ARWZ Editors with an active email address for contact. ARWZ Editors, in turn, promise never to add your email address to a mailing list. All contact from ARWZ Editors will be in the form of individual emails sent specifically to you. ARWZ Editors will use this email address to contact you about Associate issues - such as your featured profile - and new projects. The Top Ten Project is the ONLY project that Associates pages are required to participate in. However, you may find that other projects and events will be of interest to your members. When we start a new project, we will send an email to you, personally, to tell you about it, and to ask if your members would be interested in participating. We will only sign your board up for a new project if you give permission.


How long does the Associateship last?

Once your page becomes an Associate of ARWZ magazine, your Associateship will last indefinitely - for as long as your page and ARWZ are still up and running. If, at any time after becoming an Associate, you wish to decline membership in this program, please write to our webmaster and inform us that you would like to decline from the program. No problem. We'll simply remove you from our list and stop visiting your page. You are free to rejoin again at any time. On the other hand, if your page ever becomes inactive for an extended period of time, that is, if we find that no one responds to our posted replies week after week, we reserve the right to terminate any Associate at our discretion. If your page becomes active again, you are welcome to resubmit. We will keep your profile (if one was compiled) on file and reactivate it upon reapplication.



Want to become an Associate?

If after reading through the details of our Associate program, you would like to join, please fill out the following application. When we receive your application, we will presume that you have read all the details of the program and agree to participate on these terms. We would recommend you discuss this decision with co-administrators and/or inform moderators of your decision of apply for membership in the program. Once we receive your application - if approved - we will sign you up for the program and begin visiting your page. We will post an introduction and an announcement about our current Top Ten list (so it is best if your moderators know we're coming). Again, there's nothing else for you to do, just fill out the application. We'll take care of all the details if you're approved. If you have any questions before applying, please send them to [email protected]. If you're ready, please proceed to fill out the application:


Name of Administrator Contact:

This should be the name or internet handle of the head administrator of the page. If you are a co-administrator in charge of the page, we will presume you have permission from fellow administrators to speak for them in being the main contact for our editors and in applying for the program. If you are not the head administrator or one of a team of head administrators, but think the page where you are a moderator or member would be interested in joining, please inform the head administrator of the page about this program and ask him or her to join.

Administrator Contact Email Address:

An active email address for the above submitted administrator contact is required. ARWZ Administrators reserve the right to terminate Associate page memberships based on email inactivity, so please keep us informed of changes to email addresses.

Name of Your Board:

Provide the official title of your message board community, as you would like it to read in the link on our Associates Main Page.

Main Message Board URL:

Please enter the main URL of the message forum. This URL should lead us to the main page of the board, where all individual forums are listed. This URL should NOT be the domain address of your website, unless the domain address forwards directly to the message forum index page.

Target Forum for ARWZ Editors:

Use this box to submit the URL of the forum on your board where ARWZ Editors should visit to post Top 10 topics and participate in discussions. This should be your General Discussion, General Book or Media Discussion, Off-Topic or Out-of-Character forum.

Additional Comments:
If there is any information specific to your board that you feel our editors should know when considering your application, please send us an email to accompany your application. You do not need to include any further information if you feel your application is self-explanatory. However, if you feel your board needs further explanation (e.g. your board themes differ from our typical associate page), or if there is any additional information you feel we should have in considering your application, please email us after clicking the "Submit" button below. Additionally, if any of the application fields above are not large enough for your name, email or board URLs, please submit what you can and send us an email giving us the rest of your application information. If you feel you need to submit a supplemental email for any of the above reasons, please send it to [email protected] with the subject line "ATTN: RE: ASSOCIATES"