Who are we? XBLF is a private, invite only community of Xbox Live gamers.  Most ranging in age from mid 20's to late 30's.  Several of our members have been profiled by Trixie. History of XBLF Even back during the Xbox Live Beta period, the service was plagued by folks who didn't play nice, were verbally abusive, or just flat vulgar.  Many of us were committed to testing out the service and helping to debug, but dealing with the 'children' in the beta proved a huge obstacle for many.  The answer was clear, we needed to gather a group of people to conduct our games with. So a gamer named Blair started a usergroup at the now closed Smartgroups website.  Within a month or two, it was clear we wanted more than just a basic message board.  Myself and Vitamin B both created websites with MSN Groups (neither knowing the other was doing it), and went to Blair asking to move the group to a more user friendly, feature filled home.  Not wanting to leave Smartgroups, Blair put the two of us together and Xbox Live Friends was born in late '02. From MSN Groups, we moved to our own website.  I built and paid for hosting the site, and Vitamin B secured the .com.  Later I bought the .net and incorporated them both into use. To date, I manage the website, and our members pay for hosting through yearly donations. How do we gain new members? New members are gained solely by invitations from current members.  When they find someone in a public room that seems to fit our ideal of an XBLF member, they are nominated and voted on by other members who've played with them as well.  If they pass the vote, they're told about the group and invited in.  This is a system that has evolved over the history of our group, and seems to work well to keep undesirables out, and good people in. As time has passed, our members have become incredibly protective of XBLF, because unlike many public gaming groups, we're very much like a family.  Aside from our personal views on particular games, the service and Xbox in general,  we also help each other with computer issues, talk about our families, movies and just shoot the breeze.  And on a rare occassion, in the words of Ram2600 (possibly a future MVP ;) "we bicker like a family at thanksgiving dinner".  Because that's what families do. In Closing We're a family of Xbox Live gamers that have been together for 5 years, dedicated to seeing the Xbox succeed.  We love the platform, the LIVE service, and the opportunity it gave us to come together and become what we are today. Thank you Microsoft! -- LoneStarGal -- XBLF Admin