They're very friendly and genuinely appreciative of you making the effort to converse with them in french. Try to make your own translations rather than depend on Google etc. as this is seen as impersonal, They won't give you a hard time over poor spelling, grammar and punctuation, your own efforts, no matter how flawed, are always better received.
They have a few features I envy - an area for, 'talking among friends', where they greet whoever's online at the time, lots of forum games that are well supported and, as Rich says, a wealth of smilies.
They also have a cool feature where you can access/print off any thead in .pdf format.
Formidable!
