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AstronomyConnect Community Guidelines

Discussion in 'Community Rules and Information' started by george, Feb 9, 2016.

AstronomyConnect Community Guidelines

Started by george on Feb 9, 2016 at 1:26 PM

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  1. george

    george Developer

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    george, Feb 9, 2016
    #1
    Astronomy Connect Guidelines

    Here at Astronomy Connect, we take great pride in providing a non-threatening environment that encourages mutual respect, active discussion, and participation from the entire Astronomy industry. Astronomy Connect aims to take a transparent and common-sense approach to the conduct of members contributing to our site and to the way that we moderate contributions and behavior. Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the guidelines below. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact a community Staff Member.

    The following set of guidelines apply across the site – this means anywhere you can publicly express your opinion, including but not limited to product reviews, comments, forum discussions, profiles and profile posts.

    Do’s
    • Post threads in the correct section

    • Get to know your fellow members! Help out new users with any questions, be active, and share your feedback. Help promote a non-threatening environment.

    • Please respect your fellow users, staff, and moderators. We are all part of a community and you are expected to treat all users in a professional and respectful manner. Astronomy Connect is a Family-Friendly site.

    • Before posting a new thread, please search and check recent threads from the past few days because there is a chance the topic has already been started. Duplicate threads will either be locked or merged with the original thread.

    • Please stay on track! If you get a bit carried away in an unrelated thread, the moderators may step in to steer the thread back to topic.

    • Have an awesome idea or feedback? Feel free to open a thread in the suggestions and feedback forum. Our community is full of smart knowledgeable people and posting your ideas will help the betterment of our community.
    Do Not's
    • Spam: Threads that are considered spam will be disabled and users warned or banned depending on the frequency and severity of their actions.

    • Encourage personal attacks, call out another user, or sabotage a user’s reputation. If a thread becomes personal or heated towards a user, reviewer, vendor, moderator, or staff member, the thread will be locked or removed. Further action may be taken depending on the overall behavior.

    • Go extremely off the topic in a thread. We understand the forums are a fun place and a little off topic chat never hurt anyone, but the moderators may step in to steer the direction of the thread if needed.

    • Discuss or seek advice on engaging in illegal activities such as the purchase or sale of stolen property.

    • Discuss or link to offensive topics, such as pornography, violent themes, sexism, racism or other discriminatory subjects, even as a “joke”. Users doing so will receive a warning and further action if needed. Threads of a political or religious nature are also not appropriate for Astronomy Connect.

    • Post or solicit any kind of racism, flaming, trolling, harassment, and discrimination of any kind, or behavior deemed to be intentionally abusive or inappropriate. Behavior of this kind will result in an immediate warning. Further violations can escalate to account freezes and bans.

    • Solicit for any kind of material support, donations, aid, etc. While they may be well-intentioned, such requests are sure to attract the wrong kind of attention. Due to the high risk of scamming, such threads will be locked and removed if no prior permission has been given by Administration.
    Anti Censorship, Pro Constructive Feedback!
    We don’t intend to censor messages based on opinions expressed within posts, but we will enforce the policies outlined here as well as the rules of individual forum. We reserve the right to remove, modify, or move posts at our discretion. We value the feedback and input we get from the community. As long as your posts abide by our rules and guidelines of conduct, we’ll take note and respond where possible to your input or feedback. If you have any issues or something you’d like to discuss privately, please do not hesitate to contact a site Staff Member.
     
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2016
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  2. george

    george Developer

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    george, Feb 9, 2016
    #2
    What does family-friendly mean?
    All content on Astronomy Connect should be family-friendly. Here are some tips;

    No objectionable language or images, including but not limited to:
    • Profanity
    • Obscenity or Vulgarity
    • Hate Speech or Prejudice Comments
    • Personal Insults
    • Hostile Comments and Threatening Language
    We do not permit graphic descriptions of death, injury, violent criminal activity or animal cruelty. First-hand reports of deaths and criminal activity will be considered on an individual basis.

    All the standard curse words are banned (You know what they are), and we will remove reviews and posts that contain clever (or not so clever) misspellings of curse words intended to circumvent our content filters as well as acronyms for inappropriate phrases.
     
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  3. george

    george Developer

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    george, Feb 9, 2016
    #3
    Non-Threatening Environment
    Astronomy Connect encourages active discussion in all our forums, even those about controversial topics, but the forums can only flourish if all members feel welcome and safe. We will not tolerate the following:
    • Multiple messages targeting any members(s) for insults, attacks, or personal comments.
    • Challenges to another member’s right to participate on our site.
    • Sarcastic asides and snide comments.
    • Posting of contact or personal information about other members without permissions.
    • Posting of private correspondence with Astronomy Connect Staff, it’s members, and industry vendors should not be reproduced, summarized or discussed in the public forums unless you receive prior permission from all other parties.
     
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  4. george

    george Developer

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    george, Feb 9, 2016
    #4
    Vendor Guidelines
    We welcome vendors and manufacturers to come and participate and contribute on Astronomy Connect but please do not actively market/promote your business outside the proper areas.

    Vendors are permitted to make sale or commercial announcements within the Vendor and Sale Announcements forum. All announcements will be moderated prior to being posted by a staff member of Astronomy Connect.

    You can participate in discussions related to your business but you must clearly state your affiliation as a representative. Our members are entitled to this information so they can be aware of any potential bias in your comments. A simple statement like, “Hi, I’m John from XYZ,” is sufficient disclosure.

    You may also join in a conversation that is NOT directly related to your business. Please do not use this as an opportunity to solicit new clients, provide contact information or post commercial links.

    We ask that vendors/manufacturers not comment on or review competitor’s equipment (directly or indirectly) and that you stick to comments about products you manufacturer or resell. You may not comment on the quality of another competitor’s products or services.

    If you are caught shilling, this will result in an automatic disciplinary actions including account temporary suspension, or permanent banning. A shill is an owner, employee or associate of a seller of the products or services who pretends (or purposely omits) any association with the product or service, while pretending to be a satisfied customer or interested bystander. People who omit an association with a product or service for other reasons (they’re paid to post about it, they’re helping a friend, etc) so that they can help promote it are also considered shills.
     
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