Aquarium Advice - Aquarium Forum Community

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Community Rules

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Community Rules

Aquarium Advice Community Rules

Registering and participating at Aquariumadvice.com constitutes agreement to abide by the Social Knowledge Network Terms of Service (Social Knowledge is the company that owns this forum). We reserve the right to modify these rules at any time without giving prior notice to you. By using the services of this web site, you agree in advance to accept any changes.

There is no charge for joining this Forum! This is a community of individuals who share a common interest in Aquariums. Please think before you post and keep your comments limited to the topic at hand and above all be nice. If you come across any violations to these guidelines or have any problems navigating the site, do not hesitate to let us know through the Forums Contact Form. We'll be happy to address your concerns. We encourage everyone to participate in and enjoy the Community while at the same time adhering to these rules:

Be Courteous!
We aim to ensure that the forum is an enjoyable place that you want to visit time and time again. Our underlying philosophy is that the strength of the member relationships we build here is what sets us apart from the other boards - we are friendlier, more civil, more insightful, more mature and more fun.

Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Challenge others' points of view and opinions, but do so respectfully and thoughtfully.
Do not post unsubstantiated gossip, libelous remarks or directly misleading information.
Trolling or cyber-bullying are NOT allowed and are grounds for account restriction or banishment. Harassment, stalking or predatory behavior will result in account suspension.
Do not post the same discussion more than once or in many forums.
The language of this forum is English. If you are not a native English speaker, do your best. We are glad to have you as a member and will be supportive and polite.
Be mindful of yourself and others. This forum is not a democracy; it is privately owned and we make the rules. If rules are violated we retain the right at our discretion to remove, edit or delete posts and if necessary ban or remove members.
We take the "be nice" rule VERY seriously! We do not tolerate ANY rudeness.

Be Appropriate!
Please don't post it here if you wouldn't say it to your grandmother. Posts containing explicit, obscene or vulgar language, images or links to websites with adult content/images or punctuation marks designed to "trick" our obscenity filter will be removed. Discussion of politics and religion is permitted only in association with the topic of this forum.

Be Welcoming!
Welcome newcomers to our growing community. Many of our community's members have a wealth of knowledge and much to share. Please help new members learn about how to find information and resources and how to get involved in the Community.

Be Ethical!
Many participants have commercial interests associated with the forum topic and bring valuable information and expertise to share. With a few specific exceptions (see sponsor section), participants may not use the Forum for commercial gain.

Participants may not post to direct others to any pages at their own commercial website or website in which they have a commercial interest, including informational pages unless a sponsor account has been established and then only in areas here where advertising is expressly permitted.
Participants may not use the main Forums to direct others to the advertising Forums.
Participants may not send out SPAM via our Private Message system.
Our user base is not a resource to be "mined" by individuals, groups, or businesses, for profit or not for profit.
Participants may not bump threads unnecessarily. Bumping is posting useless information, posting one-liners or any other action to deliberately keep a thread hot or to bait others.

Posting standards:
Forum members may use standard fonts available on the forum. The standard font size is 2. The use of bold, large or colored fonts should be used sparingly. Posts containing inappropriate formatting will be removed or modified at our discretion; e.g. all caps or excessive color. E-mail and web address are not appropriate forum user names.

Ethical fishkeeping:
The owners of Aquarium Advice adhere to certain standards of ethical fishkeeping. We believe that freshwater and saltwater aquarists are directly responsible for the health and well being of any aquatic animals in their care, be they fish or invertebrate. These responsibilities include providing a healthy aquatic environment, humane treatment, humane euthanasia (when required), as well as obtaining and disposing of aquatic animals in such a way that does not damage sensitive local ecosystems. Posts advocating the illegal collection of fish or invertebrates, inhumane treatment, flushing live animals down the toilet, or releasing them into the wild will be removed.

About the First Amendment, censorship and your "right to free speech":
You do indeed have an absolute right to free speech. However this forum is privately owned and requires members to abide by our rules and by the decisions of our staff. If you cannot accept these guidelines we encourage you to contact one of the many good web hosting companies out there to and exercise that right to your heart's content.

Do not post protected / copyrighted content:
Information copyrighted or owned by any individual or entity other than the member should not be posted on the discussion forums without the consent of the owner. Copyrighted material includes images and text produced and owned by others. If such an event occurs, the individual posting the information shall be held solely responsible. You cannot legally post entire articles or news in the forum without permission from the copyright holder. Even if you attribute the article correctly it’s still copyright infringement. Under Fair Use provisions you can legally post a small abstract of an article - or perhaps the opening paragraph. The exception to this rule is press releases; they are meant for distribution and can be copied and distributed. If you are not sure if you can copy something then always err on the side of caution and simply post a link to the material.

Signature Standards: Signatures must be setup in your profile rather than manually added to your messages. They will appear at the bottom of every post you make.

Signatures must be kept to a maximum of 4 lines (including blank lines) and contain no more than two links (non-commercial).
Signatures may not include email addresses, phone numbers, prompts to contact or a sales pitch.
Signatures must follow our forums posting standards and only one line may be bolded.

Classifieds posting rules:
Our classifieds system is offered as a benefit of membership and no commercial sales are allowed.

Place only one ad per item - do not post or repost an ad in more than one section of the classifieds.
We expect ads placed to be related to the topic of this forum.
Do not place ads directing others to an e-bay or other online sale or directing others to another website.
Ads may be removed by our staff at any time for any reason.

Commercial Parties (Sponsors, for-profit companies and industry professionals):
The forum does not discourage nor endorse any commercial entity. Site sponsors must adhere to all the forum policies including these specifically set out for sponsors. For information about how to become a site sponsor please visit this page.

Sponsors are assigned this status at our discretion. We value our sponsor participants and the knowledge they bring to the forum. Only authorized sponsors may post commercial content.
Sponsors have a sub-forum in the vendors Forum specifically dedicated to their products and services. Sponsors may not post to other sponsors sub-forums or in the classifieds section.
Sponsors may not quote prices in any forum except the Vendors Forums.
Sponsors may not direct others to any pages at their own commercial website or website in which they have a commercial interest except in the vendors Forums or by prior arrangements with SK networks.
Sponsors may place a (1) link to their company website in their signature line (font size 2). Platinum sponsors may have a banner image in their signature.

Dealer/Vendor and Customer Disputes:
This forum is not intended to be a mechanism for people to vent frustrations about vendors or sales from private parties. Please settle your differences with the seller, manufacturer and dealer through the long-established legal or arbitration systems or the Better Business Bureau but not through our community.

Site Management & Member Concerns: If we feel site rules are violated we may remove, edit or delete posts and if necessary ban or restrict account access. Any abuse toward our administrators or moderators may result in suspension of your account. Complaints about a moderator's decision regarding a particular post are not to be made in posts; instead send a private message to a moderator. If a moderator deletes or edits one of your posts and you disagree with the action, contact the moderator concerned or any other member of our site team. Do not repost deleted material. This forum is largely self-policing, which means that moderators will respond and react to problems reported through the REPORT POST option, via the CONTACT FORM at the bottom of each page, or via PM. Do not hesitate to use these tools to report any problems regarding the forum.

Account Management: Requests for changes to your account should be made by using the Contact Us link at the bottom of every forum page. Participants may only have one account. Moderators may consolidate or delete multiple accounts.

Disabling Accounts: We may remove accounts that have no posts. If the account has many posts, completely deleting the account can significantly disrupt thread continuity. In that event, we may (if requested and at our discretion) disable your account in some or all of the following ways:Change the user name, remove signature content, subscriptions, avatar and any info from the profile that might be identifying or replace it with fictitious info, change account options to refuse contact and ban account. Where communication features were used to share information with other individuals (e.g., sending a personal message to another Forum user) we generally cannot remove content. If someone quoted your post, the original user name will be shown as having been quoted (which we cannot purge).

Someone has to interpret the above guidelines and how they apply to this forum. Ultimately it's up to our site administrator to make this decision. If you have any questions about these guidelines, please feel free to contact us.

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