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Groundspeak Forum Guidelines


hydee

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Groundspeak is pleased to announce the Groundspeak Forum Guidelines. The only real changes are the guidelines we follow are now in writing, so you may all know what to expect. And, going forward, we will have assistance from some of the community members as forum moderators.

 

~Heidi

 

Groundspeak Forum Guidelines

The goal of the Groundspeak Forum is to promote the activity of Geocaching and GPS Usage. It is an open forum sponsored by Groundspeak Inc. for discussing all aspects of Geocaching, Benchmark hunting, GPS Usage and Groundspeak related GPS Gaming.

 

There are certain guidelines you should be aware of before you post messages to this Discussion Forum. It is important there are some basic guidelines of conduct. While most people are courteous and polite; there are some individuals that choose to behave in a disrespectful and irresponsible manner. Unlike other public discussion boards, Groundspeak will take appropriate steps to keep our discussion in line with these guidelines and with good taste.

 

In general we will leave it to you the community, to police yourselves. Treat others with respect. Remember that this is a public venue read by many people spanning all walks of life. If you question a post please use the ‘report this post’ icon in the lower right hand corner.

Please understand that we are not attempting to censor any messages or opinions posted, but this is a moderated discussion forum. We simply want to preserve the spirit of an open, interactive discussion without offending participants. This means that we (Groundspeak and the volunteers for Groundspeak) reserve the right to edit/remove inappropriate messages, or to lock a discussion thread. Before taking any of these actions, a moderator will attempt to steer the discussion back to the topic, if this is possible and appropriate. The additional step of editing or deleting a post will only be taken in appropriate circumstances; again, the intent is not to censor legitimate discussion or to change the meaning of any post. If we edit a post and you do not like the changes please feel free to notify us and we will delete your post. Examples of posts that may be edited or deleted include posts containing profanity, chain letter and other spam postings, posts that disclose the tracking number codes for Groundspeak travel bugs or posts that reveal private information about another community member. Other examples are discussed in the guidelines below.

 

Some things to keep in mind when posting:

 

Respect: Respect the guidelines for forum usage, and site usage. Respect Groundspeak, its employees, volunteers, yourself, fellow community members, and guests on these boards. Whether a community member has one post or 5,000 posts, they deserve the same respect.

Foul Language and obscene images will not be tolerated. This site is family friendly, and all posts and posters must respect the integrity of the site.

 

Personal Attacks and Flames will not be tolerated. If you want to praise or criticize, give examples as to why it is good or bad, general attacks on a person or idea will not be tolerated.

Sock Puppet accounts will not be allowed. A sock puppet is an account made on an internet message board by a person who already has an account for the purpose of posting anonymously. Use your own account for posting personal opinions. Posts from known sock puppet accounts will be deleted and both the puppet and actual account may be banned from using the services of Groundspeak.

 

Keep on topic: Responses to a particular thread should be on-topic and pertain to the discussion. Users should use the New Topic button to start a new discussion which would otherwise be off-topic in the current thread. Threads that are off topic may be closed by the moderator.

 

Private Discussions: Sometimes, a discussion thread strays off into a friendly dialogue or a heated debate among a very small number of users. For these exchanges, use the private discussion feature that is provided through the Groundspeak forums, or the Geocaching.com e-mail system. Public forum posts should be reserved for matters of interest to the general community.

 

Posting Messages: Posting the same message to many topics or boards is considered spam. Duplicate messages will be deleted or consolidated by our moderators. Please do your best to post new topics to the appropriate forum board, moderators will move topics that are posted inappropriately.

 

Commercial Postings/Solicitations are not allowed. Commercial content as a direct or indirect (either intentional or non-intentional) attempt to solicit customers through a forum post will be edited or deleted. Notwithstanding the above, Groundspeak reserves the right to include limited commercial content in this Forum, in its sole discretion.

 

Classifieds advertising is permitted in the ‘GPS Garage Sale’ Forum. (Geocaching.com is not involved in these transactions) Abuse of this forum will be not be tolerated.

 

About our Moderators: Forum Moderators are community volunteers that give up their time to help build a better community. They will assist with focusing topics and enforcing guidelines. They have the ability to edit/delete posts, to move, close or delete topics, and to temporarily moderate users’ posts. Our moderators are equipped with Kevlar flak jackets and an unlimited supply of admin bricks. Do not attempt to engage them in direct combat.

 

Disclaimer: Any messages you post will stay available to the public for as long as this discussion board is online. Please post carefully, once you have posted your message it is here to stay. We will not edit the content you wrote unless it does not conform to these guidelines. If we edit a post and you do not like the changes, we will delete the message at your request.

If someone has posted copyrighted material or otherwise illegal material, please notify Groundspeak so that it may be removed.

 

Complaints: If you have an issue with a specific post/topic on this board, please use the ‘report a post’ link in the lower right hand corner of the post. We will review the post and edit/delete if necessary. Any comments on the personnel of Groundspeak or one of the volunteers, please send an e-mail message to contact@Groundspeak.com.

 

Additional Terms: The Groundspeak Forums are further governed by the GEOCACHING.COM SITE TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT, the terms of which are hereby incorporated into these guidelines by reference. The Terms of Use Agreement may be found here: http://www.geocaching.com/about/termsofuse.aspx

 

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