Community Engagement Rules

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Community Engagement Rules

To ensure the best possible experience for all Community members, we have established some basic engagement and etiquette. By signing in and using this Community, you agree that you have read and will follow these rules and guidelines.

Please take a moment to acquaint yourself with these important guidelines. In order to preserve an environment that encourages both civil and fruitful dialogue, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate membership in this community for anyone who violate these rules.

The Rules

Respect others. Focus on the content of the posts and not on the people making them. Please extend the benefit of the doubt to everyone; there’s no such thing as a stupid question.

Respect the purpose of the community. Use the community to share successes, challenges, constructive feedback, questions, and goals. Promoting items or services for personal gain is NOT respectful of the community. Please do not do it.

Use caution when discussing products. Information posted on the discussion groups and in the libraries is available for all to see, and comments are subject to libel, slander and antitrust laws.

All defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, or illegal materials are strictly prohibited. Sticks and stones may break bones but words can also hurt. Be kind and respectful and do not post anything that you would not want the world to see or that you would not want anyone to know came from you.

Respect intellectual property. Post content that you have personally created or have permission to use and have properly attributed to the content creator. When posting items in our collaborative environment, please indicate if the item is not available for reuse. It’s also advisable to contact the owner of any material if you would like to reuse it.

Post your message or documents only to the most appropriate communities. This helps ensure all messages receive the best response by eliminating “noise.”

Follow the rules of discussion group etiquette. State concisely and clearly the topic of your comments in the subject line. This allows members to respond more appropriately to your posting and makes it easier for members to search the archives by subject.

Send messages such as “thanks for the information” or “me, too” to individuals- not to the entire list. Do this by using the “Reply to Sender” link in every message.

Do not send administrative messages, such as “remove me from the list,” to the group. Instead, use the web interface to change your settings or to remove yourself from a list. If you are changing email addresses, you do not need to remove yourself from the list and rejoin under your new email address. Simply change your settings.