Rules & Etiquette

Locked
User avatar
pedant
Admin
Posts: 1516
Joined: Fri Sep 29, 2017 4:35 am
Location: Chicago
Contact:

Tue Dec 05, 2017 10:16 pm

Civility
  • Be good to one another both in public and in private.
  • Avoid making ad hominem attacks.
  • Please avoid using offensive language.
Search First
  • We encourage newer members to search through past posts before posting questions. Doing some research first will help you refine your questions or possibly even answer them, and we believe that you will get more out of the forum this way.
  • Before posting a new thread, consider seeing if there is an existing one to contribute to. By keeping conversation topics consolidated, it will be easier to find information and do research in the future.
Link Posting
  • New users who are not vendor or artisan members should refrain from posting promotional links.
  • Affiliate links and use of URL shortening services are prohibited.
Manually Posted Signatures
  • The Signature feature is disabled.
  • Manually adding "Signatures" to your posts is strictly prohibited.
  • See more details here.
Multiple Accounts & Users
  • We ask that each member have only one registered account, and each account should be associated with one single person; one account per person, and one person per account.
  • You can change your username by contacting the staff.
Health Discussion
  • Discussion of health effects that is not carried out in an academic manner -- preferably with links to peer-reviewed articles -- may be removed without notice.
Restricted Topics
  • This is not a proper venue for discussing politics or religion.
Surveys
  • Surveys are discouraged. Refrain from posting them unless they specifically pertain to and are for the benefit of this community.
Vendor Members
  • Please Introduce Yourself before applying to be a Vendor Member.
  • Ideally, vendors interact as community members first and vendors second. Use your good judgment.
  • Vendor members should avoid (self-)promotion outside of the Community > Tea/Teaware Vendors forum area.
    • One topic per vendor, please. This is to keep vendor offerings and announcements centralized and to reduce clutter.
  • Vendors shall be limited to using Community > Tea Swap as individuals and should promote their business in the Community > Tea/Teaware Vendors forum area.
    • For example, a vendor may list an unwanted cake or the occasional pot in Tea Swap as any normal member would, but these should be things that said vendor is not normally selling in a business capacity.
      The main intent of this rule is to prevent Tea Swap from being cluttered with potentially repetitive offerings.
Tea Swap
  • Newly registered users cannot post items for sale in Tea Swap. Please settle in, make a few posts, and introduce yourself.
    • If a new user wants to list something but can't, he or she should contact the staff to ask for an endorsement.
  • Prices must be stated publicly.
  • Items posted for sale should not be cross-posted in other forum areas. Practice good curtesy and avoid excessive (self-)promotion.‬
  • Please see also these Tea Swap suggestions.
Quotations
  • Please avoid quoting large amounts of material (including images) unless it's relevant to your post specifically. Consider trimming quotes to avoid making threads unnecessarily long and annoying to scroll through.
Old Topics
  • Please avoid resurrecting old threads unless it makes sense. Use your judgment.
    • For example, a pattern we have seen is that new members sometimes make low-effort posts in older topics seemingly just to get their post count up. Please don't resurrect unless you have something to contribute (e.g. a question you feel was not answered adequately) and genuinely want to continue the conversation.
Reposting
  • When reposting, please add unique commentary to put it into context and encourage discourse between members.
  • Plagiarism is prohibited. Please properly attribute what you repost to the original author(s).
User avatar
Chip
Admin
Posts: 371
Joined: Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:47 pm
Location: In the TeaCave atop Mt Fuji
Contact:

Wed Dec 13, 2017 9:24 am

Depending upon the severity of the offense, Moderators may take appropriate action at their discretion up to permanent banning and removal of all offending member posts.

We are all a family of tea drinkers, so please don't ruin our day ... :mrgreen:
User avatar
Chip
Admin
Posts: 371
Joined: Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:47 pm
Location: In the TeaCave atop Mt Fuji
Contact:

Tue Dec 19, 2017 10:09 am

The "Signature" feature is disabled on the forum for several reasons.
... disrupts the flow of topics.
... rarely has anything to do with the topic.
... is often used to spam the forum.
... diminishes the quality of the forum.
... is generally nothing more than self promotion.
... is not in keeping with the goals of this forum.
Etc.
For similar reasons, "Manually posted Signatures" posted by members will NOT be permitted. Posting a signature (w/ or w/o links) manually will potentially get your entire post deleted w/ or w/o prior notice, and may lead to banning from this forum.

None of us want to delete posts or ban otherwise great members, so please just do not do it!

Thank you in advance for your understanding!
Locked