The beauty of this site is that there are few rules and the ones that exist are unwritten (until now) and you knew them before you signed up because they're common sense:
1) Treat a fellow member as you would like to be treated
2) Don't offend another member with foul language or materials
3) We don't come into your living room unwelcomed advertising our site so don't come in here blatanty advertising your products. There is a Vendor forum for this now.
Edit by Rickk to add #4:
4) Don't use the forum to vent a bad experience with a vendor and smear their name all over the web without posting just the facts - no heresay. We should/will offer the vendor an opportunity to respond here to defend themselves. If they don't, it speaks for itself.
Edit by Rickk to add #5:
5) No Politics/Religion/Controversial topics - someone will get offended by this, no way around it. Remember, this is a boating site first. There are plenty of other sites to go vent your opinions about something.
That's pretty much it - pretty simple.
It's ok to post something that you found and think is ok - we've all done that. That is not #3 because it's not your product and hopefully you're not sponsored by that company to do so.
Where the fine line becomes fuzzy and is not so easy to explain is when a member starts to bash a product/service based on opinion or incomplete facts - kind of goes back to rule #1 (which your parents hopefully taught you). We hate to see a person or business's reputation dragged through the mud for no reason.
It's very easy to click a link in your favorites and go somewhere else if you feel like venting, bashing or want to beat your chest in the cyberworld trying to draw out another combatant so you can feel better about yourself when finished. In fact we encourage a person to do that (see rules 1 and 2) and then once they feel better, come back here and relax.
Anything goes in the world of PM though, unless members start complaining about someone taking advantage of #3 via PM.
If these "rules" are wrong, let's discuss them - I didn't make them, they're common sense. This site has operated quite nicely for all these years without much interference from people like me that spend more time lately screening applicants than participating.
