These rules are intended to ensure the highest quality of the posted messages. If you have any questions or concerns about these rules, please send them to website@infoadvisors.com. A Frequently Asked Questions list is available. That page asks and answers some of the most common questions about the mechanics of these Groups. You can get assistance with the groups by clicking on the HELP button on the board toolbar.
Post want you want, as long at it complies with these policies.
This is a user-to-user discussion group. That means that you can post what you want, as long as it complies with both the spirit and and rule of these policies. If you want to gripe about something you are more than welcome. If you want to sing your own praises about a service or a product, please do, as long as you are not affiliated with or do not receive benefit from posting your kudos.
We don't censor messages for any reason other than compliance with our policies.
We love to have fun, but this is also a professional community. No personal attacks.
Disagreeing with a statement or idea is fine, be we don't approve messages that verbally abuse or attack others. Contentious issues are fine, but your contention should be about ideas, not personalities.
Vendors are welcome.
Staff of vendor organizations are welcome. We all share the same goal, so getting a variety of viewpoints gives our groups great perspective on tools and services. However, vendors must follow our policies about disclosing affiliations. That goes for vendor partners as well. We invite consultants, vendor reps, sales personnel and others to carefully read our policies of commercial posts.
Don't forward general or off topic messages to the group.
If you receive a message somewhere via any means that asks you to pass it along to everyone you know, don't post it here. It is explicitly against group policy to post it here. Off topic messages are also prohibited. As these types of messages do not comply with the posting rules, they will not be approved or forwarded to the group members by the moderator.
No unsolicited commercial postings
In order to ensure a premium level of message content, no unsolicited commercial postings are allowed on any of our boards. A commercial message is one made by a person or on behalf of a person or organization selling a product or service, containing information about that product or service. Commercial postings include employment offerings, contract offerings, agency inquiries, and referrals to websites where something is for sale or revenue ads are located. This also includes vendor staff postings that are overtly sales-oriented. Violations of this policy most likely will result in a complaint to your provider and the deletion of your account.
This prohibition does not apply to unaffiliated-users making recommendations on products or services. Brief signatures mentioning your employer, company, and or product will be allowed. If there is any doubt ask first. Commercial ad rates are available for select boards and lists. We will file complaints with your provider or employer if this policy is violated.
Use your full, real name and identify any affiliations
We do not allow anonymous names or handles on our discussion groups. Accounts found to have misleading, obviously anonymous, or obviously false names will be deleted. You must used your full first and last (family) names in your profile. Violations of this policy will result in the deletion of your account.
We also require that any vendor affiliations be disclosed in your account profile. Vendors are encouraged to participate as a member of the IRM Community. If you are affiliated with a vendor, we also require that your posts be made via your official vendor account. Violators of this policy will be disclosed and publicly pilloried on the boards. It isn't pretty. Our users are pretty sophisticated and can spot posts that overly promote a product yet have a free e-mail account registration.
Only group members will be allowed to post
The moderator will reject messages received from e-mail addresses that have not subscribed to the board. If you have multiple e-mail accounts, you will need to register each one.
Crossposting
Please do not crosspost message to other lists, websites, or newsgroups if your message contains material posted by other list members, unless you have permission from the other authors to do so. This includes crossposting from one of our groups to another of our groups. Also, it is good practice to ask the other list/site/newsgroup if they allow crossposting. In all cases, limit crossposting to only those discussions that CLEARLY would be of interest to both groups. If you have any doubt, don't do it.
Also, it is bad practice and forbidden to forward a message from another group member to anyone outside the group without the message author's permission.
Keep quoted material brief
When replying to a post, please do not include the entire text of the original message unless it is brief - only repeat those lines that your are responding to. This is especially critical if your e-mail client automatically includes the entire original message when you REPLY to a message. Please do include a brief quote of the original message for the benefit of those participating via e-mail.
Please send any short, "me, too." or "I agree." or "Thanks" messages directly to the message author, not to the list. If you have more to say, then by all means post to the list.
Use only the explicitly listed access methods.
You may access messages and announcements via e-mail, via a web-based application, or via NNTP. Any attempts to access data or other content via other means not explicitly featured on our website is forbidden. Using exploits, hacks, or other methods to navigate or access our site or boards will result in your removal from out user list as well as a complaint to your provider.
No unauthorized posting of copyrighted material
Please do not post lengthy quotes from copyrighted sources. A sentence or two or three is probably OK, but paragraphs aren't. In any case, these quotes must be properly attributed with author, publication name, date, and page numbers. Items do not need to have a copyright symbol in order to be copyrighted. If you didn't write it and do not have permission from the copyright holder, don't copy it. This includes distributing other subscriber's messages outside the group. If you have any questions, check with your favourite legal source. You may also want to check out the Top 10 Copyright Myths.
The copyright on the compilation of all messages is held and reserved by InfoAdvisors.
Privacy
Members of this list are prohibited from using other members' e-mail information for any other reason than discussion of group topics. Any infractions will result in removal from the group. We include several tracker accounts in each board. These accounts exist solely on these boards and we can trace any abuse or unsolicited e-mails through these boards via these tracker accounts. Abuse of this policy will result in a complaint to your provider.
If you have any problems at all with members who violate these rules, please let us know immediately.
Too many messages?
If you are annoyed by increased traffic on a mailing list, you can modify your Profile settings to receive to the digest version.