Community Guidelines

Here are some common-sense rules that’ll help you steer clear of trouble. Please take these rules seriously and try to respect the spirit in which they were created.

By participating on cleanadviser.com you agree to the following “Community Guidelines” in addition to our Terms, Privacy Policy, and Cookie Policy.

General
Our goal is to provide a positive environment for all our users and visitors. These rules are in place to prevent disruption and maintain a safe, friendly, open-minded and constructive place to exchange thoughts and opinions. The following guidelines apply to any message, comment or media (collectively, a “post”) contributed or submitted by a user to the site.

No Spamming
Spam includes any of the following:

Advertising: Do not advertise or promote other websites, books, products, media releases or services without express permission from a member of staff. The site is not a free advertising platform, registering an account solely for the purpose of posting promotional material will result in the suspension of your account.
Recruitment: Do not recruit site visitors into joining other websites or forums, request participation in surveys, petitions, contests, protests, political campaigns, fundraisers or money-making schemes.
Multi-posting: Do not start or upload multiple identical posts in multiple subchannels or post multiple identical replies in multiple posts. Posting something once in one place is sufficient.
Post bumping: Do not “bump posts”; i.e. commenting a short response to a post such as “bump” or off-topic comments, for the sole purpose of returning that post to the top of the channel or index page.
Flooding: Flooding involves disrupting a discussion for other participants by intentionally filling up the screen with large blocks of text, or repeating to post short but meaningless blocks of text, so that nobody can see the conversation.

Comment, Post or Submit Content
Please read and understand the following before posting or uploading content:

Thin content: Opening posts that contain minimal or thin content, links with little or no explanation, videos upload with no commentary, images with little or no commentary, and similar nominal content may be removed without warning or explanation. If your topic is important to you, make sure you explain why, with links and supporting material so that our users may offer more relevant contributions, and ultimately, better posts. In fact, if you have less to say than this simple notice, then you probably do not have enough to start a new post.
Nudity or sexual content: Cleanadviser.com is not for pornography or sexually explicit content. If this describes your post or content you want to submit, even if it’s a video of yourself, don’t post it on this site. Also, please be advised that we work closely with law enforcement agencies and that we report child exploitation.
Offensive material: Do not submit or post crude sexual references or material, images or links containing pornography, gore, excessive violence, sexually explicit content, images of death or other overly graphic material. Remember that we have visitors of all ages, post content should be as ‘family friendly’ as possible.
Violent or graphic content: Do not post content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people; likewise, do not post content that glorifies or encourages the abuse of animals. We understand there are sometimes reasons to post violent content (e.g., educational, newsworthy, artistic, satire, documentary, etc.) so if you’re going to post something violent in nature that does not violate these terms, ensure you provide context so the reason for posting is clear.
Illegal material: Do not submit or post material which is violative of any law or which describes illegal activities such as taking, growing, buying or selling drugs, the sale or promotion of weapons, hacking, downloading pirated software or music, participation in criminal offenses or plans to enact criminal acts.
Copyrighted material: Respect copyright. Only submit content that you made or that you’re authorized to use. Don’t submit or post content that you didn’t make, or use content in your posts that someone else owns the copyright to, such as music tracks, snippets of copyrighted programmes, videos made by other users, articles from other websites without the necessary authorizations.
If you quote text from another website then please properly credit the source. Not doing so constitutes plagiarism, always include a source link with quoted material. Users are asked to copy only as much as is necessary when quoting copyrighted material from other websites, do not copy and paste entire articles or web pages.
In accordance with industry accepted best practices we ask that users limit their copy/paste of copyrighted material to the relevant portions of the article you wish to discuss and no more than 25% of the source material, provide a link back to the original article and provide additional original content in your post along any copied quote from a third party.
Hateful content: Cleanadviser.com stands for freedom of expression. However, we don’t support content or posts that promotes or condones violence against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status or sexual orientation/gender identity, or whose primary purpose is inciting hatred on the basis of these core characteristics. This can be a delicate balancing act, but if the primary purpose is to attack a protected group, it is crossing the red line of this site.
Threats: Things like predatory behavior, stalking, threats, harassment, intimidation, invading privacy, revealing other users’s personal information and inciting others to commit violent acts or to violate the Terms are taken very seriously. Anyone caught doing these things may be permanently banned from the site.
Harassment: We do not tolerate the harassment of people on our site, nor do we tolerate communities dedicated to fostering harassing behavior. We define harassment as systematic and/or continued actions to torment or demean someone in a way that would make a reasonable person conclude that our website is not a safe platform to express their ideas or participate in the conversation or fear for their safety or the safety of those around them. Being annoying, vote brigading, or participating in a heated argument is not harassment, but following an individual or group of users, online or off, to the point where they no longer feel that it’s safe to post online or are in fear of their real-life safety is.
Garbage posting: Do not deliberately make posts of little worth or that contain offtopic nonsense, this includes making numerous short non-constructive posts designed to quickly inflate your post count or to annoy other users or posts that are not related to the general topic of a subchannel. Do not submit or post material that is verifiable or intentionally false.
Forum sliding: Purposely making unuseful posts in order to rapidly move other posts that are contrary to one’s positions down a page or subdivision in an attempt to make them “disappear” from obvious view.
Private content and anonymity: Do not post the content of private messages, e-mails, the personal contact details of other users or hints to reveal the real person of a user. This also applies to the contact details, e-mails etc. of non-users and to other offline correspondences. The content of private correspondences sent by site visitors or users of staff via private messenger or through e-mail are copyrighted to the sender and should not be reproduced, published or distributed outside of this website through any means without prior written permission from the copyright holder.
Language: As this is an English speaking site we ask that our users submit content or post only in English. Mobile phone shorthand, fictional languages and “leetspeak” are disallowed.
Agenda posting: Do not use the site to promote an agenda. This often involves the starting of posts which appear to be legitimate in nature but which are aimed at surreptitiously promoting some political view, religious belief or to attack or criticise other users, beliefs or views in an underhand manner which detracts from unbiased and fair discussions.
Medical advice: Do not use the site to request medical assistance, you are always best to seek the advice of your doctor. Discussions and content submissions pertaining to medical topics, discoveries and research are acceptable so long as they avoid recommending treatments to specific users. Similarly, promoting or recommending alternative or potentially harmful medications to visitors such as vitamin megadosing, human growth hormones, prescription drug abuse, white powder of gold, psychic experience inducing drugs or anything similar is disallowed.
Preaching: Do not promote or push religious beliefs on to others, we have visitors from all over the world of many different faiths and we ask that all beliefs be respected. Using the site to preach to, convert other users or to ‘advertise’ a belief system is disallowed, cleanadviser.com is about letting people decide for themselves what to believe.

Behaviour
Any of the following constitutes unacceptable behavior:

Racism or hatred: Do not post or submit racist or hate-driven material or views which express hatred towards or discriminate against any specific race, religion, country, gender, individual or group.
Harassment: Do not harass, defame, threaten, bully or victimise other users, this includes but is not limited to sending harassing private messages or harassing users via posts, comments, or uploads.
Profanity: Do not use profanity, crude, vulgar language or attempt to intentionally bypass the profanity filter.
Trolling: Trolling is strictly disallowed. We define a “troll” as someone who’s purpose on the site is to create as much disruption as possible, offend as many people as possible or otherwise cause disruption intentionally for personal amusement. Behaviour that can be defined as “trolling” generally involves the posting of knowingly false or offensive comments or views designed to provoke, bait and annoy other users.
Flamebaiting: Do not intentionally instigate “flame wars” or bait others into making personal attacks.
Abusive behavior: Do not be rude, insulting, offensive, snide, obnoxious or abusive towards other users.
Suggestive behavior: Do not post or submit sexually suggestive comments or material, innuendo or engage in inappropriate sexually oriented personal exchanges; purely personal correspondences are best kept private. Using this site for the pursuit of an intimate relationship with a user who in their country or state of residence is below the age of consent is strictly forbidden, as is the sexual harassment of users in private messages or via the chat.
Multiple usernames: Do not register more than one account. If you have forgotten your password please use the password recovery system to retrieve it. If you have forgotten your login username or are otherwise unable to access your account please contact us via e-mail for assistance. If you want to change your account’s display name you can do so from the profile settings page. Registering another account and then posting under it in order to either back up your own arguments, attack other users or otherwise take on more than one identity is known as creating a “sock puppet” and if caught you risk having both accounts disabled.
Group/gang building: The formation or promotion of organized groups, clans or gangs is disallowed, as are organized attempts to harass other users, disrupt discussions or enforce a certain viewpoint in any way that prevents fair and unbiased discussion.
Post derailment: Do not derail or ‘hijack’ discussions with comments that are either off-topic or designed to draw attention away from what is being discussed. If you’d like to discuss something different either start a new post or find another existing post which better suits the area you wish to discuss.
Warfare: Do not initiate or participate in “wars” with other users. Collective or individual attempts to attack, accuse, discredit or force a certain viewpoint on other users are disallowed. A “war” can constitute a prolonged series of disruptive confrontations between specific users or groups of users with similar beliefs or views, usually with either side accusing the other of being the aggressor and attacking, criticising and baiting each other on a regular basis. Action will be taken against users who instigate or participate in this type of activity.

Etiquette
In the interests of maintaining a positive environment, please avoid the following:

Shouting: Do not write in all uppercase letters, writing in this manner is considered “shouting” and makes posts difficult to read as well as looking unsightly and being annoying to other visitors.
Drive-by posting: Do not respond to posts with short one-off responses such as “Fake!” or “Photoshop!”. If you think something is fake then explain why you think that, elaborate on your response.
Quoting: Do not quote everything that has become beforehand in a post or comment only to add a short response, this not only clutters up the discussion but makes it harder to follow and tends to be frowned upon by other visitors. Quote tags should only be used to remove any ambiguity over what you are responding to, only use them when necessary.
Username: Please choose a sensible username. Usernames should contain only alphanumeric characters and must not contain profanity, racism, sexual references, hatred or relate to illegal activities such as drug taking. Do not use your username to display any web site or e-mail address, or to impersonate, harass or offend other users.
Signature and avatar: Please be sensible when it comes to what you put in your profile. Overly large, offensive, sexually oriented, drug-related, flashing or distracting signatures or avatars will be removed. Signatures should not be used to attack other users or to ‘bash’ or mock religious beliefs or views. We reserve the right to remove any signature or profile information that we deem to be unsuitable, inappropriate or disruptive.

Moderation
You might not like everything that you see this site. Some of the content might offend you. If you think it’s inappropriate, locate the flagging feature and submit it for review by our moderators.

We review flagged posts and contents 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When they do, we remove them. Sometimes a post or comment doesn’t violate our guidelines, but might not be appropriate for everyone. This content may be age-restricted.

Accounts are penalized for Community Guidelines violations, and serious or repeated violations can lead to permanent account termination without prior warning. If an account is terminated, that person won’t be allowed to create any new accounts.

By using cleanadviser.com you agree to the following:

Compliance: You agree to co-operate with the requests of our site staff should you be asked to stop doing something that they deem to be disruptive, inappropriate or in violation of the terms of service.
Protest: You agree not to attack, harass, threaten or become abusive towards any member of staff. Users who become offensive or participate in harassing, threatening or retaliatory action against the site or a member of staff will be subject to further action. All our moderators are volunteers who give up their own free time to keep the site a safe and friendly place, please treat them with the respect that they deserve.
Appeal: If you disagree with the action taken against your account by a member of staff you can appeal the decision by contacting either the member of staff who took said action or an administrator privately via e-mail or through our private message system. Do not start posts questioning or criticising moderator action in public.
Access: If your access or posting rights have been revoked, do not register more accounts in order to circumvent this restriction or have another user post or deliver messages on your behalf. Accounts that we find belong to previously banned users will also be banned.

Takedown
Cleanadviser.com is a privately owned website and as such we reserve the right to remove any post that we deem to be inappropriate, offensive or intentionally disruptive, or to take any action necessary against any user whose behavior we deem to be inappropriate, offensive or intentionally disruptive.

Action taken is done on a case by case basis and is dependant on the nature and severity of the violations, but can include anything up to the banning of the account and IP address without prior warning or notice.

Guideline Changes
Cleanadviser.com reserves the right to alter these Community Guidelines at any time without prior notice.

Participate
Remember that this is your community. Each and every person on cleanadviser.com makes the site what it is, so don’t be afraid to dig in and get involved. Let people know what you think. Feedback is part of the experience, and when done with respect, it can be a great way to make friends, share stories and make your time on this site richer. So leave comments and post content – there’s a lot going on and a lot of ways to participate.

Last Edited on 2018-07-25