Forum Guidelines

[Administrator]

Welcome to the TripSense Forum Community!

Before you read the following guidelines, read, accept and love our golden rule: Whether this is your first visit or your thousandth, you should always remember that every member shares the same privileges that you do as a participant in the TripSense Forums. While some members may need more help navigating their way, a welcoming and helpful guide is always appreciated. In a world full of different cultures, experiences, opinions and preferences, people always disagree. While TripSense encourages active discussions in our Forums, debates should remain civil and respectful as the Forums are not a place for interpersonal disputes. If you can’t offer some friendly advice to a fellow traveler, it may be wiser to move along. Otherwise, we welcome you with open arms!

We want this to be a self-governing community of travelers who enjoy sharing ideas, experiences and questions with others. As you’ll see, most of the users on here are terrific. But this is a community of real people, and we want everyone to have realistic expectations of what you’ll find here. Posting in a forum is a lot like walking down the street—you don’t have to talk to everyone, and not everyone has to talk to you. And occasionally, you’ll encounter someone who’s a bit surly, or pessimistic, or even confrontational. Our advice? Just ignore that user, and continue talking to everyone else. We can’t make everyone be nice all the time, so if you are afraid to get critical commentary from others about your posts, this might not be the best place for you. But if you have a sense of humor and the ability to rise above any petty squabbles that arise, you’ll probably get hooked on our Forums.


Finally! - the Guidelines:




We remove posts that do not follow these posting guidelines:

1. Postings must be family-friendly. A good rule of thumb is: If you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother, please don’t say it here. Objectionable language and images, including but not limited to profanity, obscenity, vulgarity, racial slurs, hate speech, personal insults, hostile comments and threatening language, will not be tolerated. All the standard curse words are banned. Additionally, clever spellings of words to get around our profanity filter are viewed the same way as the words themselves and could get you in trouble.
2. No self-promoting advertising or solicitation postings of any kind. It’s fine to share places you’ve been with other people, but this is not a space for you to tout your business or the business of a friend or relative. And while we’re on this subject, it’s not a space for you to bad-mouth your competitors, either. Neither of these things is fair—or remotely professional.
3. Users affiliated with a business or property being discussed must identify themselves as such. If you own "Awesome Tours," and someone asks a question like, "Does anyone know how to contact Awesome Tours?" then of course we think you should be able to answer! Just say in your post, "Hi — I own Awesome Tours." However, if someone asks, "Does anyone know of any good tour companies?" it would probably be best for you to stay out of it, lest you violate rule #2.
4. Destination-specific forums are for travel-related discussions — they are not chat rooms. Obviously, pleasantries are nice, but staying on topic is nicer. The off-topic chatter forum is the only appropriate place for daily check-ins with all of your forum buddies.
5. No harassing or impersonating other users. Harassment is defined as "the act of tormenting by persistent attacks and criticism." It’s pretty serious, so don’t do it. As well, it should also be pointed out that not everyone who’s annoying, irritating, repetitive or just not the brightest bulb in the chandelier is "harassing" you. Let’s ignore people we don’t want to talk to and avoid undue electronic confrontation.
6. Every person is limited to one forums screen name. Members with multiple screen names will be banned.
7. No HTML or Javascript.
8. No posting copyrighted material. We ask members not to provide any information that they do not have the permission to make available, such as copyrighted material, trademarks, passwords, confidential information, or intellectual property of any other person.
9. No posting contact or personal information about another individual without their permission. It should be pointed out here that if you include your personal information (e-mail address, phone number, street address, or IM name, for example) in a Forum post, it will be viewed and potentially used by any and all who see it... including people you’d probably rather not hear from. (See point #12.) Also, if you don’t want people here to know your real name, don’t include any version of it in your screen name.
10. No impersonation of TripSense staff or postings on behalf of TripSense. This means your username or content of postings should not contain anything that would indicate you are a member of the TripSense staff. As well, if TripSense wants to talk to you, share with you or solicit your feedback we will make ourselves known as official staff members. However, it’s your Forum, so we don’t interrupt all that much. Also, talking about TripSense, its staff or its policies is a surefire way to get your post removed. If you would like to contact us or send us your comments, you may do so by sending an email to webmaster <at> tripsense.com.
11. You must be at least 13 years old to post. This is not something we decided arbitrarily — it’s the law.
12. No self-promoting commercial URLs or e-mail addresses. We would never walk into your home and start posting ads for our website, so you shouldn’t come on our site and do the same.

A few more thoughts:

Local Experts aren’t required to answer every question in their forum. They do their best, but just can’t weigh in on everything. Also, Local Experts are real people, which means that sometimes they may be grumpy, make a typing error or, once in a great while, even be wrong! They’re great people who are volunteering to help other travelers... please cut them some slack.

We don’t give out anyone else’s contact information. We’re sorry if you’ve made a friend and want to get in touch, or have a specific question for someone, but our privacy policy does not allow us to release anyone’s information.

How to deal with trolls: IGNORE THEM. They are looking for attention; they want to make you react; they want to be talked about. We advise pretending they do not exist. Forums members should always remember that they are individuals who should take responsibility for their own behavior. Just because someone acts like an ugly tourist doesn’t mean that you have to be one too.

Bottom line: HAVE FUN, post wisely and help us keep this forum the best travel forum on the web. We truly appreciate your contributions, and your fellow travelers do too.