Community Guidelines

Community Guidelines
Adapted in part from the original guidelines on Helping.org's discussions for nonprofits, as well as TechSoup.org's subsequently developed guidelines.

While the Consultant Commons community area is intended to be a virtual space for the open exchange of ideas and experiences, we do have a few simple rules that we ask our users to abide by:

Courtesy. Feel free to engage in a spirited discussion or disagree; however, avoid "flaming" or attacking individuals (members and non-members) and organizations. Consultant Commons reserves the right but assumes no obligation to remove any user-generated content that includes bigotry, racism, sexism, or hatred; promotes illegal activity or physical harm to anyone; and any content that is harassing, libelous, abusive, vulgar, offensive, threatening, obscene, or otherwise objectionable.

Responsibility. There are several site moderators who keep an eye on the webiste content. Nonetheless, you are responsible for your posts. We don't use profanity filters, but we do ask that you refrain from using profane, obscene, intolerant, or abusive language. You are responsible for the content of your messages, and you may be liable for negligent, knowing, or willful misconduct, as well damages arising out of these actions. Accordingly, do not post, transmit, or link to material that is libelous, illegal, defamatory, fraudulent, harmful, or threatening, or material that violates the property rights or privacy of others. Additionally, be aware that by posting a message or participating in the Consultant Commons community, you grant ConsultantCommons.org the right to modify and publish that information on the site and in other media.

No advertising. Consultant Commons is not a billboard for your company, enterprise or service. Please refrain from posting advertising, promotional materials, or any other forms of solicitation for goods or services. In no part of the site are you allowed to spam, or to promote or offer for sale any goods or services. This includes: promotional statements about your company or organization or advertisements for free services or products made within the context of another message; repeated links to websites, blogs, and otehr sites that serve to enhance your search-engine rankings (commonly known as GoogleBombing); and other promotional activities which are deemed "advertising" as determined by community members and moderators of this site. You are also not permitted to contact users off board to promote your services. If you have been asked by a Consultant Commons administrator to refrain from a particular posting behavior and you continue to post in this manner, your account will be terminated.

Privacy. To protect your privacy and the privacy of others, please exercise caution when posting any personally identifiable information for yourself or a third party. This includes your user name and password, which should be protected and not shared with any other user.

Security. Consultant Commons.org is not responsible for the transmission of any viruses or worms that were acquired by following a link and downloading an executable file from a message board post.

Copyright. Do not post any material that is protected by copyright unless you are the copyright holder or have the copyright holder's permission. However, you may make fair use of copyright material by quoting limited passages with citation.

Edit your content. We do not edit content for you. Please preview (using the preview function) your content before posting it to ensure that it makes sense to others.

No "shouting." Please do not post messages in ALL CAPS.

Advice is not legally binding. While we hope that people share advice with one another freely, please be aware that it is just that: free advice. Consultant Commons is not responsible for any results obtained from the information you get from our site, including any loss or damage caused by a member's reliance on information obtained through a post in the Consultant Commons community. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Stay on topic. While we know that your Area 51 conspiracy theory is extremely interesting, we respectfully remind everyone that this is a nonprofit technology discussion area. Please post questions with that in mind.

No duplicate posting. No duplicate posting. There is no need to post your question as a comment, a story and as a forum. Please spend the extra two minutes figuring out where is the right location for your post.

Be yourself. Please avoid choosing a username with the explicit intention of impersonating another person. Impersonating another user is grounds for removal from this community


If your posts violate these Community Standards we may, at our own discretion, remove or move the offending posts and take such action as we think are appropriate, including, but not limited to: getting extremely upset, sending you a thoughtfully worded reply post or email reminding you of our Community Standards, suspending your posting privileges, banning your IP address. We will also monitor banned people who try to re-register with new accounts.