Welcome to the DeeperBlue.com Forums.

Please take a moment to read through these FAQs and guidelines. There is some useful information about how to use the forums, our guidelines for behavior, and how to set up your account and profile. You are also governed by the User Agreement and Privacy Policy.

THE RULES AT A GLANCE

1. Don't spam. We have a zero tolerance policy. Do it once and you're out.
2. Make quality posts. Contribute to the discussion and add value
3. Respect is the key. Treat each other with kindness and respect
4. No personal insults. This is self explanatory.

THE RULES IN MORE DETAIL

We only want one of you please

We only allow one account per person please. If you lose access to your account, there's no need to create another one. Instead, try resetting your password on the login page, or contact an Administrator for help.

English, please

We welcome members from around the world. To help us be able to moderate the forums and keep discussions useful for everyone can you please write in English on posts and threads.

Remember, everyone was new once

Whether you’re after a quick answer to a question or you’re looking to meet people who will bounce around ideas and get you inspired, there are certain things that you need to know if you want to make the most of any online community.

It's not just about sticking to the rules; it’s about knowing how to find and use the resources that are on offer in order to make the most of your experience. Before posting a new question, use "search" to see if it's already been asked and answered.

The first point to remember is that everyone was new once. The whole point of a forum is to learn, so for that very reason there is no such thing as a dumb question. So if searching hasn't helped, just ask and then bask in the goodness of knowing that hundreds of people in the future will benefit from the answers that you elicit.

Welcome Newcomers

When newcomers arrive, welcome them to our growing community. Many of our community's "elders" (regardless of age) are a wealth of knowledge and have much to share. Help new members learn about how to find information and resources, save time, and how to get involved in the community.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the discussion or might detract from its usefulness, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said. If you have to, just move on. Save your energy for something you value.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Please spend some time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Be Courteous: Avoid duplicate posts

Do not post the same discussion more than once on a discussion forum or on many forums. Duplicate discussions can be frustrating for other members, especially for those whose time and energy is limited. Weeding through the same discussion in multiple locations can be not only frustrating, but down right annoying. Duplicate discussions will be deleted. Reposting the same message repeatedly can be interpreted as SPAM and could result in the loss of your DeeperBlue.com Forum Membership.

Spam? There's No Way I'd Do That!

I’m sure it’s unintentional, but sometimes spam is in the eye of the beholder. You might have just written what you consider to be the most amazing free script known to humankind. You’ve signed up to a forum with the sole intention of sharing it with as many people as possible, because that’s the kind of generous person you are. Now consider it from the moderator’s point of view. They see a new member come on board and their very first post happens to be a link back to their own site. That, my friends, looks very much like spam... and we have a zero tolerance policy.

Spammers may be warned, infracted or banned at our discretion.

What Can't I Say?

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

• Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
• Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
• Respect each other. Don’t harass or troll anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
• No politics or religion. Nothing starts a fight faster than politics or religion, so we don't allow those discussions.
• Keep personal information private. All posts in the forums are easily found via search engines, so unless you're willing to expose your information to the world, please do not post telephone numbers, e-mail addresses etc in your posts.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself whether you'd go on TV and publicly say it on camera.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Other things we ask you not to do

Don't copy and paste whole articles

Don't post content from other sites. If you want to discuss an article you read somewhere, post a link. (It may also be copyright infringement if you post the whole lot.) Make sure to provide enough input of your own to get a decent discussion started. For example, explain why you liked the article.

However, this is not an invitation to post a link to your own works. You are welcome to write about a topic that interests you and start a discussion, but not to promote something you've posted elsewhere. The content should be unique and not self-promotional.

Social bookmarks

Don’t ask for votes on social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, or Facebook. We consider this self promotion and it's not OK.

Comply with local, regional and national laws

There are topics on this forum that include activities governed by local, regional and national laws in your country - for example Spearfishing activities. Please ensure that your posts and any photos you post are compliant with any legal requirements otherwise you will find you post(s) and photo(s) removed

Complaints against posts and photos will results in them being removed

We run a simple system on the forums. If more than 3 different people use the reporting system to complain against a thread, post or photo will result in it being removed from public view whilst the forum staff review the complaints.

Piracy, warez, adult sites, and illegal content

No sharing of warez or pirated material, please. It is not cool. Likewise, don’t post any work (even a small piece of it) unless you have express permission from the owner or creator of the piece or work. You’ll be responsible for copyright infringement -- not us. It is better if you link to it. It will save you some lawyers’ fees!

Additionally, links to adult sites are not allowed.

Affiliate links, coupons, and offers

Affiliate links, coupons, offers are not welcome. DO NOT:

• Post coupon codes, discounts, offers
• Ask for coupons, codes, discounts, invitations to services, etc.
• Post affiliate links. Links to Outwar and similar types of schemes are acceptable, as these are links to games. However, it should be obvious from the outset where the links lead to.

This is a serious offence that will often earn you an infraction or banning.

Republishing your words

We know that your words are filled with knowledge of how things work in the real word, because of this we have dedicated ourselves to bringing the best of our community to a larger audience. We do this by including links to your posts throughout the network and using discussion topics for the basis of new articles and features. We also reserve the right to quote your discussion forum posts in newsletters, throughout the DeeperBlue.com network of sites and in DeeperBlue.com promotions. When republishing your quotes for wide distribution, we will identify you only by your DeeperBlue.com member name. We promise to be sensitive in this effort. We will not republish anything you write that we think could be deemed personally endangering, inflammatory or embarrassing to you without your consent.

Signatures

Each DeeperBlue.com Forum Membership comes with the ability to display a signature once you’ve stopped being a new member (this is based on criteria such a length of membership and number of posts). This signature can be used to promote your site, business, or other ventures.

Avatars

Avatars are small images that can be included in your user profile. These images must be 50 X 50 pixels or less and be under 8 Kilobytes in size. Avatars fall under the same guidelines as printed text and must comply with these guidelines.

Advertising or Soliciting Services

The DeeperBlue.com Forums has a strict, in-post no-self-promotion policy. Linking to your own web pages or pages from sites which you are affiliated with (including affiliate links) inside posts will be deemed as self-promotion and could result in the loss of your membership. Under certain conditions (for example being a Forum Business Sponsor), links to your site can be placed into your posts so long as your posts contribute some informational value to the conversation and aren't just there to promote your site. All members are allowed to promote goods and services in the Marketspace only.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

• Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
• Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
• Don’t post no-content replies.
• Don't bump threads
• Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
• Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.
• Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button.
• Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a New Topic.

REMEMBER: Search before you post

Nothing fills a forum up with rubbish faster than questions that have already been asked and answered many times over. Please search carefully before asking a question to see if it already exists.

What Can I Do to Make You Like Me?

Our ultimate goal here is to help people learn in a fun and welcoming environment. There are a few easy things that you can do to help us achieve that.

Be kind. No one likes a bully. When people from every walk of life get together, there are likely to be differences of opinion. That’s cool—it’s what makes the place interesting, but it also means that on occasion you might just have to walk away. We don't tolerate name-calling or personal insults.

Be patient. Forums attract beginners, and that means beginner questions. You’ll likely come across questions that you think are stupid, but what goes around comes around. Treat people how you'd like us to treat you.

Be polite. If someone rubs you up the wrong way, reply to the content of their post rather than the tone. Easy.

Like Us Back

The conversations we have here set the tone for everyone. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be. Our aim here is to create an environment that is fun and welcoming. So... have fun!

Every community needs growth – not just to keep things interesting, but to ensure survival. You can help us to keep this community vibrant by spreading the good word. Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: favorites, bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too. The easiest way to do that is to share interesting posts with your peers. There are a number of sharing options available by clicking the link icon below a post. You know how it goes – help us to help you.

If You See a Problem, Tell Us

It is the job of the Moderators to ensure that everything is clean and tidy, but there will never be enough moderators to look at every post, so we rely on you to help out. You can do that by alerting us of anything you see that looks off base. It might be a post that’s rude, it might be spam or maybe it's just in the wrong forum.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just report it. If enough reports accrue, action will be taken by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts in any way; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

The Internet is Forever

Before you post, please think carefully about what you post. These days it’s good business practice to Google your company name every so often to see what people are saying about you. For that reason, if you’re asking for basic advice on how to deal with a difficult client, it would be prudent to avoid naming them.

At DeeperBlue.com we accept that occasionally people make silly mistakes and we’ll do everything we can to help you out, but we simply lack the time to edit hundreds of posts and heavy edits or post deletions compromise the flow of a discussion. So please, think first.

Private Message Etiquette

• The same rules apply to Private Messaging as to posting. No spamming, insulting, self-promotion allowed.
• Don’t use the PM system to ask for help if your problem is being discussed in a thread. This will prevent others from using the knowledge to solve the same problem at a later date.

Changing your username

You can change your username via your User Account Control Panel.

Closing or deleting your account

If you don’t wish to participate in the forum anymore:

• Turn off all the e-mail notification options in your profile
• Stop posting
• You can self-delete your account by going to the Deactivate Your Account section of your account section.
• Please note that we do not delete posts or threads on account deletion, we will reassign them to a generic Deleted User account.

Help!

All this stuff is very interesting, but it doesn't answer my question. How can I get some help?

No worries. There are a few options. You can send a PM to a staff member. Staff fall into the following categories:

• Mentors act as moderators on these forums. As moderators, they have the ability to move and delete posts and threads,as well as issue warnings, infractions and bans.
• Team Leaders lead the team of Mentors.
• Administrators are the Community Manager and Administrator of the forum.

NOTE: New staff members are chosen and nominated by the existing staff only. It is not possible to apply to become a staff member.

You can flick an email through our Contact Us form and we'll get back to you within 24 hours (on a bad day) or you can message our Admin (@Stephan Whelan) for a response right here on the forums.

DEEPERBLUE.COM’S RIGHTS

DeeperBlue.net Ltd. and its assigned agents reserve the right to remove a post that does not relate to the topic being discussed in the forum. In addition, DeeperBlue.net Ltd reserves the right to organize discussion forums in order to best serve the majority of our members. For example, narrow-interest or minimal activity topics may, at DeeperBlue.com's discretion, be relocated to a more appropriate discussion forum, or deleted entirely.

DeeperBlue.net Ltd. or its assigned agents also reserves the right to prohibit or delete discussions that are thought to violate applicable law or that may be harmful to other members, the sites that comprise DeeperBlue.com, or the rights of DeeperBlue.net Ltd. or others. That said, DeeperBlue.com does not have the practical ability to restrict conduct or communications that might violate these Guidelines or the Terms of Service prior to transmission on AOL or the Web, nor can we guarantee prompt removal of offending discussion forum posts.

We also reserve the right to remove your membership from the DeeperBlue.com Forums should you violate the Community Guidelines.