Please Read Before Posting

[Rik Brown]

Thank you for visiting TRAVEL.com! We hope that you will visit often and participate in our many travel forums. These forums are designed to allow the easy sharing of travel information in a friendly question and answer format with users worldwide. In order to keep these forums open but on-topic, some common-sense rules will apply.

All Posts Must Be On-Topic

Our website is a place for friendly discussions in a question and answer format. Off-topic posts and unrelated chatter in message threads ruins the value of the forums. Please make sure you have something relevant to contribute or say nothing at all. It follows that....

Advertising or Other Solicitations Are Prohibited

Any messages with advertising, announcements, promotions, sweepstakes, questionnaires, surveys, or solicitations of any kind will be deleted without explanation. This includes promoting your website or any other service. If you are a new user, do not attempt to post URLs, e-mail addresses or any other kind of advertising spam. Such messages by new users (this does not apply to ranked members) will be deleted without explanation.

New/novice members who attempt to post URLs/e-mail addresses will be automatically blocked by our software and banned from the system. You may help other users with your expertise, but you may not ask if you can provide assistance. Just give helpful non-business guidance if you are here to help and not solicit business. Those who wish to advertise on TRAVEL.com may easily use Google's Adwords service to have their advertisements appear on our system.

Personal Attacks Are Prohibited

This should go without saying. We invite you to give your opinions but personal attacks on other users will not be tolerated.

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Please note that many of our forums are shared with G-o-o-g-l-e newsgroups. Although your messages must comply with G-o-o-g-l-e rules, our own rules are much more stringent and therefore exceed all requirements of G-o-o-g-l-e. We are currently in the process of weeding out past offending G-o-o-g-l-e messages.
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Please help us by reporting any prior advertising (spam) or personal attack violations by clicking on the triangle (caution sign) icon on any offending message [top right corner of any message].

If you notice a past-user's messages that are constantly off-topic or antagonistic to other users [previously imported ****** messages], please advise us the exact spelling of that user's name and we can review and possibly delete their messages from our system.

Title Spam Is Prohibited

Please note that any usage of keyboard characters such as non-letters or numbers or CAPITALIZATION where not grammatically required in order to attempt to gain attention to your topic is considered visual spam and will not be tolerated. Likewise, we already delete much of the inbound ****** messaging that violates this rule. If your message title isn't simple and concise, it will likely be deleted for this reason.

User Name Spam is Prohibited

These forums are for independent travelers to post their experiences and to exchange mesages. While we invite people in the travel industry to participate as individuals, these forums are not a place for travel companies to promote their services. We want only unbiased opinions here. User names that are also URLs or appear to be travel company names (include the words travel, tours, hotels, etc.) or any other commercial entities are prohibited.

All user names are subject to approval. You may use an alias, but it can only include letters and numbers. User names cannot be all in CAPITALIZATION. If we notice that your name is all capitalized, we will simply change it all to lowercase or delete it.

We suggest that you use all normal capitalization in your user name or all lowercase. You may drop "spaces" so JohnDoe and John Doe are both acceptable whereas JoHndOe is not. Also, if you are using a real person's name (especially a famous person), it must be yours.

Users with non-complying names will not be allowed to post messages or simply will have their user record deleted [the names in inbound ****** messages are out of our immediate control]. If you find your user name deleted, log on with a new user name appropriate for a mature person.

Users without a Mainstream E-mail Account

Users with e-mail addresses from non-mainstream, major e-mail sites may have their user accounts deleted. We find that most spammers opt for these "throw-away" or hidden accounts at non-mainstream e-mail sites that faciliate their spamming. We suggest you utilize major, national companies such as offered by the top, interernational search engines, those from major ISPs, etc.

Messages Including Profanity or Topics Regarding ***uality Are Prohibited

We wish to keep these forums family oriented. Any messages deviating from this standard will be deleted.

The Posting of Duplicate Messages Is Prohibited

Do not post the same message twice -- either in multiple forums or by repetition of the same message over a period of time. Once is enough. Violators will be removed from the system.

Do Not Reply to Old Posts

Generally, replies to posts over 1 month old will be deleted as the original participants will likely no longer be monitoring it for replies. Please only participate in currently active posts.

Reviews With Pros & Cons Are Welcome - Rants Are Not

If you have had a less than satisfactory experience with a travel provider, you are welcome to review both the pros and cons of your experience. But one-sided rants intended to harm to an operator are generally not acceptable. If you feel you have a monetary issue with the operator, please contact the operator directly plus governmental offices, etc. We do not have the resources to act as a referee.

Likewise, we do not allow first-time posts to be negative rants. Those who jump from website to website to post one-time negative or attack messages will not find their messages approved here. Until one has built up a history of normal messaging, negative posts will be deleted.

Only Messages in English Are Currently Allowed

We cannot monitor non-English messages so these will be deleted.

User Profiles

When you register, you created a very sparse user profile. While we currently only ask for several details including your location, you may later update your profile with additional information you wish to share with other users. For example, there is an appropriate place to optionally indicate your website, instant messaging contact info, a user photo, etc. But, no advertising there or elsewhere is allowed.

User Photos

You may optionally upload a small user photo. Please note that cartoonish "avatars" are not allowed. Only real photos may be used online. You are allowed to post a photo of yourself or of a location (such as a photo of your town/city or a place that you like in the world). We reserve the right to approve or disapprove of any photograph. So please keep them nice and related to travel!

Photo Gallery Photos

You photo gallery notices must be nice and related to travel. Photo gallery photos may not contain any "added" written notices such as advertisements, URLs, or copyright notices. Simply, do not upload any such altered images.

User Profiles

Naturally, all rules that apply to messaging and photos likewise apply to information in your user profile or online "website."

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This user side of our system is for users to help other users. If you are here simply to do so, you'll have free reign of the system. If you are here to spam the system with advertising, you won't get anywhere. If you do wish to advertise on TRAVEL.com, you may do so by clicking on the "Advertise on this Site" link on any Google advertisement shown here.

We do not have the time to explain why an offending message or photo is deleted (much of it is programmed into our system so that a human doesn't even see offending messages). If you read these rules, you should know why your message or photo is not acceptable.

Obviously, we cannot list all possible infractions here. And, we may grant individual exceptions to these rules. However, we reserve the right to edit or delete any message without explanation in order to continually improve the quality and standards of messaging here.

For obvious reasons, if your question is answered in this "Please Read Before Posting" message, we normally will not respond to such questions with a please read before posting the "Please Read Before Posting" message. Just read this message and you'll have your answers.

Thank your for taking the time to read this message. We look forward to your participation.