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Rules of Conduct and Disclaimer
 
Community Overview
 
The Business.gov Community site provides open, publicly accessible forums and communication tools for entrepreneurs and small business owners to learn, share, and discuss practical solutions to everyday business problems with each other, industry experts, and experts at government agencies.
 
By registering as a member of the Business.gov Community, users may post to forums, blogs, and use other online resources for sharing information with other members. They may also share information about themselves and their businesses in their user profile. 
 
These member-contributed resources and user profiles are moderated by the Business.gov team, which includes employees and contractors of the U.S. Small Business Administration and partner agencies. 
 
Rules of Conduct
 
All member-contributed resources and user profiles are post moderated by the Business.gov team. Any contribution that does not meet these rules of conduct will be removed.

1. Comments and contributions to forum threads or blog posts should be descriptive, succinct, and relevant to discussion or forum topic. 
1.a. To better facilitate conversation, moderators may move off-topic threads to another appropriate forum, close threads or delete off-topic posts at their discretion.  Members may also start a new discussion that would otherwise be off-topic in the current thread.
1.b.  To maintain quality of discussions, contributions that do not provide a substantive purpose or relevance may be flagged by a moderator as abuse, and will be removed.
 
2. We encourage community members to have open and candid discussions and debates. We will not censor members for expressing an opinion within the limits of these Rules of Conduct.  However, all communications should be civil and polite. Community members should treat each other with respect and consideration for all points of view. Please remember that this is a public venue read by many people of all ages, from around the world, spanning all walks of life.
 
3.  The Business.gov Community may not be used to post, transmit or provide hyperlinks or pointers to material that is knowingly false and/or defamatory; contain ad hominem attacks, misleading, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening or invasive of a person's privacy; that otherwise violates any law; or that encourages conduct constituting a criminal offense.  
 
4. Users are encouraged to discuss and share business knowledge and experiences.  To ensure that all users will get the most out of the Community experience, the following linking policies are in effect to curb self-promotion and spam.  Posts that do not adhere to these policies may have their links disabled or be removed.
4.a.  The Business.gov Community may not be used to post, transmit or provide hyperlinks or pointers to press releases, newsletters, websites, or any other type of content that promote one's business, product or service or does not address the thread's topic.   Members may include text-only references to their sites.
4.b. Community members may use their profile page to share information about their business, products, or services, and may include only one (1) hyperlink to their commercial websites.
4.c.  Community members may include only one (1) link in their signature line.  
 
5. User names that might be deemed abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise inappropriate are not allowed and will be removed.
 
6. User names that are intended to mislead others will be removed. Such nicknames include but are not limited to using nicknames that impersonate competitors, other community members, government employees , elected officials, or any other individual or entity.
 
7. Sock puppet accounts are not permitted. A sock puppet is an account made on an Internet message board by a person who already has an account for the purpose of posting anonymously or as a different user. Please use your own account for posting personal opinions. Posts from known sock puppet accounts will result in deletion of the posts and sock puppet accounts.
 
8. Email excerpts of any type or length are not allowed to be posted in community forums, blogs or other tools.
 
9. To protect the privacy of community members, and the privacy of others, Community members may not include anyone's personal information or personally identifiable information such as names, addresses, phone numbers or e-mail addresses, or social security numbers in any forum, blog, or other member contributed area. By default, personal information (except e-mail addresses) you choose to include in your user profile can be viewed by the general public. However, you may choose to make your personal information private so no one can view it; or you can choose to share personal information only with certain members of the Community.
 
10. Advertising: The Business.gov Community may not be used to advertise or promote businesses, products or services within the discussion boards, idea exchanges or blogs. However, Community members may user their profile page to share information about themselves, their businesses, products, services and personal and professional background.
 
11. Intellectual property: The Business.gov Community may not be used to post material that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right without the express permission of the owner(s) of said copyright, trademark or other proprietary right.
 
12. Spam: Posting the same message, or an unsolicited commercial message, to one or many topics or boards is considered spam and will be removed. Duplicate messages may be deleted or consolidated by a Moderator. 
 
13. Access Permissions: Abusive and harassing behavior or any actions that violate these Rules of Conduct may result in suspension of your ability to post to forums and other member-contributed areas. Account suspensions may be appealed to a Moderator.
 
14. Private discussions: 
Sometimes, a discussion thread strays off into a friendly dialogue or a heated debate among a very small number of users. For these exchanges, we ask that you take these discussions outside the Business.gov Community.
 
User Profiles
 
Community members may create personalized profiles, and opt to include personal identifiable information about themselves to everyone who visits the Business.gov website or select members of the community. Except for email, by default any information you supply about yourself is publicly viewable by anyone who visits Business.gov. You may change who can view your personal profile or portions of your profile. Except where noted above, the content of personal profiles are subject to the same Rules of Conduct as the forums, blogs and other member-contributed content.
 
Guest Contributors
 
Occasionally, the Business.gov team will invite guest bloggers from industry and government to contribute their expertise.   Please read the disclaimer below concerning the views expressed in contributions from guest contributors.
 
Moderators
 
The Business.gov Community is moderated by the Business.gov team, which includes employees and contractors of the U.S. Small Business Administration and partner agencies. We recognize that the Web is a 24/7 medium, and your comments are welcome at any time. Given the need to manage Federal resources effectively, however, we will generally review comments and contributions from 8:00 a.m-5:00 p.m Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. We will read and respond to comments submitted after hours, on weekends, or on holidays as early as possible the next business day.
 
Privacy Policy
 
The privacy of users and members of the Community is very important, and we encourage you to read the Business.gov Privacy Policy. 
 
Disclaimer
 
Except when specifically noted, any views or opinions expressed on the Business.gov Community forums, blogs or member-contributed resources are those of the individual contributors. The views and posted comments do not necessarily reflect those of the Business Gateway Program Office, the U.S. Small Business Administration, partner agencies, or the Federal government. Information on the Business.gov Community site is provided as a service to the Internet community, and does not constitute legal advice. Business.gov aims to provide quality and accurate information, but we make no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained in or linked to by Business.gov on the Community site. Since laws and regulations change frequently, nothing provided herein should be used as a substitute for the advice of an attorney.
 
Additional Documents 
 
* Business.gov Website Policies
* Copyright Information
 
These Rules of Conduct are published and updated simultaneously on the Business.gov Community site in the guidelines and help area.
 

This document was last updated on June 12, 2009

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Business.gov helps small businesses understand their legal requirements, and locate government services supporting the nation’s small business community.

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