Community Rules

Last updated: November 9, 2021

Our Community Rules

1. Be nice. This is a serious rule. If you cannot be nice and treat others with respect, there is no place for you here. Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
2. No discrimination. Attacking entire classes of people is just like attacking a single person: we’ll ban you for it. Forever.
3. No spam. Zero tolerance, of course! If it comes from a human or a robot, spam will be deleted. This includes self-promotion. Generally speaking, promoting your products or services here will be treated like any other spam.
4. No free advertising. Posting your products, services, or promotions of any kind in this forum without prior authorization (or Vendor Membership) is considered spam and will be treated as such. If you would like to advertise with us, please visit the Advertise page.
5. No politics. Political discussions are not allowed. Anything you post that contains a political lean will be removed and your account will be locked, banned or both. For example, if you want to talk about sports, don’t add political banter to your sports post.
6. No harassment. No threats or harassment of other users will be tolerated. Any instance of threatening or harassing behavior is grounds for deletion from the forums.
7. No adult content. No profanity or pornography is allowed. Posts containing adult material will be deleted.
8. No illegal content. No re-posting of copyrighted materials or other illegal content is allowed. Any posts containing illegal content or copyrighted materials will be deleted upon discovery.
9. No doxxing. Don’t reveal someone else’s personal information. Even if it is available publicly somewhere else, SurveyorConnect is not the place to expose the personal information of other people.
10. Post in relevant sub-forums only. Messages posted in the wrong topic area will be removed and placed in the correct sub-forum by moderators. Duplicate posts will be deleted.
11. No cross-posting. Don’t make duplicate posts across different forums — it clogs things up and fractures the conversation.

The Community Rules apply to all areas of the SurveyorConnect website. This means that you can’t circumvent these rules in your signature, avatar, post comments, or any other place on the website. There may also be rules for specific sub-forums; please read the descriptions for each sub-forum to be sure you comply with those rules.

Account-Specific Policies

1. No email addresses as usernames. If you do this, we’ll delete your account and ask you to create a new one.
2. No links or advertising in your account settings. This includes your forum signature, social links or any other fields in your profile. We treat this as spam — your profile settings will be removed and your account will be banned. The only exception is if you are a current Advertiser with us.

What to do if you observe violations

We here at SurveyorConnect are indeed human and miss some things due to time constraints and other reasons. If you see anything offensive or miscategorized, please use the Report button associated with the offending post to let us know.

A word about censorship and freedom of speech

The US Bill of Rights allows citizens the right to free speech in a public forum without limitations imposed by the State. (“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.”) This forum is not a “public forum”; it is a private forum that is open to the public. As a general rule, however, we uphold the ideals of the Constitution and do not condone the censorship of ideas. We allow relatively free and open discussion about just about anything. However, we do adhere to a simple tenet of respect. There is no place here for personal attacks, trolling, racism, sexism or other forms of discrimination. Debate, fault, discuss the action and don’t abuse other members of the site. When in doubt, please remember this golden rule of message forum etiquette: It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

What happens when rules are broken?

People need to grow up. If you break the rules or other ethical and common standards of public engagement in any way, including but not limited to name-calling, personal attacks, singling-out other users in a hurtful way, bullying or other ridiculous childish behaviors (including inane “Abbott and Costello” banter), we retain the right to temporarily or permanently ban you at will and remove your posts at our discretion, even if you are a paying for your membership.

This is a forum where adults are supposed to get together and discuss surveying issues and maybe some other non-surveying issues from time to time.

We invite you to amaze us with your ability to act like an adult and a professional.