We welcome your comments and participation on our forum, so that it will be an informative and enjoyable place to visit. We want all our participants to feel free to ask any relevant question without fear of any bad result. Screeds of rules and legalese won't change the personalities of the people participating here, so we've tried to keep the rules as simple as possible. The guiding principal, as you use this forum, should be to treat everyone as well as, or better than, you would if you were having a face-to-face discussion.

Luckily we are all professionals, so these rules should be largely unnecessary.

We require everyone participating in the forum to have respect for all other members. We encourage debate, but be respectful and objective. If you disagree with someone's comments, “I disagree” is approprate; “You’re stupid” (or worse) is inappropriate. Avoid spiralling into a catfight and keep things civil. Train yourself to think in a respectful way and the rest will follow.

You are responsible for what you post on this forum. Comments posted on the site only represent the views of their authors, not Tim Cooper or Otata Ltd. Information and opinions on this forum are not endorsed by Tim Cooper or Otata Ltd, nor do we stand by the accuracy of the postings. While we will do our best to maintain a safe and reasonable place to conduct discussions, we are not responsible in any way for the content of the posts, or any actions you may take as a result of the information or advice you read here.

We reserve the right to reject or remove posts that violate the rules, at our sole discretion and without prior notice. In the same way, we reserve the right to ban members who are offensive or inappropriate.

Please try to stay on topic. Posts that diverge from the topic at hand may be moved or deleted without notice if, in our opinion, they are interfering with the discussion.

There are certain things that are prohibited. You may not post messages that are illegal or unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, intimidating, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, or indecent.

You may not spam the boards (post the same message over and over) or use them for any commercial promotion.

You may not impersonate someone else, or invade anyone else’s privacy.

You may not to engage in copyright infringement.

Whilst we respect your privacy, we reserve the right to report unlawful behavior and vandalism of our site to your Internet service provider or to law enforcement.

Users who violate these rules or engage in a pattern of misconduct may face sanctions, including but not limited to rejecting posts, deleting existing posts or even the entire posting history, as well as suspending or deleting the user’s account. Again, Otata Ltd has the sole discretion to apply any of these sanctions at any time and without prior notice.

For more detail on the rules governing the site, please see our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.