Etiquette for the Cantonese Discussion Forums

• Use the correct forum.  Requests for name translation in the Cantonese Discussion forum will be moved to the Translate This! forum.  Technical (computer) questions will be moved to the Tech Talk forum.
• No offensive posts - this website is read by a variety of age groups - any strong profanity, racism, or overly insulting messages will be removed - please just use your common sense!
• No commercial posts - Commercial posts are generally not encouraged unless they deal with a specific request.  If you want to advertise your business contact me for advertising rates (which are very reasonable!).
• No spamming.  Spamming is where you constantly post to the forum just to advertise your own website.  Even if your site isn't commercial this is still considered to be bad form.  The reasonable way to let people know about your website is to use the signature feature of the forums to put a small advert for your site in (see the Help page on how to do this).

The following rules can be summed up as "Please try and be friendly" but here they are in more detail!

• No personal attacks!  From time to time, discussions may grow heated.  This is to be expected and reasoned, passionate debates are fine.  Personal insults have no place here though, so please desist.
• Give people the benefit of the doubt - sometimes people can write something which you may find offensive.  Before launching into a public condemnation though, please consider that the person may not have intended  to cause offence.  It is also worth noting that English is not everybody's first language here which can sometimes lead to further confusion.  At the very least, it is only polite to explain why you are offended without resorting to insults.
• No Trolling!  What is a troll?  Its a person who posts something which is bound to stir people up and then sits back and watches as dozens of people jump in and start arguing.  A good example would be something like "Chinese is a stupid language, it doesn't have an alphabet!"  Sometimes trolls get their friends to join in or post under different names. Generally they will do anything it takes to get attention. If you see a message like this, please try and refrain from replying to it - it will soon be deleted anyway.
• Don't post e-mail addresses in your main message! This is a relatively new one and it is perhaps not obvious why this is a Bad Thing. If you post an e-mail address in your main message, spammers are likely to pick it up (using automatic spam "harvesters" which trawl the web for addresses) and start using it.  Note that it is OK to supply your e-mail address in the box that specifically asks for it, as that will be protected by the forum software against spam harvesters.  If you need to post extra e-mail addresses do it like this:  
  yourname @  yourdomain . com (notice there are spaces between each part)
  Some people like to do something like this:
  yourname@***REMOVE THIS*** yourdomain . com

If anyone disregards these reasonable guidelines please don't be surprised if one of the following happens:

• The post may be edited...
• ...or it may be deleted altogether
• The author might be banned from posting
• The forum may be restricted so that no new posts appear until approved by the moderator.

I would like to stress that I hate taking any of these measures, please don't force me to!

Complaining about posts

At the time of writing, there is just me to look after the forums.  I do the best I can but sometimes offensive posts will slip through the cracks, only to surface at a later date and make  someone unhappy!  If this happens to you, please send me a short note including the author, date and URL (web address) of the post you are complaining about.

Related Link: Privacy Statement