Terms and Conditions

These are the rules for the use of the boards on Family Tree Forum

We want this to be a safe, enjoyable and friendly environment for all of our members. These rules will help provide a framework for our members to achieve this.

The boards are read by our moderators but posts are not generally moderated before they are added. If you see a post which breaches these Terms and Conditions please notify the moderating team by clicking on the red alert triangle alongside the post.

Overall Community Attitude

• Keep in mind that Family Tree Forum is a genealogy community.

• Our purpose is to share, help and support others with the genealogical research.

• Always display a positive, friendly attitude. Personal attacks, rudeness, baiting, insults to others, or arguments will not be tolerated.

• Please do not post cryptic messages that will only be understood by a few members. Posts should be friendly and easily understood by all members.

• Be respectful of others' opinions and allow your fellow members to voice their opinions.

• DO NOT deliberately start arguments. Debates are great, as long as they remain respectful.

• Always try to "give" back to our community. For each time you find help or answers here at Family Tree Forum, try to help someone else out in return. You may find that what goes around comes around...

• Give people a little time to respond to your requests. There's a lot going on in these forums and it may take a little time for people to notice and respond to your request. Please be patient.

• Please avoid enquiring after members who have not logged on for a while. They may have personal issues for not doing so which they may not wish to discuss on the open board. A personal message to them would be more appropriate.

• Although you may consider yourself to be an "expert" now, try to remember that we were all new and learning once upon a time. Take it easy on your fellow members.

• Do NOT make threats or implied threats towards other members -- even if you think it's fun.

You and your membership

• Do not give anyone the login information to your system, passwords, or personal account information. Accounts are deemed to belong to one registered user. Anything posted from that account is deemed to have come from the registered user and that user is held responsible for any activity on that account.
  Should a member choose to share account details with another person then the registered member should be aware that he/she will incur any infractions or suspensions for inappropriate activity on the account.

• Each member is allowed one login account. Registering with multiple accounts is not allowed.

Inappropriate Behaviour

• DO NOT Make inappropriate or offensive posts - including threats, harassment, swearing, prejudice, libel or deliberate insults/name-calling, or other negative remarks about Family Tree Forum members, moderators and administrators. Your behaviour should be polite and neither intended nor capable of causing offence.

Respect your fellow members

• Family Tree Forum respects what other forums and websites have to offer. Members of Family Tree Forum may also be members of other sites. Do not try to degrade or discredit other forums, their administrators and moderators, or their members. This includes slander and other offensive comments.

• Family Tree Forum is open to people of all genders, races, and sexualities. Any inappropriate, discriminatory or offensive posts will be deleted and may lead to an infraction or suspension.

• This is a public forum and our members' reputations are valuable to them – don’t communicate anything that is, or could be considered to be defamatory about any person.

• DO NOT POST PORN or adult content or links to sites containing such content.

• Non-pornographic adult related material (such as lingerie) is allowed, as long as you provide a warning in your post, such as: "WARNING: Site contains adult content that may be unsuitable for some individuals." Please be mindful that the minimum age for this site is 13.

• Even though this is an international forum, please make sure that your posts are written in English.

• Inappropriate content will be removed without notice.

• When posting try to avoid giving your topic a title of: "HELP ME PLEASE! I NEED HELP!" "I have a question." "BIG problem!" "Newbie needs help!" "Problems URGENT!" Carefully choosing a title for your thread will help others to get an idea of your enquiry. Please keep your posts appropriate and continue any private matters by e-mail or private message.

• Members post lookups at their own discretion and do so without payment or endorsement from Family Tree Forum and we cannot be held responsible for lookups posted by our members.

• Members should not offer "look-up" threads as it may contravene the copyright/terms and conditions of the software in their possession.

• Do not post anything that infringes anyone’s copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property rights. If in doubt refer to the Family Tree Forum Copyright Guidelines

• Private messages between members should remain private and not be posted on the boards without the explicit consent of the sender. Abusive private messages should be forwarded to a moderator and will be dealt with by the moderating team

Forum Abuse Policy

1st Offence - A polite private message from a moderator pointing out the forum rules, in addition to the editing or deletion of the post and an infraction given to the user.

2nd Offence – Public warning on the message board plus deletion of post and infraction given to the user.

3rd Offence - Moderators will discuss and possibly delete the user from Family Tree Forum.

Depending on the situation, the moderating team may bypass any and all of these steps and take whatever action is deemed appropriate.

• Discussion of deleted threads or reasons for suspension should be by private message with the moderation team and not conducted on the boards. Such threads will be deleted from the board and may result in a suspension or ban.

• The Administrators, Moderators and SCAD team members of FTF will not discuss with third parties reasons for suspension of members or deletion of threads or postings.

• Please do not discuss banned or suspended members, or members who have left the site, on the boards. Threads doing so will be deleted.

• Making posts on behalf of banned or suspended members, or members who have left the site, is not permitted under any circumstances.

Private Message and Email Abuse Policy

• DO NOT use Family Tree Forum as a basis for spamming or scamming our members.

• We take private message/e-mail/msn abuse very seriously, and if proven it may result in the immediate removal of your membership and ban of your IP address, without warning.

Charities and Fundraising

• Direct requests for donations should not be made by members involved in fundraising although links to registered charities/fundraising sites are acceptable.
• The administrators of Family Tree Forum do not verify the charitable status of any links, neither can they accept any responsibility for their contents. Their appearance on the site does not reflect any endorsement of them.
• Fund raising/charity threads should be posted in the "Hugs and Support" forum of the site.

Advertising

• Advertisements for genealogy based businesses can be posted in the Advertising Forum of the site. The owners and administrators of Family Tree Forum do not endorse or verify the legality of any business enterprise that is advertised.
• Business advertisements, of any description, on other sections of the site, or links in signatures, are not permitted.

Our SPAM Policy

• Do NOT use the Family Tree Forum community for the purpose of 'spam' or excessive advertisements! This includes forum posts, private messages, or emails to other Family Tree Forum members

• Our moderators reserve the right to edit or delete any posts they consider to be 'spam'

• If we find that you are spamming our community you will be warned by a moderator or site administrator, and it may lead to the deletion of your posts and/or the removal of your Family Tree Forum account.

Identity Theft

• DO NOT impersonate anyone, regardless of whether the other individual is a Family Tree Forum member.

Living People

• DO NOT post any identifying details of living people either in forum posts or on our names database. Such posts will be deleted by the moderators without warning and further action may be taken as per our abuse policy.

Multiple Posts

• DO NOT post the same topic in multiple forums. If you are unsure of which forum a thread should go under, just state that in your post, and a moderator will move the thread to the correct forum. Multiple posts are unnecessary and will be deleted.

• DO NOT post the same question multiple times in multiple threads in the same forum. If no one responds to your question or request, just post a reply to the same message thread again to bring the message to the top of the list so folks notice it.

• Multiple or repetitive posting in order to increase your post count is not allowed.

Username/Signature/Avatar Restrictions

• Change of username is only permitted in exceptional circumstances. Please contact one of the Admin team if you have a query.

• You may use an image as a signature up to a maximum size of 100 x 200 pixels or 140 x 140 pixels. Anything larger may be edited down to these sizes.

• TickerFactory signatures are allowed with a maximum size of 450x80 pixels

• You may link to your own personal non-business site, but no illegal, pornographic or otherwise objectionable links are allowed.

• No more than 3 links per signature

• Animated avatars are not allowed

Font Restrictions

• Do NOT use excessively large font sizes, or type exclusively in capital letters, as it is considered to be "shouting" and will be edited back down to the default size or deleted by the moderators.

Attaching files to posts

• This is permitted on Family Tree Forum but please remember to keep files to a minimum. If you are in a position to e-mail the file to another member then please do that. Attached files take up space on the Family Tree Forum server and too many files may end up causing problems.

Magazine

• When submitting material to the magazine members are required to give their permission to Family Tree Forum to publish their articles and/or images on the website indefinitely. Copyright remains with the submitter and will be acknowledged alongside each piece.
• Submissions for the magazine cannot be withdrawn after the closing date for the issue in which they are due to appear. Articles or images will not be removed from the magazine once it has been published.
• The magazine editors have the final decision in respect of the wording and presentation of articles and illustrations in the magazine.

We do our best ...

Although the administrators and moderators of Family Tree Forum will attempt to keep all objectionable messages off this forum, it is impossible for us to review all messages.

All messages express the views of the author, and neither the owners of Family Tree Forum, nor Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. (developers of vBulletin) will be held responsible for the content of any message.

By agreeing to these rules, you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-orientated, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.

Family Tree Forum reserves the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason.

These guidelines are subject to change and the version listed above is always the current version.

Members who violate these rules may be suspended or banned.

If there is a problem

If in doubt contact a Moderator rather than post for the attention of the moderators.

You can see which moderators are online by using the View Forum Leaders link at the bottom of the forum page.

If you are unhappy with the administration of Family Tree Forum please raise your concerns with the administrators or moderators. Criticism of Family Tree Forum on other websites or in other media is unhelpful and may result in suspension or deletion of your membership.

Last Updated 13/04/2009 by The Moderating Team