Terms and Conditions

Coulee Region Online is a family friendly site where people can converse and debate in an environment free from personal attacks. In order to maintain our welcoming and friendly site, we expect all members to abide by our rules. We moderate lightly and encourage posting of all points of view whether you're right wing, left wing, or somewhere in the middle but will remove posts that violate these rules. Remember that freedom of speech is a guarantee that the government will not censor speech and does not apply to privately owned websites. Repeated violation of these rules may result in the violator being banned from the site.

In any set of rules, there are always loopholes. In the end, the decisions of the owner and appointed moderators (Known as "Gardeners") are final.

Posting rules

These rules are for all public content anywhere on the site including, but not limited to, forums, groups, and blogs.

Be respectful to your fellow posters. While spirited debate is allowed and even encouraged, personal attacks are strictly forbidden. Attack the message, not the messenger. Rudeness, insulting posts, and posts intended only to stir up trouble (trolling) will not be tolerated. Fighting may bump up the post counts but it does not contribute to a friendly site.
Keep the site clean and family friendly. We are adults here and topics may occasionally be suggestive in nature but outright vulgarity and obscenity is not allowed. Mild, occasional, untargeted swearing will be overlooked but excessive profanity, swearing at other members, and vulgar profanity are not allowed, even if self-censored with * replacing some letters.
No posting anything illegal or discussing illegal activities.
When quoting copyrighted material, only quote a small amount and then link to the original article. Posting an entire copyrighted article is not legal, even if you link back to it. If you are pasting an entire article that is licensed for such sharing, please say so to avoid any question.
Stay on topic. Occasionally, a topic will drift over time and that's ok as long as the participants are drifting with it. But abrupt changes should be avoided whenever possible. If you want to address a particular point that will take a topic off topic, start up a new topic on it and add a post to the original topic linking to your new one.
Images may be added either via a link to offsite images or added directly to your post. To save our bandwidth, we prefer linking where possible but either method is fine to use. Images must comply with the "clean and family friendly" rule.
Help keep things organized. Do your best to post forum topics in the appropriate forum and group topics in the appropriate group. Topics and posts may be moved as needed. If you lose track of a post, you can find it from the list on your profile page. If a post needs to be removed, the poster will be contacted (except outright spamming).
Advertising must be done in accordance with our Advertising Policy below.
Resurrecting old topics is allowed. New members join all the time and a topic that was discussed a year ago may still have some value so go ahead and add your thoughts no matter how old it is.
Multiple accounts are allowed in some cases. While we encourage people to stick to one account, sometimes you may want to ask a question that is personal and would be embarrassing to have associated with your main account. As long as both accounts are following the rules, they are allowed. Creating a new account for the purpose of breaking any rules or as an extra source of advertising is not allowed. Separate accounts cannot be merged easily so be sure you really need another account before creating one.

Private contact

Private messages and contact forms are provided as a method for members to contact each other out of public view. We generally do not read private communication but reserve the right to do so if a rules violation is suspected. In using the private messages and contact forms, you agree to these rules:

You may not contact other members for the purpose of advertising. This includes contacting members just to get them to look at your profile to see your link.
No personal attacks.
No illegal activity.
Private messages shall not be reposted publically without the consent of all involved members.

If you receive a private message that violates our rules, please contact us. Because we don't monitor peoples' private messages, we won't know there is a problem unless you tell us.

Advertising

We like to help out local businesses and organizations and so advertising is not banned but must follow these guidelines:

Active members are also allowed to advertise in their profile but accounts that are created solely for profile advertising may be blocked or have the links removed.
You may advertise in your signature, including links.
You may mention your business or organization in forum, blog, and discussion posts if it is on topic. Posting purely to advertise is not allowed except in the classifieds forum.
The classifieds forum is intended for non-business transactions between members but home based businesses may post as well. This forum is for local people only.
Businesses and organizations can add themselves to our Area Directory for free.
Paid advertising spots are available throughout the site. See the Advertising page for details.
Spamming will not be tolerated and all spam will be deleted on site with the spamming member blocked.

General site terms of service (some of the above is repeated here)

You agree, through your use of this website, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, hateful, harassing, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy or otherwise in violation of any International, Canadian, or United States Federal law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this website unless approved by the management.

Note that it is impossible for the staff or the owners of this website to confirm the validity of posts on this service. Please remember that while we try to actively monitor posted messages, we are not responsible for the content contained within. We do not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information presented. The posted messages express the views of the author, and not necessarily the views of Coulee Region Online or its staff. Anyone who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to notify an administrator of this website immediately. The owner of this website reserves the right to remove objectionable content, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, so please realize that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately. This policy applies to member profile information as well.

You remain solely responsible for the content of your posted messages. Furthermore, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the staff of Coulee Region Online. We reserve the right to reveal your identity (or any other related information collected on this service) in the event of a formal complaint or legal action arising from any situation caused by your use of this service.

You have the ability, as you register, to choose your username. We advise that you keep the name appropriate and suggest you do not include your last name. With this user account you are about to register, you agree to never give your password out to another person, for your protection and for validity reasons. You also agree to never attempt unlawful use or access of another member's account for any reason. We also highly recommend you use a complex and unique password for your account, to prevent account theft.

After you register and log into this website, you will be able to fill out a detailed profile. It is your responsibility to present clean and accurate information. Any information the website owner or staff determines to be inaccurate or vulgar in nature will be removed, with or without prior notice.

Please note that with each post, your IP address is recorded, and may be used in the event that you are to be banned from this website or your ISP contacted. This will only happen in a major violation of this agreement but can also happen at the staff's discretion or at the request of law enforcement.

Coulee Region Online places a cookie (a text file containing bits of information, such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is only used to keep you logged in/out. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to your computer.

You remain solely responsible for any and all personal information you provide. Do not post, nor include any information in your profile that you do not deem public information. While we do our best to retain your privacy, we are not immune to hackers. Remember that this is a very local website and people reading what you post are more likely to live near you than on a typical international site. This closeness can add an extra level of danger so please be very careful when posting information that could be used to find you offline.

For legal reasons, you must be at least 13 years old to use this website. Some material may be inappropriate for minors so anyone under the age of 18 must have parental permission.