Rules and Guidelines
General Rules
CycleChat is busy and growing online community for cyclists.
We want you to share your cycling experiences and knowledge with us, and to help us keep CycleChat a friendly and lively place, please follow these simple rules and guidelines:
The Private Message (PM) system is designed to allow non-public communication between you and other forum members (including the Admin Team). Please be considerate when using the PM system and don't use it to abuse other forum members or your PM privileges may be removed.
Whilst we expect everyone to be considerate and maintain each other's privacy, we cannot control what people do with your private message content and as such cannot guarantee your privacy. We would therefore strongly suggest that if you do not want information to be in the public domain, you do not post it via the private message system.
Advertising or soliciting via the private message system is not permitted.
High Maintenance Clause
Any member who occupies a majority of admin or moderator time unnecessarily will be shown the door.
Advertising and Solicitation
We don't allow people to post threads or to send private messages or emails to members here that advertise or solicit any products, services, funds or donations without first getting permission from Admin.
Signature Guidelines
Signatures should not exceed the following limits:
Avatars
The CycleChat Admin team reserve the right to modify or remove avatars that, at their sole discretion, are deemed to violate community standards.
Affiliate Programs
You are not allowed to post affiliate links anywhere on the CycleChat forums, without first getting permission from Admin.
Charity Rides and Sponsored Events
Many charities promote cycling as a fund-raising tool, and there are a great many rides for an amazing array of good causes.
Whilst we support such endevours, you should remember that CycleChat is a community of cycling enthusiasts and not an arena for promoting charity events.
You are free to post your questions about bikes, equipment and training in the respective forums, and we have a special forum where you can announce your event, but please do not do so with any expectation of raising funds from our members.
Please also take note of the following:
Guidelines for specific forums
Know How and Technical forums
P&L forum
Cafe forum
Classifieds forums
The CycleChat classified forums are offered as a free service for members to buy, sell, trade and barter between each other.
To help avoid disputes, post editing is turned off in classifieds. If you need to edit an advert, please use the Report Post feature (red triangle) to tell the Admin team what needs changing and we'll sort it out for you.
Try to put a guide price on items you are offering for sale. If you don't have a fixed price in mind, ask for offers around a guideline figure. This is very helpful to prospective buyers and reduces "How much?" type posts and PMs.
Please also take note of the following when using the classifieds:
Subscriptions
Moderation
Although the administrators and moderators of CycleChat 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 the owner of CycleChat will not be held responsible for the content of any message.
The moderators try to keep the forums spam free, safe, and secure. If they ask you to do something, please do it. Please do not harass or intentionally annoy or insult the mods. If you do not like the mods or the moderation on CycleChat, please feel free not to post here.
Private messages from Admin or Moderators should be considered confidential. Sharing or publication of such messages may result in a ban.
Once you are permanently banned, you are considered Banned On Sight (BOS) and no longer welcome to post on CycleChat. All subsequent new accounts will be banned on sight by the Admin team.
The owners of CycleChat reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread or post for any reason.
Addendum
We reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we know about you) in the event of any complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by you.
We also reserve the right to update and modify these guidelines as the needs of the CycleChat community dictate to ensure the smooth operation of this site, the forums, and the CycleChat community.
Last updated: 01 August, 2010
CycleChat is busy and growing online community for cyclists.
We want you to share your cycling experiences and knowledge with us, and to help us keep CycleChat a friendly and lively place, please follow these simple rules and guidelines:
- Be respectful and considerate to other CycleChat members.
- While debating and discussion is fine, we will not tolerate personal attacks or purposeless inflammatory posts.
- Do not post anything that is obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, racist (including slang), hateful, threatening, or that otherwise violates any laws.
- Advertising, spamming and trolling is not allowed. This includes using the forum, email, visitor messages, blog comments, picture comments and private message systems to spam other members.
- Persistent trolling will result in a permanent ban.
- Do not post others' phone numbers, addresses, pictures, instant messenger aliases, email addresses, etc., without their permission. Respect the privacy of other community members.
- Do not start threads directed solely towards another member. Use the private message function to contact individuals.
- Please wait a reasonable amount of time before bumping posts.
- Please do not post pornographic or objectionable/inappropriate material. If it's not safe for work, it's not likely that it is appropriate for CycleChat.
- Encouragement or facilitation of illegal activities such as software and music piracy and other intellectual property violations are not allowed.
- Each member is allowed one login account. Registering with multiple accounts is not allowed. The Admin team reserve the right to merge multiple identities without warning or discussion.
- Constructive comparative conversations about other forums, are fine, but please refrain from bashing other boards.
- Please, no SHOUTING. Don't use all caps when posting. It is difficult to read and annoying.
- Please do not post any affiliate or referral links, or post anything asking for a referral. Such posts will be subject to removal.
- Please do not post advertisements or notices for contests without first getting permission from Admin.
- We reserve the right to remove offensive posts without notice.
- We also reserve the right to ban anyone who wilfully violates the forum guidelines, as access to our site and forums are a privilege and not a right.
While these guidelines cover most common situations, they cannot anticipate everything. Consequently we reserve the right to take any actions we deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not disrupted or abused in any way.
The Private Message (PM) system is designed to allow non-public communication between you and other forum members (including the Admin Team). Please be considerate when using the PM system and don't use it to abuse other forum members or your PM privileges may be removed.
Whilst we expect everyone to be considerate and maintain each other's privacy, we cannot control what people do with your private message content and as such cannot guarantee your privacy. We would therefore strongly suggest that if you do not want information to be in the public domain, you do not post it via the private message system.
Advertising or soliciting via the private message system is not permitted.
High Maintenance Clause
Any member who occupies a majority of admin or moderator time unnecessarily will be shown the door.
Advertising and Solicitation
We don't allow people to post threads or to send private messages or emails to members here that advertise or solicit any products, services, funds or donations without first getting permission from Admin.
Signature Guidelines
Signatures should not exceed the following limits:
- For text signatures: 6 lines normal size, 8 lines small size and up to 90 chars per line. Font sizes above 2 are not allowed. (Blank lines count as lines).
- Do not use images with large text to bypass the previous item.
- Images in a signature are not allowed.
- Your signature should fit in with the rest of the forums, not detract from them. Oversized, bold, coloured, or overly long signatures may be edited or removed at Admin's discretion.
- Links to commercial products/services are fine, provided they do not promote illegal activities, are authorised by Admin, and the poster does not use CycleChat primarily to promote the linked site. However, Admin reserves the right to modify or remove any signature links at his sole discretion.
- Linked sites should not violate CycleChat community standards. The Admin team shall be the sole arbitrator of what does and what does not violate community standards. (Examples include sites that promote the illegal drug use and/or sites that feature adult sexual images.)
- Signatures should contain no more than two links.
- Duplicate links to the same web site and/or domain are not allowed in signatures.
Avatars
The CycleChat Admin team reserve the right to modify or remove avatars that, at their sole discretion, are deemed to violate community standards.
Affiliate Programs
You are not allowed to post affiliate links anywhere on the CycleChat forums, without first getting permission from Admin.
Charity Rides and Sponsored Events
Many charities promote cycling as a fund-raising tool, and there are a great many rides for an amazing array of good causes.
Whilst we support such endevours, you should remember that CycleChat is a community of cycling enthusiasts and not an arena for promoting charity events.
You are free to post your questions about bikes, equipment and training in the respective forums, and we have a special forum where you can announce your event, but please do not do so with any expectation of raising funds from our members.
Please also take note of the following:
- We only allow ride and event announcements in the Charity and Supported Rides forum.
- You may include a link to your donation web page in your annoucement, but please do not push your donation link into every post or make posts solely for the purpose of including your link. Doing so will be considered spamming and many result in your user account being closed (this may be relaxed if you become a long-term member of our community).
Research and Questionnaires
Whilst we allow the posting of surveys and questionnaires, please be aware that people often register at CycleChat to gather data from our membership and then disappear never to be seen again.
No participation in our community, no feedback, no sharing of data and results, and in some cases not even a Thank You!
Understandably this is not a good way to treat our membership, especially if the data is for personal gain such as a university course and not for the general benefit of cyclists. So please respect our members and do not be surprised or disappointed if they do not want to participate.
If you do post a survey or questionnaire, please take note of the following:
- We only allow questionnaires and surveys in the Research and Questionnaires forum.
- Be considerate to our members if you are expecting them to give their time and information freely.
- Do not use other parts of the CycleChat site to promote your survey or recruit our members into participating. (Doing so may result in your survey being deleted and your user account being closed.)
Guidelines for specific forums
Know How and Technical forums
- These forums are specifically for asking and giving advice, and should not be used for chit-chat. Off-topic posts that are not related to the thread may be removed without notice.
P&L forum
- Because of the volatile nature of the following topics: religion, sexual orientation, race, class, gender, and political opinion, you should be aware that the Politics and Life forum can contain a wide spectrum of views and opinions.
- With such a diverse topic range there are going to be discussions that will get heated. Please stop and think before you post and re-read what you type before you post it to ensure they do not violate the forum guidelines. Limit your comments to the topic of the debate and do not make it a personal issue between you and other forum members. There is tremendous diversity in age, race, gender, language, location (worldwide) and more here at CycleChat, and there will be a lot of varying opinions on different subjects. We're all human beings and we were all drawn to this site because we have a common bond as cycling enthusiasts, please remember that.
Cafe forum
- The Cafe forum is where CycleChat community members can gather to chat about almost anything, technical or non-technical in nature. If you have a question that doesn't fit into any other forum, or you just want to chat, this is the place.
Classifieds forums
The CycleChat classified forums are offered as a free service for members to buy, sell, trade and barter between each other.
To help avoid disputes, post editing is turned off in classifieds. If you need to edit an advert, please use the Report Post feature (red triangle) to tell the Admin team what needs changing and we'll sort it out for you.
Try to put a guide price on items you are offering for sale. If you don't have a fixed price in mind, ask for offers around a guideline figure. This is very helpful to prospective buyers and reduces "How much?" type posts and PMs.
Please also take note of the following when using the classifieds:
- Don't offer anything obscene or illegal - use your common sense.
- Commercial postings and advertisements are not permitted.
- Posting details of items you are selling on internet auction sites is not permitted.
- Please do not bump your advertisements.
- Stick to discussing the items being offered. Off-topic posts will be removed.
- CycleChat has no control over buyer or seller, does not get involved in any transactions, and doesn't hold any personal contact details for any forum members. With this in mind please be careful how you conduct your transactions.
- We reserve the right to remove any listings at our sole discretion without notice.
Subscriptions
Forum subscriptions give you extra features for your user account and can be purchased using the Subscriptions link at the top of the forums.
Simply chose your subscription preference and pay via PayPal (you don't need to have a PayPal account to pay by credit or debit card).
Subscription notes:
- Your extra features will remain available providing you maintain an active subscription.
- We will try to notify you when your subscriptions are due for renewal, but you should check them yourself from time to time to ensure they are kept up to date.
- Subscriptions do not entitle you to any special privileges or rights other than those set out on the subscription page.
- Your payment does not infer any exclusions or exceptions to the forum rules, which still apply to you the same as they do to all our members.
- Unless stated in writing otherwise, all subscription fees are nonrefundable.
We hope you enjoy the extra features available through the CycleChat subscriptions, and we thank you for helping to support our forums.
Moderation
Although the administrators and moderators of CycleChat 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 the owner of CycleChat will not be held responsible for the content of any message.
The moderators try to keep the forums spam free, safe, and secure. If they ask you to do something, please do it. Please do not harass or intentionally annoy or insult the mods. If you do not like the mods or the moderation on CycleChat, please feel free not to post here.
Private messages from Admin or Moderators should be considered confidential. Sharing or publication of such messages may result in a ban.
Once you are permanently banned, you are considered Banned On Sight (BOS) and no longer welcome to post on CycleChat. All subsequent new accounts will be banned on sight by the Admin team.
The owners of CycleChat reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread or post for any reason.
Addendum
We reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we know about you) in the event of any complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by you.
We also reserve the right to update and modify these guidelines as the needs of the CycleChat community dictate to ensure the smooth operation of this site, the forums, and the CycleChat community.
Last updated: 01 August, 2010