Forums - Posting Guidelines
These newsgroups are the core of the Track-Link community, I hope that you find them to be a useful and interesting place to exchange ideas and information. To foster better communications I ask that you be aware of a few things.
Notification
The Track-Link Web Site does not necessarily endorse, support, or agree with the opinions or statements expressed in any of the newsgroups. Any information placed online is solely the opinion of those who post it.
These are Track-Link Web Site newsgroups. By participating, you grant to the Track-Link Web Site the unrestricted right to use, reproduce, modify, translate, display, perform, transmit and distribute any material you post to a newsgroup in any present or future medium and for any purpose.
Rules
Messages found in violation of the following Rules are subject to cancellation without notice, however I will make a reasonable effort to notify the user if their message has been cancelled.
Commercial vendors must not post commercial messages or commercial messages disguised as friendly messages in any other newsgroup other that the vendors newsgroup. Do not advocate or engage in unlawful activities. Note: Track-Link resides in Canada, so the laws of Canada apply. Do not post copyrighted material without permission of the author. Do not post anything that is obscene, abusive, hateful, an invasion of anyone's privacy, harmful to other users, or harmful to the Track-Link Web Site. Do not cross-post or multi-post your message. Post your message to the single most appropriate group. Do not quote these rules to me.
Content
Anything to do with the hobby of AFV Modelling is suitable for posting on the Track-Link news-groups. This includes: personal and professional opinion, commercial announcements, general inquiries and assistance and advice.
Stay on topic. When you post a reply to a message ask yourself, "Does the subject line describe the contents of my message?" If the answer is no, you probably want to revise your message or modify the subject. Modifying the subject helps other users determine if your message has information of interest to them.
Move off-topic discussions to e-mail. Often a long thread will evolve into a friendly chat on some other, unrelated topic. This is good because it's part of what makes these newsgroups a community. When the discussion has moved away from the original topic to the point that it is likely no longer of interest to the greater community, please move the conversation to e-mail.
Communication in a pure text medium, such as a newsgroup, is prone to misunderstanding, often due to the lack of non-verbal cues such as inflections, facial expression and body language. Given this, it is best to be conservative with expressions of anger and sarcasm when writing. When reading, assume good intent; if a message can be taken two ways, assume the friendliest meaning.
Double check where you are sending your message. It can be very embarrassing to accidentally post a message to a newsgroup when you meant to send it as e-mail.
Remember, your words will last a long time. With news archiving services, the whole world can read your words, long after you have written them. Think twice about what you say.
Quoting Messages
Keep quoted text to a minimum. When quoting a previous post, edit out the non-relevant parts of the message. Remove salutations and signatures. A good rule of thumb is, there should not be more quoted text than new text.
Another special case is EXTREME over-quoting. If you post a very brief reply to a very long message, and you quote the entire message, your message may be cancelled.
If you include quoted text in your message, be considerate and clean up the margins and line breaks in the quoted material. Quoted text is typically preceded by a character indicating that it is quoted, and this additional character increases the line length. The longer line length can cause the message editor to re-parse the line and insert new line breaks that conflict with the existing line breaks.
Abuse
Abusive posts, or "trolling", is best dealt with by ignoring them. Such message are posted by lonely and socially inept individuals just to see what kind of reaction they get from the group's serious users. If anyone proves to be a constant source of such harassment there will be legal action taken to prevent further messages and to recover the cost of damages.
Image Attachments
This is very much a visual hobby and photographs are sometimes essential for getting your point across, but excessive image postings can slow down the not only the news-server but everyone's download. Feel free to post images however please be aware of the impact on others.
Tips For Getting Answers
Check the web site first. Most of the time you will find the information you need contained within the contents of the web site. For example, most new kits are reviewed when they come out and are available in the Reviews section, so if you want opinions on a new kit then check there first.
Determine to which newsgroup you should post your question. Check the messages that are already on the newsgroup to see if others have asked about your problem recently.
Use a meaningful subject line. Instead of saying that you need help urgently, summarize the problem in your subject line.
Try to ask one main question in each message. Message containing lists of questions are less likely to get the same attention as a focused message with one question.
Do not be annoyed by receiving "I think" answers from different people, although they may not answer your question directly they are just trying to help.
If you do not receive and answer to your question do not assume that nobody cares to help you. It may be that no one has the answer, or perhaps your Subject heading was not descriptive enough. Try again.
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