Hydrogenaudio Forum Terms Of Service Options

[Dibrom]

Hydrogenaudio Terms of Service / Notices

1. All messages express the views of the author, and are not and should not be taken as representative of the official policies of the forum or the views of its staff, unless explicitly stated as such by the authoritative members of the staff.

2. All members, at the staff's discretion, must converse in an acceptable fashion to be allowed the privilege of continued participation.

3. All members must acknowledge and accept that data integrity is not the liability of the Hydrogenaudio staff. Those who do not accept this should not contribute any content whatsoever to the Hydrogenaudio community.

4. The Hydrogenaudio community requires that all members provide a valid email address. This email address will only be used for user account validation and activities directly related to the features of this community, and will never be given to any third party.

5. All members that post to the Hydrogenaudio community must acknowledge and discuss only acceptable topics when starting a new thread. If posting to an already existing thread, they must continue in the vein of discussion that the thread has already manifested; if they wish to change topics, they must start a new thread.

6. All members that create new threads must use a topic title which is understandable and describes the content of the thread properly. Furthermore, all new threads must be started in the correct forum categories, and posted only once -- in the appropriate category -- throughout the entire forum. Double posts will be removed, and threads with inappropriate topics will be moved. A member that continue violates this rule may be subject to administrative action.

7. All members must acknowledge the authority of the staff insofar as administrative actions are concerned. These issues are no longer open for discussion once the staff member has indicated that the matter is closed. Further concerns regarding an action should be communicated via a private message to the staff member, and not repeatedly discussed publicly. Furthermore, once a thread on a particular topic has been closed or removed and indicated as being unacceptable by a staff member, starting a new discussion on the exact same topic will result in administrative action being taken against the poster.

8. All members that put forth a statement concerning subjective sound quality, must -- to the best of their ability -- provide objective support for their claims. Acceptable means of support are double blind listening tests (ABX or ABC/HR) demonstrating that the member can discern a difference perceptually, together with a test sample to allow others to reproduce their findings. Graphs, non-blind listening tests, waveform difference comparisons, and so on, are not acceptable means of providing support.

9. All members must refrain from posting links to -- or information regarding how to obtain -- copyrighted or illegal material. Discussion containing information of how to obtain such material, how to bypass protection methodologies of such material, or how to otherwise violate laws pertaining to such matters will not be tolerated, and participating members may be subject to administrative action.

10. All members must post in English. Content in other languages are allowed as long as full English translations are provided, or otherwise at the discretion of the staff. User profile information (including sigs) in other languages is allowed.

11. All member sigs must be kept brief -- 3 to 4 lines at most. Signatures and avatars must also be non-obtrusive, non-offensive and work-safe.

12. All members are only allowed to have a single user account with the forums. Members who are found to violate this rule may be subject to immediate banishment or other administrative action.

13. Updates posted in the "News Submissions" forum should be of importance for the community.

14. All members must refrain from using the forum solely for advertising purposes.

This post has been edited by CiTay: Feb 3 2006, 16:41

[CiTay]

-> 1.

Although the Hydrogenaudio staff will attempt to keep the forum free from all objectionable content, it is impossible for us to review all submitted posts. Therefore, you acknowledge that all content present on these forums express the views and opinions of their author and not necessarily represent those of any external parties such as the administrators, moderators or webmaster. Hence, the management of this forum is free from all liability for the content within.

[CiTay]

-> 2.

Messages which are found to be abusive, obscene, vulgar, hateful, slanderous, threatening, or which are otherwise in violation of any laws, deemed as such by the Hydrogenaudio staff, and at their sole discretion, will be removed. Users which have made posts falling into any of the above categories may face permanent banishment from the forum or their account may be subject to any other actions which are deemed appropriate by the Hydrogenaudio staff. This may include reporting you to the proper authorities such as law enforcement agencies or internet service providers. Logs of all forum activity, including the IP address of all posts, are recorded to aid in enforcement of these conditions.

Explanation: Over time, Hydrogenaudio has had some issues with rude, unfriendly, or otherwise inappropriate personal comments made by some users. This is unacceptable. Any users which unnecessarily contribute to so-called "flame-wars" will be reprimanded within the limitations of Hydrogenaudio.

And no "free ipod" talk.

[CiTay]

-> 3.

As a user, you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. While personal information will not be disclosed to any third party, the Hydrogenaudio staff cannot be held responsible for the possible corruption of this data by illegal activities propagated by malicious users.

[CiTay]

-> 4.

The email address is only used to confirm your registration details and your password (and for sending new passwords in case you forgot your current one). It may also be used for site-related news considered of great importance by the administrators.

[CiTay]

-> 5.

Submission of a thread that is not related to any of the topics covered by the Hydrogenaudio forums and subforums, or posts which are not related to the thread that they are submitted to, is against the rules. If you wish to discuss Off-Topic issues, please use our Off-Topic forum. Repeated violation of this rule after one notification may lead to administrative action including banishment.

Explanation: Many of the threads within the Hydrogenaudio forums which would have otherwise been good resources for information, have been rendered uninformative and confusing because of the discussion drifting off topic. This makes the forum less useful as a resource and often leads to questions and posts of information being repeated unnecessarily. This wastes peoples time, promotes agitation, frustration and hostility, and causes people to lose interest in participation. Therefore, please respect this rule.

[CiTay]

-> 6.

Thread subjects should properly describe the content of the thread. Thread subjects like: "What's this?", "Why isn't it working?", "I have a question", "This is cool" etc. are to be avoided.

Explanation: Thread subjects should explain the thread content as shortly and precisely as possible, for example: "Lame --alt-preset quality problem", "Vorbis plugin tagging problem", etc.

Find the right forum section for a new thread. Do not double-post.

[CiTay]

-> 7.

To avoid unwanted discussion, this must be followed:

• If a thread was closed or deleted to stop unwanted discussion -
  don't start a new one to discuss the same issue.
  don't post in other unrelated threads about the same issue.
• If your post was edited by HA staff -
  don't edit the post yourself to recover the removed information.
  don't re-post the removed information in a new post (rephrased or not).
• If you do not understand why a thread was closed or information removed, contact one of the administrators/moderators privately.

[CiTay]

-> 8.

Hydrogenaudio is supposed to be an objectively minded community that relies on double-blind testing and relevant methods of comparison in discussion about sound quality. The usual "audiophile" speak of non-audio related terms which are completely subjective and open to redefinition on a whim, are useless for any sort of progression in discussion.

This rule is the very core of Hydrogenaudio, so it is very important that you follow it.

Here is a discussion explaining why
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11442

You can read how to easily perform double blind listening tests here :
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=16295

[CiTay]

-> 9.

Users found in violation of this rule will be subject to immediate punishment. Properly cited short music clips (no longer than necessary and under 30 seconds) for codec testing purposes are allowed.

Discussions about illegal filesharing sites/forums and ripping groups are not wanted here and can lead to a warning or worse.

[CiTay]

-> 10.

A non-English post is anti-social as it excludes a large section of the forum members from the ongoing discussion. Do not use so called elite or "1337" speak as it makes your post harder to read and unreadable for some forum members. Do not use uncommon abbreviations as it can make it impossible for some forum members to understand what you wrote.

Explanation: Such posts degrade the quality of the forum since many other users can't understand their content and could therefore be considered SPAM.

[CiTay]

-> 11.

It is not allowed to have a signature longer than a few lines. Signatures may not link to offensive sites or have offensive content. No commercial advertising. Formatting is disabled.

[CiTay]

-> 12.

It is not allowed to:
- Open more than one account per user
- Post under more than one nick
- In any way try to create more than one identity.

Explanation: It is an increasing problem that members try to return or "start over" over after having been banned or having received warnings. This is not accepted since it makes it impossible to enforce moderation decisions. Accounts are never deleted. We will trace down and ban users that make multiple accounts.

[CiTay]

-> 13.

Posts under News Submissions shouldn't be overly long. Very long changelogs should only be linked to. Not all minor version updates deserve to be on the portal and therefore won't be validated. Improper news submissions may be edited, moved or deleted.

[CiTay]

-> 14.

It is acceptable to announce new audio related software on the forum, but registering solely to promote your software or services, without the intent of participating in the discussion on the forums, is not allowed. You also must not misrepresent your relation to software or services you are promoting.

This forum is no marketplace, please don't put up things for sale here.

Sometimes there are also people who post spam messages. If you encounter spam, please immediately report it to the HA staff by using the "Report" button below the post. Do not reply to spam posts/topic.