Terms of Service - IMPORTANT</p>
<p>Courtesy. At College Confidential, we expect discussion to be courteous even when disagreement may be vigorous. When writing your messages, please use the same courtesy that you would show when speaking face-to-face with someone. Flames, insults, and personal attacks will not be tolerated. It’s fine to disagree with opinions, ideas, and facts, but always with respect for the other person. Also, note that messages express the thoughts of the writers, not the community, its owners, staff, or moderators. Visitors who post discourteous messages will be warned; repeat offenders will lose posting rights.</p>
<p>General Behavior. Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others. Members who post in a manner that makes other members unwelcome or uncomfortable, or who conduct themselves in a manner in any way detrimental to the College Confidential community, will lose posting privileges.</p>
<p>Commercial Posts, Repetitive Posts, Spam. Posts promoting web sites, products, or services are not allowed. Affiliate links and URL or promotional signatures are not allowed. Please don’t create extra work for our moderators by posting promotional notices on our boards. If you register as a user, you can put your URL in your profile where interested visitors can find it. We recognize that occasionally a post may contain a URL which could be of value to our visitors. Users who post commercial messages will be warned or lose posting privileges. Repetitive posts, numerous posts that do not comply with our TOS, solicitations by private message or email, and other egregious incidents of spam will be reported to the abuse department of the poster’s Internet Service Provider and/or national spam tracking organizations. Homework help posts are not allowed - please do your own work, and don’t clutter the forums with requests for other members to do your work for you. Please do not post e-mail addresses, as the forum has a mechanism for allowing member emails to be sent in a secure and private manner. Embedded or hidden content in posts is not allowed.</p>
<p>Word Filtering. The forum will automatically filter certain words, including many swearwords as well as words, websites, and names that have been targeted by commercial promoters here. Please do not attempt to “spell around” the filter. If a term you are trying to use is in the filter, do not use it. Deliberately evading our filter will cause loss of posting privileges.</p>
<p>Copyrighted Material & E-mail Content. Please do NOT post copyrighted material in our forum. Examples of copyrighted material include articles from publications or websites, book excerpts, or any other content which you have not created yourself. Fair use allows brief excerpts, e.g., a sentence or two, from copyrighted material for the purposes of review and commentary; please do not post massive excerpts from any source. Also, for legal reasons, please do not quote the text of e-mail communications; such material may be paraphrased if appropriate (and if not privileged or confidential) but should not be reproduced in the forum.</p>
<p>Links to Forums, Blogs, Social Network Pages, Photos, Videos, and Personal Sites. Please do not post links to other discussion forums, blogs, personal sites, or other non-authoritative sources. This includes Facebook, Myspace, and similar sites. In order to fulfill our mission of being the best college discussion forum, we want important topics to be discussed here at College Confidential. Linking to discussions elsewhere defeats this purpose. Links to non-authoritative sites like blogs, personal sites, etc., can’t be researched for validity on an individual basis and hence are not allowed. All such links will be removed. Similarly, please do not post email addresses or solicit private messages or email communications from other members. While occasionally you may choose to contact an individual member via email or private message when the member accepts such messages, solicitation of such contacts in the forums is not permitted. Links to photos, videos,wallpapers, etc. cannot be verified as appropriate and should not be posted.</p>
<p>Rules & Disclaimers. It is a condition of your use of CollegeConfidential.com Message Boards or Chat Rooms that you do not: (i) post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, racial, obscene, vulgar, pornographic,
profane or indecent information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions constituting or encouraging conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law; (ii) post or transmit comments containing harassing or offensive language, using sexual references, sexual nicknames, racial slurs or rude or deliberately offensive comments or engage in disruptive activity online, including excessive use of scripts, sound waves, scrolling (repeating the same message over and over), or use viruses, worms or Trojan horses; (iii) post or transmit any information, software or other material which violates or infringes the rights of others, including material which is an invasion of privacy or publicity rights or which is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right, or derivative works without first obtaining permission from the owner; (iv) post or
transmit any information, software or other material which contains a virus, worm, Trojan horse or other code that has contaminating or destructive properties; (v) post any information, software, or other material for commercial purposes; (vi) solicit other users to join or contribute money to any online service or other organization, advocate or attempt to get users to join in legal or illegal schemes; (vii) impersonate any person or entity or falsely represent your professional or other affiliation with any person or entity; or (viii) use CollegeConfidential.com to collect personally identifiable information in violation of our Privacy Policy. You agree College Confidential, at its sole and absolute discretion, shall determine whether any information transmitted or received violates this provision.</p>
<p>You agree to indemnify and hold CollegeConfidential.com and its employees, officers, directors and agents harmless from any claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, made by a third party arising from any material
you contribute to Message Boards or Chat Rooms you access via CollegeConfidential.com.</p>
<p>You understand that CollegeConfidential.com has no obligation to monitor Message Boards or Chat Rooms. CollegeConfidential.com reserves the right at all times to disclose any information regarding the Message Boards or Chat Rooms, or to remove any information or materials, in whole or in part, that in College Confidential’s sole and absolute discretion are objectionable. You acknowledge that CollegeConfidential.com reserves the right to monitor any and
all information transmitted or received through CollegeConfidential.com which may be examined, recorded, copied, and used in accordance with our Privacy Statement. Use of CollegeConfidential.com constitutes consent to such activity by CollegeConfidential.com, Inc…</p>
<p>Personal Information. When using CollegeConfidential.com, please be certain that anything you disclose does not compromise your personal safety. Do not provide your name, phone number, social security number or any other personally identifying information to people you do not know. Do not continue any conversation online that makes you feel uncomfortable. Please report any incidents of harassment or attempts to discover personal information to the moderators.</p>
<p>Moderation. CollegeConfidential.com moderators and administrators may edit, move, and delete posts to make them more accessible or to bring them into compliance with our TOS. If an edit changes the context or meaning of the post in any significant way, moderators will usually include a note that the post has been edited in the post itself. All moderation, however, is performed on a “best efforts” basis - each poster is fully responsible for his/her own posts, and each visitor is responsible for what he/she reads. Offensive posts should be reported to the moderators, and every effort will be made to remove them as soon as possible. Out of respect for both moderators and policies, discussion of moderator actions and forum policies is welcomed via private message or e-mail; these issues are off-topic for the forums.</p>
<p>**Language. All posts will be in English. Be descriptive, specific, and succinct in your postings. This way your opinion and point is clearly understood and referenced. Remember, people from all over the world read here with english as a second language. Please avoid excessive abbreviation and “text messaging” shorthand. Posts that do not meet our language guidelines will be deleted.
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Registration and Your Identity. CollegeConfidential.com seeks to maximize the utility of its forum to its members and visitors, and does not knowingly allow members to misrepresent themselves. Multiple registrations by the same individual without written permission from CollegeConfidential.com are not allowed. Re-registration by individuals who have been banned or denied posting privileges in the past is not allowed. Individuals who misrepresent themselves (e.g., posing as a student or parent when they are not, claiming a false affiliation with a college, etc.), or who register with multiple identities, or who re-register after having been banned, will be reported to the abuse department of their internet and/or email service provider and may be subject to civil or criminal action depending on the nature of their violation.</p>
<p>College Professionals. Some of our members are be admissions officials, administrators, or faculty at a college or university. Occasionally, a member may falsely claim to hold such a position. To protect our student and parent members, there are two ways that a higher education professional can post. First, that member can contact the forum administrator and present independently verifiable information as to personal identity and school; that individual can then receive “College Rep” status, which indicates that CC has taken reasonable steps to verify the individual is from the claimed school. The school must be identified publicly, although the individual’s personal info will not be disclosed. Second, if an individual prefers to remain anonymous, he or she will refrain from making claims (even if true) as to current position. E.g., “I’m an admissions officer at a selective liberal arts college” would not be permitted. Such members will still develop a reputation for expertise, of course, if their body of posts demonstrates their knowledge. CC members are advised NOT to publicly question the credentials of a new member claiming a university affiliation. Rather, they should call the post to the attention of the moderators or the administrator so that CC policy may be explained and any necessary verification take place.</p>
<p>Copyright. All content on the CollegeConfidential.com web site is the property of CollegeConfidential.com, Inc., and CollegeConfidential.com reserves the right to publish and/or distribute such content, including discussion, commentary, and chat posts by visitors to the web site, in printed and electronic form, including media that may become available at a future date.
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