Mobile Electronics Australia Rules & Guidelines

Purpose:

Mobile Electronics Australia is the single largest community in Australia for Mobile Electronics, including car audio, security, navigation and multimedia. As a result of that, combined with the presence of beginners, enthusiasts, and those with commercial interests these guidelines are required to protect both the members, the site owners, and of course those companies that support the website.

By abiding to these guidelines in all forums, chat areas, email services, and/or other message or communication facilities designed to enable you to communicate with the public at large or with a group ensures a positive experience for all our users. By participating in any area of Mobile Electronics Australia, you agree to abide and be bound by these guidelines.

Mobile Electronics Australia is not responsible for any user-created content on the site, including but not limited to forums, chat areas, email services, and/or other message or communication facilities unless the contrary is expressly stated. Any user of this site agrees they are soley responsible for their actions, and if required that their details may be passed on to third parties to assist in any matters arising.

GENERAL RULES & GUIDELINES

We encourage everyone to treat each other with mutual respect. Do not threaten, harass, stalk, or abuse others participating in the website. Refrain from all expressions of bigotry, racism, hatred, or excessive profanity. Be courteous to others, even if your opinion differs from theirs.

Do not make inflammatory remarks in order to provoke others.

Using all CAPITALS, excessive punctuation, and website URLS in message subjects is forbidden. (You may use URLs in the message body).

Using all CAPITALS in a message is considered rude. Learn to use your CAPSLOCK key appropriately.

Post in the appropriate forum. Do not be surprised if you post in the wrong forum and your thread is moved or deleted.

Be clear in your posting and have a point. Threads with no point will be removed at the moderators' discretion.

Personal matters between yourself and another member must remain between yourself and them. The public forum is NOT the place to air your private grievances.

Use the forums appropriately. Do not use the forums if your messages would be more appropriate in a private message, email, chat, or phone conversation. This includes references to private transactions that may have taken place between members, and / or retailers and distributors. The public forum is not the place for communication of this nature.

You are allowed to use images in your posts, but be mindful of those people with slow connections. If the images are very large consider using a URL instead. Images may be removed at the moderators' discretion.

Threats of any kind (either implied or explicit) will, at the discretion of the moderators and administration, result in the loss of your forum rights (banning).

Administrators and/or Moderators who manage the website may eject or ban users, as well as edit or remove posts that violate any guidelines, without any explanation, and no further correspondence will be entered into.

If you publish material which defames another person or company, or which amounts to unlawful discrimination or the incitement of hatred, then you may be held liable for those actions. You should be aware that Mobile Electronics Australia may be required, by law or court order, or at it's own discretion, to disclose certain information which it holds.

Mobile Electronics Australia reserves the right to remove posts discussing and/or promoting illegal activities including but not limited to the possession, procurement and consumption of drugs, criminal activity and other associated issues, copyright infringement etc

Do not upload files or post messages that contain photos, software or other material protected by intellectual property laws, rights of privacy or publicity or any other applicable law unless you own or control the rights thereto or have received all necessary consent. This also applies to scanned pages of magazines. Mobile Electronics Australia is not responsible for any use of anything you say or post.

Do not post any materials (including software and other information) that could harm (or is designed to harm) other users' computers or would allow others to inappropriately access software or web sites. Hackers are known to target forum websites and Mobile Electronics Australia has features in place such as IP Tracking, Server Log Files to analyse information and pass it on to appropriate ISP's, and/or authorities.

Mobile Electronics Australia has a zero tolerance policy to persistent off-topic comments and postings or statements that encourage others to violate the Forum Guidelines.

Multiple accounts are forbidden. Mobile Electronics Australia has a feature in place that alerts Administrators to users logging in from more than one account. ALL accounts are subject to being deleted if a reasonable explanation is not given.

Promotion of any website / forums considered of competitive nature to Mobile Electronics Australia and it's main genre, via any method is strictly forbidden. This includes promotion via the Private Message system.

TRADING POST - FOR SALE GUIDELINES

A seperate set of guidelines govern the posting of FOR SALE listings. Your post will not be approved if these guidelines are not followed. You can access these guidelines here.

COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING

Mobile Electronics Australia has many relationships with Industry Members and also offsets the costs of running the website via Advertising revenue and other indirect methods of funding (including but not limited to sales of merchandise through audiodiscs.com.au and the MEA Online Store). Mobile Electronics Australia must protect the interests of those paying for the right to advertise their products and services.

You may not post any information considered to be of commercial nature, whether it be selling a product, promotion of a product or business unless you are a paying commercial advertiser, or a representative of a paying commercial advertiser. This also includes deliberately engaging in activity considered to be deliberately drawing sales away from MEA and it's advertisers.

You may not contact members of Mobile Electronics Australia with information of a commercial nature.

The Private Messaging system is disabled for members with known commercial interests that are NOT a paying commercial advertiser. Commercial Advertisers and 'Approved Dealer Network' Members have full use of the Private Messaging system.

Mobile Electronics Australia reserves the right to ban a user at any time, without notice for ignoring these guidelines, soliciting sales via the forums, or external email system, and/or circumventing the guidelines in place to prevent unsolicited commercial transactions.

MODERATORS

The moderators of the forums are there to make the time spent on the forums more enjoyable for the Mobile Electronics Australia community as a whole. They receive no compensation for their time or services.

If you feel that somebody has breached the guidelines we strongly suggest you use the "Report this post to a moderator" function. This function sends an email to every moderator of that forum, and alerts us to the thread in question. Do not create a new thread or reply to the post as you will simply bump the thread to the top of the screen for everyone else to see.

If a thread is deleted or closed, or a post is removed, and you want to know why this has happened, do not start a new thread questioning the whereabouts of the post/thread. Such threads will be deleted. Simply send an email or private message to one of the moderators.

If you feel a moderator has been unfair in handling an issue, then send an email or private message to the website manager via the Contacts Page.

Moderators use a combination of common-sense and these guidelines when making decisions. If you breach these guidelines, expect to receive a warning. Depending on the severity of the breach, a warning may be issued. You can receive up to five warning before you will automatically be banned from the Mobile Electronics Australia website. Moderator’s reserve the right to ignore the warning process and issue an immediate ban if required.