Forum policies

Not related to a specific OLAP tool. (Includes forum policies and rules).
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Martin Ryan
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Forum policies

Post by Martin Ryan »

TM1Forum (formerly OLAPForums) is intended to be a meeting place to allow people who are involved in or interested in TM1 and other OLAP tools to discuss matters related to those tools (and, within reason, other things). It's not intended to be a marketplace, but a Commercial forum has been provided to allow the community to be advised of products or services which may be of use to them. This post provides a (not too onerous) codification of the Forum policies to help clarify what is and is not acceptable in terms of postings on the forum.

- Unfortunately as a result of an excessive number of spammers creating false accounts, all new accounts now need to be approved by one of the Administrators before posts can be made to the Forums. This will usually take much less than 24 hours. No email is sent when the account is activated so ensure you come back to check. Posts from new users may also need to be approved by administrators, which will also normally happen within a few hours.

- The Forums have a zero tolerance for spam. Spam messages will be immediately deleted, along with the user's account.

- If you're a TM1 or other OLAP contractor, partner, agency or supplier you're invited to submit your details in this thread. Please note that you should post your details only once, though you can edit your post if your details change.

- Similarly if you have services or products that you want to promote, you can make a single "introducing me or my product" post in the Commercial forum. This post should not be "bumped", though if there is some genuinely new information (a new version, a bug fix in an existing version, etcetera), a further posting in that thread can be made. "Services or products" include other blogs or web sites. It also includes free products or services which, it could be reasonably inferred, are intended to attract people's attention to your firm and the other products or services that you're charging for (or may be in the future).

- If a user posts about a problem that they're having and you think that your product or service can fix the specific issue mentioned, please link them to your post in the Commercial forums or provide a link to your site without elaboration; if you want to extol its virtues or describe its functionality, that may only be done in a Commercial forum post. "Boosting" your product in the main forums isn't acceptable.

- If you're providing a good or service you need to make that known in your post. Under no circumstances should suppliers or contractors recommend products or services while masquerading as end users only. Any posts found (or strongly suspected) of being in that category will be deleted.

- Signatures may be used to promote links. Only text links may be used. Images in signatures are not permitted in order to avoid threads being taken over by self promotion ads.

- Job posts must be genuine and specific, contain relevant details, and made in the Jobs forum. Agency posts must refer to a specific job or jobs. Postings which are only intended to build contact books will not be looked on favourably, and most likely not only by the Forum Admins.

- Do not send technical questions to other forum members via private message. Post them in the forum where you are likely to receive a reply more quickly, and others can benefit from the knowledge transfer.

- Do not post information that violates your confidentiality agreement with IBM or any other company. This includes information about future IBM releases that is not already in the public domain. This is a public forum and as such anyone can see the information posted here. If you are in doubt regarding this policy, please read the specific post on it, or contact one of the Administrators for advice.

Thank you to the vast majority of you who continue to make this a vibrant and useful forum, we hope these policies will help to keep the minority in check.

The TM1 Forum Team
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Alan Kirk
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Re: Forum policies (Activation Of Accounts)

Post by Alan Kirk »

Martin Ryan wrote: - Unfortunately as a result of an excessive number of spammers creating false accounts, all new accounts now need to be approved by one of the Administrators before posts can be made to the Forums. This will usually take much less than 24 hours. No email is sent when the account is activated so ensure you come back to check.
Please note that we've identified an issue which involves accounts being automatically deactivated when you change your e-mail address. Unfortunately there's no way to turn this off as it's built in to the phpBB software. (Which thankfully is free, given the bovine by-product attitude of the developers demonstrated here. They maintain that this is a "sekuritee" feature, and having invoked the majik word no counter arguments will be tolerated, notwithstanding that the "logic" behind this has so many holes that you could drive a freight train through it.)

As of the time of writing there's no automated way for the administrators to be notified when this happens, so if you plan to change your e-mail address you may want to send a PM to some of the more active Administrators to let them know in advance. Otherwise, your account will be reactivated the next time someone scans the Admin log and sees the deactivation. (Usually at least one Admin is in the Administration Control Panel each day, so it would be rare for the deactivation to run for days rather than hours.)
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