Engineers Edge is dedicated to developing and maintaining a friendly online community, where members of all ages and technical backgrounds feel relaxed and comfortable. Like any community, Engineers Edge has certain standards. When members join our forums, they agree to abide by these rules. To remain a part of the Engineers Edge community, members must be considerate to others. Repeated violations of these standards may result in a member being barred from entry or participation in community forums.

Member Names and Personal Information
While Engineers Edge does not prohibit the use of nicknames on our forums, we strongly encourage members to include their real first and last names with their registration information. Please refrain from using offensive names and never post a message under another person's name or pretending to be another person. When posting a message to a forum, your name is the only personal information that is displayed. Your username and email address will never be displayed publicly. However, you should always exercise judgment when revealing personal information about yourself when you post messages in public forums. For more information, please read Engineers Edge Privacy Policy.

Topics of Discussion
While these discussion, job and resume boards encourage a wide range of opinions, please keep your posts focused on the topic of the forum in which you are submitting your message. Each forum has a different topic (Job Board, Resume Board, Design & Engineering forum), so what is appropriate in one forum or thread may not be appropriate in another. All queries are answered in the forums and not answered by email, so that everyone can benefit from the replies and its content.

Inappropriate Language
The use of inappropriate or offensive language is not permitted in these boards. Inappropriate or offensive language includes, but is not limited to, any language or content that is sexually oriented, sexually suggestive or abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, profane, hateful, or that contains racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable material of any kind. We ask that you please be considerate to other members in the boards when posting your messages.

Harassment and Flaming
Engineers Edge members are not permitted to harass or "flame" other members. Please do not post or transmit any unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, profane, hateful, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable material of any kind, including, but not limited to, any material which encourages conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, violate the rights of others, or otherwise violate any applicable local, state, national or international law. Please note that this also includes the posting of taunts on a forum solely for the purpose of deriding that forum's topic and/or members.

Copyrighted or Trademarked Materials
It is illegal to post any content that is copyrighted or trademarked, unless you hold the copyright or trademark. Any material protected by copyright may not be posted in the message boards without the expressed permission of the author or owner of the copyright on that material. This includes reproducing the full text of news stories, articles, etc. It is acceptable to provide a link to copyrighted material, to post brief excerpts, or to paraphrase other works, though we do strongly encourage you to cite the original source whenever possible.

Piracy or Unlawful Activities
This community forum is a place for ideas and constructive participation, and not a place to violate any laws or to discuss illegal activities. This type of activity includes, but is not limited to, advocating or asking for information regarding software piracy or unauthorized emulators of software or hardware, sharing or distributing viruses, licenses, registration information, software keys, "cracks," or other information designed to do harm to or allow unlawful access to any computer hardware, software, networks, or any other systems. Please refrain from posting this kind of message.

Posting Advertisements
This is a forum of ideas, so advertisements are not allowed in this venue. A member may answer another member's question about their occupation or business, however, blatant advertising or solicitations of or for business is prohibited. This includes, but not limited to,  links to products or services with which the poster is affiliated, whether or not a fee is charged for the product or service. Spamming, in which a user posts the same message repeatedly, is also prohibited. Pyramid schemes --chain letters that involve money-- are not only prohibited by Engineers Edge standards, but they're also illegal. It is permissible for members to mention services or products that are provided by them, as long as the information is germane to the topic, is not a blatant advertisement, and the members mention their affiliation with the product in the content of the message.

Posting Images
Forum members are allowed to embed images in their messages by linking to an image that exists on another site. In addition to the copyright restrictions mentioned above, users should also refrain from embedding any images of a sexual or offensive nature. If you are uncertain is an image is acceptable or not, please just post a link to the image with a warning that it goes to a page that some may find offensive. Any links to clearly offensive or pornographic materials will be removed immediately at the moderator's discretion.

Posting Links
Currently, we do not allow hyperlinking to other web sites. We do allow posting of web addresses in text format only.

The only type of text addresses (besides porn and spam, of course) that will not be allowed on our site is when members solicit people to leave our site and join a competing service. That's just common sense. We won't allow people to use our site to promote a competing service any more than a brick-and-mortar store would allow his competitor to paste flyers all over his walls. However, people are always welcome to provide the web address to any online resource, whether it's on our site or any other site, in order to share useful information with fellow members.

Other General Rules of Conduct
You shall not post on these forums any Content which (a) is libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, harassing or threatening, (b) contains viruses or other contaminating or destructive features, (c) violates the rights of others, such as Content which infringes any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or violates any right of privacy or publicity, or (d) otherwise violates any applicable law. You may not post on these forums any links to any external Internet sites that are obscene or pornographic. You shall not use these forums for any commercial purpose, to distribute any advertising or solicitation of funds or goods and services or to solicit users to join competitive online services.

Banning
Engineers Edge reserves the right at its sole discretion to restrict, suspend, or terminate your access to any part of these forums, parts of or the entire Engineers Edge network. If you violate any of the rules stated in this document or any other service terms documents, a moderator will remove the offending message and may or may not send you a note letting you know why the message was removed and requesting that you adhere to the forum policies. It is your responsibility to maintain a current, valid email address in your registration information so that our moderators can contact you in the event of a policy violation. Any member who violates our policies  will be denied access to these forums, whether or not they were able to receive a message from a moderator stating the nature of the violation.

Managing User Content
Members of these forums are solely responsible for all Content that they post on our site. Engineers Edge shall have the right, but not the obligation, to correct any errors or omissions in any Content, as it may determine in its sole discretion. Engineers Edge further reserve the right, in their sole discretion, to delete or remove any user content from the site and to deny the access of any member to all part of this site, at any time for any reason without prior notice or liability. However, we obviously don't want to do that, and this requires about a minute of the moderators time, so just follow the rules, okay?