Friendsofsamos.com Community Guidelines
These guidelines are inspired and refined by the Community, for the Community.
Our sites are home to many people and respecting these guidelines allows for everyone to have the best time possible.
While we understand that not every last person may appreciate our civility requirements, if you want to enjoy all our sites have to offer you will need to adhere to them at all times.
We ask that you abide by the Community Guidelines, in all of your activities on Friendsofsamos.com.
Some areas, products or services may carry additional standards, and we also expect you to review and abide by the standards of the areas you frequent.
The Spirit of Friendsofsamos.com The most important thing to familiarize yourself with is the “Spirit of Friendsofsamos.com.
” This site is for the love of dogs. It is about caring and support. It is about fun, friendly and informational sharing of our passion for our furry friends.
There is no shortage of places on the Internet to fight, scratch and snarl and we thought it was high time to have a place that was all about the kindness and fun of sharing and communication.
If you’re used to the dog fighting that happens in other online communities, you can pull your claws in and stop growling.
Friendsofsamos.com is a fun, friendly place. Take the time to be nice here! It’s well worth the effort.
Overarching Community Guidelines Participation in all areas of Friendsofsamos.com must be kept within the “Spirit of Friendsofsamos.com: fun, friendly and helpful,” at all times.
Your participation on Friendsofsamos.com needs to follow the laws of the area in which you reside.
You must not, in the use of Friendsofsamos.com, violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright laws).
A member may not create more than one membership account without advance permission.
You are responsible for all activity on your Friendsofsamos.com account.
You are responsible for your interactions with other members. Please act maturely and kindly.
All you need is love! There is absolutely no flaming or personal name-calling allowed on Friendsofsamos.com.
Snarling, snapping, biting and other rough behavior is strictly forbidden.
Please remember that it is not permissible to “respond in kind” if another member has been mean to you.
Bad behavior is never justified. Instead of snapping back, report the problem to Friendsofsamos.com and let us take care of the bad behavior.
Take care to avoid pack behavior including ganging up on another member.
Never participate or encourage aggressive behavior that seeks to silence, humiliate or drive away another member.
Friendsofsamos.com is a family-friendly site.
All content on Friendsofsamos.com –text, images and video, including the content on the pages of posted external links–must be appropriate for all ages.
Content that contains profanity; is sexually explicit; depicts the torture and abuse of human beings or animals; or contains graphic, descriptive and lengthy portrayals of serious violence against human beings or animals; blood, injury, and/or death are not allowed on Friendsofsamos.com.
Profanity should never be bowdlerized by replacing letters in the word with dashes, asterisks, or other symbols. Profane acronyms are not allowed on Friendsofsamos.com.
Take care to never lie, exaggerate, stretch the truth or tell tall tales.
Pretending fake stories are true is never acceptable. In the event that the validity of a user-generated content is called into question, members may be requested to provide proof or information to support their story/content. We work hard on keeping our Community a safe place. Please use caution when sharing personal information and do not encourage others to post personal information publicly on Friendsofsamos.com. This includes age, email addresses, instant messenger IDs, mailing addresses, phone numbers, or bank account information, etc. Racism and hate-language are never acceptable – ever. Content intended to victimize, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group on the basis of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation is not allowed. Members should never discuss the status of another member’s account, including their own, anywhere on Friendsofsamos.com.
Please don’t ever participate in discussions on the behalf of someone whose account is under review or has been asked to leave our Community.
If you do feel as though you should comment, do so by way of the Contact Friendsofsamos.com feature.
Friendsofsamos.com Terms of Service stipulates that, “The friendsofsamos.com service is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only.
Businesses, organizations or other legal entities may not use the friendsofsamos.com.com service for any purpose,” however, because we want to allow some flexibility to accommodate active members of the Community who wish to mention a location or service as part of their life, our only caveat is that members don’t use their account as a blatant sales and/or marketing tool.
Including a link or photo of your location, service, product or business or mentioning it in the context of your account is fine, but we do not allow the product or service to be included in group names or forums. Members should always respect the statements HQ.
It is fine if you disagree with an HQ action, but never forget the correct way to share your grievance is to contact HQ directly. The incorrect action is to challenge, defy, debate or ignore HQ in the public areas of Friendsofsamos.com. If you have any concerns or problems with other members, the proper action is to contact Friendsofsamos.com HQ.
HQ will resolve any and all Community abuses and intervene and take action as appropriate.
Responses to Violations Friendsofsamos.com HQ has the right to take action if you disregard the Community Guidelines.
Violators risk having their content edited or removed. Furthermore Friendsofsamos.com reserves the right to revoke any abusive user’s privileges on the site altogether, up to and including the deletion of all user created content (including the account itself).
Due to the nature of the site, it’s unlikely that warnings can be given to all violators in advance.
At times, Friendsofsamos.com HQ might place an account under temporary review. If your account is under review by Friendsofsamos.com HQ, under no circumstances should you try to create a new account, login using another person’s account or try and circumvent the review process in any way.
You should respect the hard work and tried and true practices and policies of HQ, which are designed to err on the side of caution. Attempting to circumvent a timeout, kenneling or temporary review could result in losing permanent rights of membership.
If you have done anything so extreme as to lose your membership rights, you will lose all rights to create an account or participate in community features.
Any attempt to circumvent this ban will guarantee that your membership status can never be reconsidered. If you are unsure of the exact meaning of any of these terms simply seek clarification from HQ before risking an abuse.
Also note, that while we profoundly value your privacy and as a rule ignore all private conversations and actions, please remember that if we need to research any abuse of our community terms we retain the right to review all private messaging, Forum posts, Group messaging, or any other communication done through the site.
Also note that such information is for our eyes only and is never shared beyond our immediate team. Out of respect for our members’ privacy, Friendsofsamos.com will not discuss a member’s account with other members of the Community.
Contacting HQ Friendsofsamos.com depends on the Community to help us moderate the site for violations of Community Guidelines.
The ‘Notify’ features Friendsofsamos.com has in place are for the benefit and safety of the entire Community. If you feel that there are members abusing a policy, please use one of the many “Notify” or “Tell Friendsofsamos.com” links located throughout the site or visit Friendsofsamos.com Community Site Support.
Community violations are taken very seriously. We take care to review and address every concern.
We strive to respond to any Community issue within 24 hours, but please note that it can take up to 72 hours, especially on weekends, to have adequate time to respond. It’s very important to remember that on occasions when we cannot respond as quickly as desired, this in no way allows for terms of the Community Guidelines to be ignored.
Never forget two wrongs never make a right. If someone behaves badly, no one else is ever justified in breaking any of our terms in response. Ever.
Trossingen, February 2010
