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September 08, 2010, 07:36:01 AM

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Michigan Natural Parenting Community Terms of Service

OK, you've signed up, and now you want to post. First, you need to read the following information first. Yes, it's boring, but it will save a lot of time and trouble on your part.

There is no charge for joining the Michigan Natural Parenting Community Forum! We do insist that you abide by the rules and policies detailed below. If you agree to the terms, please check the 'I agree' checkbox and press the 'Register' button below. If you do not agree with the outlined rules and guidelines, cancel this registration process.

This is a private community of natural parents, both experienced and inexperienced. In order to keep this community safe and secure for Michigan natural parents to chat freely, registration requires approval from a Michigan Natural Parenting Community Administrator. Guests can not view the forums nor post within the Michigan Natural Parenting Community Forums. This is to protect our awesome Michigan natural parents.

Your behavior here, and ours, can be summed up in 4 words: "Mi casa, su casa" (my house is your house). The Michigan Natural Parenting Community Forums is a place where it's okay to be yourself as long as you always act with respect for your fellow members as well as the MNPC staff. You are not expected to leave your personality at the door. There are going to be topics and discussions that will have heated debates. Please think before you post and re-read what you type before you post it. Keep your comments limited to the debate at hand and do not make this a personal issue between you and another member.

Here are some guidelines for appropriate MNPC Forum behavior:

1. NO LURKING!
It is our number one priority to keep this board safe and private. Our members share very private and personal information as well as photos within the boards. Thus, lurkers will *not* be tolerated in MNPC Forum. We have our Introductions as well as the Icebreaker boards to help shy members get used the community and to help us get to know each other. It was also a way to encourage people to post.

> Within a week of registering, members *MUST* post an introduction.
> Ten (10) legitimate posts are required before a new member has reading and posting privileges for the rest of the forum. Writing "ditto" or "bumping" are examples of illegitimate posts.
> Frequent posting is necessary to maintain membership. We realize "frequent" may be a subjective term. If you have not logged on within 90 days, your account will be marked inactive and will require reactivation. If you have not logged on within 180 days, your account will be deleted.

This may sound rough but please know our reasons are for the safety and privacy of this forum.
*IF* you can not be online for a period of time due to life circumstances (i.e. family emergencies, giving birth, vacation, etc.), let us know! If you know someone in this situation unexpectedly, let us know. We're not totally heartless! *wink*

2. BE KIND & RESPECT OTHERS!
Don't attack others. Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Challenge others' points of view and opinions, but do so respectfully and thoughtfully ... without insult and personal attack. Do not post comments that are derogatory, insulting, inflammatory, baiting, harassing, humiliating, intended to question others' character or intentions, or are generally mean-spirited.

Keep in mind that we are a diverse community and what unites us is natural parenting. But we are all at different levels of natural parenting. Many only babywear or cloth diaper, others may not vaccinate or try to eat all organic/natural foods. Every family must decide for themselves what they should or must do for their own families. Yours and their way may not be right or wrong... only right for *your* family. Inclusion of phrasing which personalizes your viewpoint such as "in my opinion" (IMO) or "in my experience" (IME) or similar, does wonders in helping everyone to feel comfortable when views that are different to their own are expressed. The same applies to political or religious views.

3. BE APPROPRIATE!
There may be places where explicit, obscene or vulgar language, graphics or behavior is appropriate however MNPC Forum is not one of them. Discussion forum posts that contain explicit, obscene or vulgar language will be removed. Similarly, discussion forum posts that solicit or offer explicit or X-rated GIFs, JPEGs or similar content files will be deleted without notice! Consider what you may say in front of your young children.

4. NO SPAMMING!
Spam is any content intended to solicit sales from other members. We won't tolerate spamming. The FSOT forums were created for individual selling of items. We will not tolerate vendor solicitations. Spamming includes, but is not limited to:

> Placing your advertisements throughout the MNPC Forums.
> Links to your FSOT postings in any forum other than the appropriate FSOT forums.
> Posting to tell of your intent to sell an item in a forum other than the FSOT forums.
> Using your business or product names as a username.
> Including advertising images in your signature.
> Sending unwanted private messages (PMs) or emails to solicit for money (for business or charity). This excludes solicitations for money to be raised to help a MNPC member. In this case, approval from the MNPC Admin is required first.
> Posting to solicit funds, free carriers, etc. on the public boards.

These are considered SPAM and could result in the loss of your MNPC Forum Membership.
If you have a business, you may have one line within your signature of normal sized font.
This will be actively monitored and any abuse could result in being moderated or banned from the MNPC Forum.

5. DON'T GOSSIP!
Avoid posting in private forums or chat to discuss people/threads on public forums. This is like "talking behind someone's back" and is not conducive to a friendly community atmosphere. We do support the discussion of issues in their own right, and moderators will help facilitate those discussions when appropriate.

Avoid public criticism of the administration team. Do not post on the public forums to criticize moderator/administrator decisions. These issues are generally best discussed in private (by PM or email). If you have concerns or questions about the actions of the administration team, please send a private message or email to the site owner.

6. POST CORRECTLY!
Please try and post new threads in the appropriate forum. If we feel that you have posted a new thread in the wrong forum, we will move the thread to where it should be without notice. Do not post the same discussion more than once on a discussion forum or on many forums. Duplicate discussions will be deleted.

To initiate active discussions, use a descriptive title for your post. For example, a post titled "need help with back carries in wrap" is more appropriate than a post titled "help me".

In order to provide a safe and secure area for our Michigan natural parents to chat, we currently do not allow guest posting.

7. BE LEGAL!
Information copyrighted or owned by any individual or entity other than the member should not be posted on the discussion forums without the consent of the owner. This includes reprinting of articles, song lyrics, emails/private messages written by other people, images, etc. If such an event occurs, the individual posting the information shall be held solely responsible. The MNPC Forums shall not be held responsible for member-posted information that may violate copyright law.

You cannot legally post entire articles or news in the forum without permission from the copyright holder. Even if you attribute the article correctly it's still copyright infringement. Copyright law does not care if you make any money off of the work or not, what matters is if you hurt the potential income of the copyright holder. In this case you would be depriving them of ad revenue and it is illegal. Under Fair Use provisions you can legally post a small abstract of an article - or perhaps the opening paragraph. So if you want to post an article you should do this and include a link, or just post the link. The exception to this rule is press releases; press releases are meant for distribution and can be copied and distributed as much as you want. If you are not sure if you can copy something then always err on the side of caution and simply post a link to the material.

8. NO TO MULTIPLE USER ACCOUNTS!
Multiple forum user accounts by the same person are forbidden. Should you ever wish to change your username, please contact the MNPC Administrator.

9. DON'T ABUSE PMs!
Private Messaging is provided to the members of MNPC Forum as a service intended to enhance the Community experience. The purpose of private messaging is to allow for discreet conversations to take place between members. This privilege is not to be abused! Solicitation, spamming, or harassment of any kind is strictly forbidden. Any member receiving an inappropriate private message should forward that message to an Administrator or Moderator right away. Although private messages are normally only accessible by those who send and receive them, they are part of the database and as such, property of MNPC Forums. An Administrator, if so inclined, could locate the Private Messages in the database and read them. They are private, but not necessarily secret. In addition, Private Messages are not intended to deprive the Community of valuable information or experiences which could benefit the entire group. Please do not use private messages if the content of the message can be helpful to others.

10. CUSTOMIZE YOUR SIGNATURES & AVATARS

Signature files may include:

* up to 300 characters, and five lines of text (including URL)
* commercial or non-commercial URL, with or without slogan
* links to your feedback at TBW or elsewhere, when appropriate

Signature files may not include:

* promotions e.g. "sale on this month"
* image files or banners
* links to items you have listed in the FSOT forum(s)
* links to eBay listings (Note: You may include a link to your eBay store if that is your primary place of business.)
* content that could be seen as inflammatory to other members
* content that violates the terms of use for michigannaturalparenting.com

An avatar is the picture featured under your username when you post. You may upload your own avatar by editing your member profile in the User Control Panel. Guidelines for avatars include:

* The avatar must be no larger than 125x125 pixels and <=6KB
* The avatar must be static - no animation.

You may have noticed that some members here have cute cartoon/doll avatars of mums with babies in different types of baby carriers. You can make one of these for free using the Mamma's Milk doll maker.

MNPC Forum reserves the right to edit/delete signature lines or avatars without notice.

11. ILLEGAL BEHAVIOR OUTLAWED!
Illegal behavior will NOT be tolerated. It will result in a immediate ban from the MNPC Forum. Illegal behavior includes, but is not limited to: PM invites, email invites, spamming, warez, chain letters, pyramid schemes, flooding, and license sharing.

12. ABIDE BY FSOT RULES!
FSOT is provided to help local area members connect in swapping or selling/buying various items. Members should use caution with transactions initiated through these venues. Moderators are provided to read threads and ensure rules (such as listing a price) are enforced; however, their role is not to serve as a mediator in disputes.

Violation of the FSOT Forum rules or a high amount of negative feedback could result in the suspension of your privilege to buy and sell through this forum or, ultimately, banned from this site. Please see the stickies within the FSOT for more information!

SUMMARY:
You agree, through your use of this message board, that you will not post any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any International or United States Federal law. You also agree not to post any copyrighted material unless you own the copyright or you have written consent from the owner of the copyrighted material. Spam, flooding, advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations are also forbidden on this message board.

MNPC DISCRETION:

MNPC Forum administration staff reserves the right to remove or move a post which does not relate to the topic being discussed in the forum. In addition, MNPC Forum reserves the right to organize discussion forums in order to best serve the majority of our members. For example, narrow-interest or minimal activity topics may, at MNPC Forum discretion, be relocated to a more appropriate discussion forum, or deleted entirely. MNPC Forum also reserves the right to prohibit or delete discussions that are thought to violate applicable law or that may be harmful to other members, the sites that comprise MNPC Forum or the rights of MNPC Forum or others. That said, we cannot ensure prompt removal of offending discussion forum posts. We also reserve the right to remove your membership from you should you violate these Terms of Service guidelines.

Considering the real-time nature of this forum board, it is impossible for MNPC to review all messages or confirm the validity of information posted. Please remember that MNPC does not actively monitor the contents of all posted messages and is not responsible for any messages posted. MNPC does not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and is not responsible for the contents of any message. The messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of MNPC or any entity associated with MNPC. Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately by email. MNPC has the ability to remove objectionable messages and will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if it is determined that removal is necessary. This is a manual process, however, so please realize that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately, in fact, we may not edit or delete posts that break our rules at all. We are all volunteers and have many time constraints on us and cannot guarantee that we will be able to edit or delete posts that break the rules/user agreement. If you do not agree with this then do not view or register for MNPC. Although this Forum does not and cannot review the messages posted and is not responsible for the content of any of these messages, we at the MNPC reserve the right to delete any message for any or no reason whatsoever. You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold harmless MNPC with respect to any claim based upon transmission of your message(s). We at this discussion forum also reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we know about you) in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by you.

Use of the site is at the discretion of the Administration of MNPC, and that any use may be terminated by the Administration at any time.

MNPC is a provider of an "interactive computer service". Postings on MNPC are "provided by another information content provider" and not the MNPC unless posted by the owner. MNPC is not the "publisher or speaker" of any posts in the discussion forums unless posted by the owner.

The user agrees as a condition of registering at MNPC to be truthful in regard to all information given during the registration process, to use the site as per the instructions, not to disclose his/her password to others for use, and that the site has a license (permission) for use of anything the user submits or posts to the site.

You have the ability, as you register, to choose your username. We advise that you keep the name appropriate. With this user account you are about to register, you agree to never give your password out to another person except an administrator, for your protection and for validity reasons. You also agree to NEVER use another person's account for any reason. We also HIGHLY recommend you use a complex and unique password for your account, to prevent account theft.

After you register and login to this forum, you will be able to fill out a detailed profile. It is your responsibility to present clean and accurate information. Any information the forum owner or staff determines to be inaccurate or vulgar in nature will be removed, with or without prior notice. Appropriate sanctions may be applicable.

Please note that with each post, your IP address is recorded, in the event that you need to be banned from this forum or your ISP contacted. This will only happen in the event of a major violation of this agreement.

Also note that the software places a cookie, a text file containing bits of information (such as your username and password), in your browser's cache. This is ONLY used to keep you logged in/out. The software does not collect or send any other form of information to your computer.

PROBLEMS:

If you come across any violations to these guidelines or have any problems navigating the site, do not hesitate to let us know through the MNPC Contact Form. We'll be happy to address your concerns.

Thank you and welcome!

Michigan Natural Parenting Community

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