Forum Policies and Terms

Our goal is to provide our visitors and members with an entertaining and safe community in which to discuss our many topics in our forums. We do this by asking members to refrain from abusive behavior, avoid topics we do not allow, and keep your posted content work- and family-friendly. We have a few guidelines we ask members to abide by. By joining and making use of our forums, you agree to the following policies, terms and conditions.

Unacceptable Behavior
  • Harassment, personal attacks and name calling.
  • Questioning a moderator's actions, publicly or privately.
  • Thread crapping (opinions directly opposed to the discussion's topic).
  • Trolling (posting with the deliberate intent to antagonize others).
  • Spamming (unsolicited links or mentions of products or other persons).
  • Circumventing the moderation team, or playing staff members against each other.
  • Retaliation and baiting is prohibited. Please Report the offending content instead; staff will deal with it promptly.
  • Contacting staff members privately vs. using the forums Report system.

Unacceptable Post and Message Content
  • Profanity, in any language, including attempts to circumvent the forum's word filtering feature by using alternate spellings or substituted letters/punctuation.
  • Images or videos containing profanity.
  • Obscenity, nudity and pornography (written or in images/videos)
  • Illegal or unsolicited offering, requesting, trading, selling or downloading of copyrighted material.
  • Racial and ethnic slurs.
  • Spelling and grammar corrections.
  • Criticizing or questioning staff or moderator activity.
  • Personal contact or location information (email, street address, phone number, etc.) of any individual, either a forum member or a person outside the forum. This include "doxing," with intent to do harm.
  • Personal communications between yourself and any forum member, person outside the forum, or organization, without their express written permission.
  • Libel, slander, and attacking individuals both inside and outside of the forum; this includes retailers, online sellers, recording industry organizations and equipment manufacturers.
  • Links to sites which violate forum rules.
  • Links to and discussions of Warez and illegal torrent or other file sharing sites.
  • Copyrighted photographs (linked from other sites, or attached to forum posts).
  • Criticism of other forums and audio sites.
  • Posting in "text speak"; please use proper language.
  • Replying to posts using only images, animated GIFs, memes or videos.
  • Any content which may be deemed "industry sensitive".
  • Any content which is among our Unacceptable Topics (below).

Unacceptable Topics
  • Politics, including topics which can turn distinctly political (including climate change, immigration, etc.).
  • Religion or religious references.
  • Racial and ethnic issues.
  • Abortion.
  • Weapons, gun control, 2nd amendment issues (US only).
  • Discussion of, or references to, illegal (aka recreational) drugs.
  • Sexually related discussions (including morality, acceptance and/or legalization of gay marriage, sexual preferences and LGBTQ issues).
  • Negative threads which ridicule, denounce or express hate towards the subject. Critical discussions based on facts and personal experience are acceptable.
  • Bootleg or pirated editions of copyrighted works, including discussions of contents and sources of same.
  • Criticism of forum policies, moderator actions and administrative issues.
  • Any topic which may be deemed "industry sensitive."
  • "Tabloid" or frivolous content, "clickbait," or low-effort threads (example: posting only an image or link with "Discuss!" as message text).

Your Forum Account

To participate in the forums, a visitor must create an account. Member accounts require a valid email address, as email confirmation is needed to activate your account. To prevent automated ("bot") registrations, we may utilize a feature such as a "captcha," or a question and answer, to prove you are human. To help prevent spammers and trolls from joining, accounts may be manually approved by staff, and a new member's initial messages are held in a moderation queue, which will be approved by staff and publicly posted as soon as possible.

To comply with COPPA regulations, user accounts may not be created on our forum by anyone under 13 years of age. In addition, we require written consent of a parent or legal guardian for those who are 13 to 17 years of age before they may create an account.

Our guidelines for member accounts are as follows:
  • Members are allowed only one account per user. Multiple accounts discovered will result in all accounts for that user being deactivated. If you have more than one account, staff can merge your accounts together. Using multiple accounts to circumvent a suspension or banishment, or as a sock puppet account, is strictly forbidden.
  • Do not share your account with anyone, including a spouse or family member; they may, however, create and use their own account.
  • Registrations are not permitted using a VPN, proxy server or (especially) Tor exit nodes.
  • Throwaway and/or one-time email addresses can not be used; accounts with invalid email are automatically deactivated.
  • Please create a secure password using a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and punctuation. For improved security, consider using Two-Step Verification. Staff is not responsible for account hacking due to the usage of weak passwords.
  • Avatars (user icons) must be family friendly, in good taste, not be prohibited by our content and behavior guidelines (above), and must not be used to attack or ridicule others.
  • Signatures should be kept brief, and must follow our posted content guidelines. Spam is not permitted.
  • Location must be your true, actual location, as specific as you are comfortable with. (Uncomfortable with city? Use state/province and country. Or, just the country.)
  • Custom titles (beneath your username) are reserved for members in good standing, and as above, must follow our posted content guidelines.
  • If you are a vendor or industry member requiring special accommodation, please use our Contact Us link below, forward us your username, and we will gladly assist you.
  • Finally, for your safety and privacy, do not use your full real name as a username. Also, do not enter your full address, your employer's name and location, telephone numbers, or email address in your profile or anywhere else in public on the forum where others can see it.
Failure to follow forum account guidelines can lead to account suspension or banishment, and/or removal of any content posted (which can include profile information, and forum posts and threads) without prior notice. Staff reserves the right to use Private Conversations and/or email to reach members with issues regarding their account regardless of member's privacy settings.


Private Conversations

This is our private messaging system, utilizing a threaded discussion allowing members to communicate privately. Please use the system with good judgement--our unacceptable content guidelines (above) still apply, despite your conversation being private. Do not attack, harass or abuse others, and do not send unsolicited messages to sell or purchase products (spam).

Please clean out your inbox periodically, as it can fill up. New messages will not be delivered to a full mailbox, and keep in mind the total message count includes the contents of your sent and archived mail.


Posting Guidelines

To keep posts clear and legible for others, please observe the following forum etiquette:
  • Use proper spelling, capitalization, grammar and punctuation to the best of your abilities.
  • Use of "text speak" is prohibited.
  • Quote only relevant parts of posts to reply to; never quote an entire post. Our forum has tools to make this easy.
  • Do not post in ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS. We hear you just fine.
  • Use an accurate thread title; half-sentence "click bait" titles, or exclamations ("Check this out!"), are frowned upon, and make your content harder to search.
  • Emoji are allowable only in message bodies, custom titles and member signatures. Usage in thread titles or anywhere else is not permissible.

Removal or Closure of Content
  • Content may refer to posts (or portions thereof), threads, avatars, signatures, locations, profile posts and comments, member profile data, and embedded images or media (video).
  • Staff reserves the right to close or remove potentially offending content at any time for any reason, and without notice. If you find your content has been affected, and the reason is unclear, please Report your own post so that our entire staff is alerted to the issue.
  • Removal of offending avatars, signatures, and custom titles may also result in loss of the usage of these forum features.
  • All content posted is considered to be under public domain and freely available. As such, staff will not delete any content whatsoever in order to "deactivate" an account, or under any other circumstances.

Warnings, Suspensions and Banishments

Behavior in violation of our published guidelines may result in an action taken against the offending member in the form of a warning, reply ban, reduction or removal of privileges, suspension, or banishment. A warning is a message sent to the member(s) involved, often in the form of a cease and desist of the warned behavior. Repeated or accumulated warnings, or a severe enough infraction, can result in a suspension, of a length to be determined by the offense. Staff reserves the right to issue a "reply ban" on individual discussions for members who are disrupting a single discussion. Banishments are considered only after multiple suspensions, or in the case of the most severe of infractions, and are to be considered permanent.

Keep in mind that any attempt to circumvent the staff, or play the moderators off of each other, to reverse a warning or punishment can result in an immediate and permanent ban. Also, members attempting to circumvent a banishment by signing up another account will find the new account banned as well.


Copyright Terms and Conditions

Content posted in our forums is copyright the original creator of the content, and may not be reproduced, republished or otherwise linked to without prior written permission of the copyright owner. Certain forum content is also copyright the A&M Corner Forums and likewise may not be reproduced, republished or linked to without prior written permission of the copyright owner. Your usage of the Forums constitutes full agreement and understanding of our published copyright terms; unauthorized usage will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and the Forums may seek to recover damages from said copyright violations.


Fine Print
  • While our guidelines attempt to cover most situations, we cannot anticipate all of them. There are times that content and behavior are unacceptable, yet not be clearly spelled out. Staff reserves the right to make a judgment call into what is acceptable, and will take appropriate action as needed to deal with these situations.
  • Our staff is limited based on time available. It is not always possible to deal with forum issues immediately. There may be a delay in acting on or communicating about moderation actions.
  • The moderation team attempts to keep objectionable content off of the forum, but cannot realistically review all messages posted. Please Report any content you feel may be objectionable and we will give it prompt attention.
  • All content posted expresses the views of the author, and does not reflect the opinion of A&M Corner Forums, its owner or staff, or any related parties (such as XenForo Ltd.); these parties will not be held responsible for any and all posted content posted by members.
  • All user generated content, posts, and discussions, contained on A&M Corner Forums are the intellectual property of the forums, and subject to copyright laws in all jurisdictions. (See copyright notice above.)
  • A&M Corner Forums reserves the right to overwrite or replace any affiliate, commercial, or monetizable links, posted by users of the forums, with our own internal tracking.
  • You agree not to post or otherwise make available content that constitutes or contains affiliate marketing, link referral code, or unsolicited commercial advertisement.
  • These guidelines and policies are regularly updated without notice. Please review them for updates regularly. If you have any questions about these guidelines, feel free to contact us for clarification.
  • Your continued usage of the forum, as a member or guest, constitutes your agreement with all policies, rules, terms and conditions listed herein.
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