What is bad behavior on Help.com? - Help.com

What is bad behavior on Help.com?

All opinions are worthy of being heard - we only ask that the advice at least be given with the intention of genuinely trying to help others. Our goal is to make participation in discussions both civilized and informative. Users who engage is serious misbehavior that hurts the experience of others in the community can have their accounts blocked.

Your account can be banned if you do anything to hurt the usability of the Help.com for other community members. Here are the 5 easiest ways to get your account banned:

1. Encouraging self-destructive behavior; or violence and abuse towards others.
2. Lying about your true age.
3. Speaking rudely to other Help.com users.
Disagreement is definitely allowed, but we do not allow name calling, swearing or attacks on anybody’s gender, race, religion (or lack thereof), nationality or sexual orientation.
4. Harassing other community members.
Help.com will not knowingly allow itself to be a venue for vendettas and feuds between individual users.
5. Writing posts about fake emergency situations.
Example: falsely claiming you are contemplating suicide.

The Help.com staff has the final word on what is and is not bad behavior. If you believe another user is engaging in inappropriate behavior, do not argue with the other user. Simply alert a Help.com community moderator. He/she will investigate, give a warning if necessary, or block an account if a serious violation of community standards of conduct is confirmed.

Does Help.com have a policy on religion?

Help.com is not a religious website and it is not affiliated with any religious group. However, Help.com is as appropriate a forum as any for general questions about religion, or questions that ask for a religious perspective on a problem. We welcome people who are inspired by their faith to help others and we recognize that many people find solutions through spirituality. At the same time, Help.com attempts to balance this with an equal recognition of everyone’s right to not have religious philosophy forced upon them.

As a courtesy to our international community, we encourage Help.com users to follow guidelines for mentions of religion in their questions and replies.

* Don’t hide your faith, just avoid the “hard sell” of actually proselytizing and quoting scripture with the intent of winning converts.
* Never attack other religious faiths, or a person’s lack of spirituality.
* Never condemn anyone else’s behavior or life choices in religious terms, unless that other person clearly indicates they are open to hearing religious judgment.
* Limit suggesting religious solutions for problems to only posts where the original writer of a question has indicated an openness to discussing spirituality.

Can I advertise a product or service on Help.com?

Warning! We encourage our users to be skeptical and cautious of all promotions that appear as posts or replies. Help.com endorses none of the products or services that may appear on the website. Help.com will not vouch for the honesty or trustworthiness of any promoter or business.

That said, if the product or service is “helpful” to other users, registered users can promote their own products or services in their posts or replies. However, the following guidelines apply:

* A distinct service or product can only be written about and promoted in a single post. Additional posts about the same service or product will be considered spam and deleted.
* Promoting your service or product in replies to other posts is allowed, but only if personalized and directly relevant to the original question. Impersonal and irrelevant replies will be deleted.
* Cutting and pasting the same wording into multiple replies is forbidden. Help.com considers this to be spam.
* The promotion can never ask other users to reveal personal contact or financial information about themselves as part of a reply to a post.