Discussion Forum Guidelines

Joining the Discussion Forums
You may participate in the discussion forums on any level you choose. You may simply view messages, or you may post messages as well. You don't have to be a tractor expert to post. In fact, you don't need to know anything about tractors! Posting a message with a specific question, or to seek general advice, is completely welcomed and encouraged. Additionally, sharing any knowledge of tractors you have is welcomed and encouraged as well.

You are not required to register a user account if you wish to contribute to the forum, but it is highly recommended. Registration makes you a real part of the community, giving you access to many features, such as thread tracking, e-mail notifications, display preferences, a user profile, et al.

If you choose to not register, you may not post with a name that contains any offensive language or phrase, or one that resembles the name of a registered poster.

When you register to participate in our community, please choose a user name that won't be considered offensive by anyone, and one that you will be happy with as long as you participate in the forum, since you can't change your user name after you register.

Once you register, you will automatically be assigned a profile with various fields of information that can be entered. While we do not require a profile to be completed, we encourage you to enter as much information as you feel comfortable sharing. The ability for others to see your first name, location, occupation, and tractor make and model, to name a few, gives our community a more personal feeling, as well as helps connect you with other users sharing similar interests, locations, occupations, and tractors. Once again, this is completely voluntary, but we do encourage you to enter as much information as you feel comfortable sharing, if you are a regular participant of the forum.

Posting Messages:
While we offer many different forums covering most topics relating to tractors, please locate the proper forum to post your message to, and stay as focused on the topic of the forum as possible. Please do your best to post messages that make logical sense, that can be read and understood by other users, and are mature in nature. English is the primary forum language.

In general, posts should not contain any offensive language, profanity, sexual content, or personal attacks of any kind. Additionally, you must follow the forum terms of service, which cover in more detail the basic behaviors we do not allow:

1. Insulting or deliberately offending other users.
2. Posting under multiple names or identities.
3. Posting or uploading material that is false or inaccurate.
4. Posting or uploading inappropriate or offensive material.
5. Posting or uploading copyrighted material without permission.
6. Posting or uploading advertisements without prior permission.

If you violate any of our terms of use, we will notify you by private message or e-mail, and if we choose, remove your post(s) in violation of the terms of use. If we have no way of contacting you (if your e-mail address is not valid), we will remove your post(s). Repeated offenses may result in your user account being deleted, and/or your access to the forum being restricted. Once your access is restricted, it may not be reinstated for a minimum of 7 days, and all requests for reinstatement must be reviewed by our moderator staff.

Uploading Files
Registered users of the discussion forum have the ability to upload files through the post attachment feature on the preview post screen. Most commonly, this feature is used to upload photos of tractors or related photos. Please do not upload any offensive photos, containing grotesque images, sexual or sexually suggestive images, or any other image that may be viewed as offense or unacceptable. If you are unsure of the suitability of a photo or image, please contact a forum moderator prior to posting.

When uploading photos or files, you will be restricted to a 200kb file size. We also encourage an 800-pixel (11.1") width limit on photos.

Please also observe our policy on copyrighted material. You may not upload an image, photo, or file of any type that is copyrighted by someone other than yourself, without permission from the copyright holder. As an example, you may not save a photo from another website and upload it to our website. If you wanted to share a photo or page from another website with the discussion forum here, please link to the image or page, rather than uploading it.

Images
You may not place an image in a post that is hosted on a website other than your own, one you have permission to source an image from, or TractorByNet.com. In addition to the above stated guidelines, you may not place an image in a post wider than 500 pixels, using the [image] markup tag. Additionally, you must follow the following physical size guidelines when placing images:

• File size under 50kb
• Physical size no wider than 500 pixels
• GIF or JPG format

Signatures
Your profile has an option for a signature field, which may contain text and markup, including an image link. If you place an [image] markup tag in your signature, the image must meet the guidelines defined above in regards to source (URL), but must also meet the following physical size guidelines:

• File size under 5kb
• Physical size no wider than 300 pixels
• GIF or JPG format

Using Markup
The markup tags defined in the forum FAQ are in place for you to add text and other effects to your otherwise plain text posts. Please do not post entire messages with text effects such as bold or italicized type, or all in one color. When quoting the text from another post, please use the [quote] tag, or highlight the text in another color, such as blue. The emoticons (small graphical faces) are free for you to use, but please do not overuse them.

Editing or Deleting Posts
The discussion forum has both post editing and deletion utilities. These utilities are available only to the poster of a message. The purpose of the edit utility is to correct typographical or other errors in your post that you notice soon after posting. It is not there for you to 'change what you said' after there are replies to your post. The same goes for the delete utility. Once there are replies to your post, we ask that you do not delete it. If you wish for your post to be removed for any reason, please send a private message or e-mail to one of the forum moderators, and they will remove it from the forum. There is a 12-hour time limit on both the edit and delete utilities.

Notifying a Moderator of a Post
At the bottom of each post, there are four icons, each having a specific function. The image to the far right is the notify moderator button (). This feature is in place for users to do their part in helping keep the quality of discussion forum content as high as possible. You should use the notify moderator feature when any of the following appear in a post:

1. Insults or offending remarks.
2. Posting or uploading of material that you think is false or inaccurate.
3. Posting or uploading of material you find inappropriate or offensive.
4. Posting or uploading of material you think is copyrighted.
5. Posting or uploading of advertisements.
6. Any other issue you think the moderators should look at.

While the moderators of the forum try to review the forums on a regular basis, given the high volume of posts to the forum, they do not always review each and every post to each and every forum, each and every day. So, your assistance in keeping the forum a great place to be is welcomed, but in no way required.

Notifying the moderators of a post does not necessarily mean action will be taken on the post, but it does mean it will be reviewed as soon as possible. Also, notifying moderators of a post doesn't mean that person will be banned or disciplined. Our moderators are very understanding and courteous, and editing or removing posts is not what they set out to do. In fact, our forum has a very low 0.0002% moderation rate on all posts. We don't expect many posts to require attention, but we have the feature in place for the rare times a post does need to be reviewed.

Sending Private Messages
Registered users have the ability to send private messages to other users within the forum. You should adhere to the same basic guidelines for sending private messages as you do for posting.

E-Mail Notifications
Registered users are given the option to set several e-mail notification preferences, for both daily digests of posts, and individual replies to messages you post. Regardless of the notification, please do not reply directly to these messages. To reply to the messages, you must be at this website and logged in to the discussion forum. By replying to the e-mail notification, our e-mail system gets cluttered with messages, and they are deleted, so your reply is lost.

 Classified Ad Guidelines

The classifieds are available for your use to buy, sell, and trade tractors and all related equipment and items. When posting an ad, you must enter as much information as possible, and be completely truthful and honest in your descriptions. Photos you upload must meet the upload requirements, of .jpg or .gif format, smaller in file size than 75kb.

Classified ads may be posted free of charge by any individual buyer or seller. Dealers must post ads in the dealer ads section, where access to post is available on a subscription basis. Please e-mail dealerads@tractorbynet.com for information on access to posting ads to the dealer ads section.

 Links Section Guidelines

Our links section is open to all tractor and related websites. You may add links to the directory yourself, but please observe the following guidelines for doing so:

1. Select an appropriate category when you add a link. Do not put a tractor dealer's website in the tractor manufacturer links category, for example.
    
2. Enter the URL in the following format: http://www.linkurl.com/ (Not www.linkurl.com or linkurl.com.)
    
3. Use your best judgment to describe the website in a manner that will be informative to other users browsing the links.
    
4. Enter a valid URL that is working at the time you add the link. An invalid URL would be a URL on a site that uses session-based code, that won't work if you close your browser and enter the link again. Please test before posting.
    
5. Do not link to websites that contain false, inaccurate, inappropriate, offensive, or otherwise unacceptable material. Do not link to gambling, alcohol, tobacco, pornographic or other sexually offensive websites.
    
6. Do not add links that already exist. Before adding a link, search for the link to see if it is in our directory already.
    
7. Do not add a link more than once.

If you see any links in our directory that you feel do not belong there, are in the incorrect category, or are invalid or broken links, please e-mail us at badlinks@tractorbynet.com and we will edit or remove them as necessary.

 Reviews Section Guidelines

The review section of this website is provided to you as both a viewer and reviewer. If you are interested in user-submitted reviews of tractors, equipment, or other products, you may find them in our reviews section. If you are a frequent user of this website and own any equipment, we encourage you to add your reviews.

When doing so, please observe and adhere to the following guidelines:

1. Post your review to the correct category. Do not post a review of a Kubota tractor to the John Deere category, for example.
    
2. Post only truthful, accurate, honest, unbiased, and intelligent reviews. The reviews section is not a place for you to complain about a product you feel isn't up to standards, or about a bad experience you had using a product. But rather, it is a place for you to post and read intelligent, informative, objective reviews of products.
    
3. Enter all the information about the product you have available to you. This means, enter the make, model, year of manufacture, purchase date, current hours, attachments, and other information unique to the product you are reviewing, like the type of tires on your tractor, for example. The more basic information you provide, the more informative your review will be.
    
4. Check your review for spelling, grammar, and punctuation before posting it. We do not edit your reviews for typographical or other errors.
    
5. Do not post reviews that won't be useful to other viewers. As an example, the text of a review should be more complete than "I bought this tractor last year, it's a very good machine." More information, comments, and opinions about the product you're reviewing would be appropriate.

 Other Website Sections/Features

When using any other section or feature of this website not covered in these guidelines, please adhere to the basic guidelines we have set for the site in general. Be honest, intelligent, mature, informative, and friendly.

We thank you for taking the time to read our website guidelines, and welcome you to TractorByNet.com.