Kitco's Rules for Forum Members

General

Moderators, the Super Moderator, and the Kitco Administration may delete, hide, or move posts and threads that do not follow the rules, or for any reason deemed in the best interests of the Forum.

Moderators will, if deemed necessary, issue a warning to members who do not follow the rules.

The Super Moderator and the Kitco Administration may suspend or ban any member immediately and without notice who:

(1) Commits the same rule infraction after having previously been warned about the same rule.
(2) Commits more than four infractions of any rule.
(3) ‘Pirates’ other contributors’ handles.
(4) Has multiple ‘handles’.
(5) Advocates wars, death, or destruction, or who threatens political, business or community leaders.
(6) States they wish to close down the Kitco forum, makes a personal attack, uses ‘name calling’, or posts threats to other members, the Moderators, the Super Moderator, or the Kitco Administration.

An ‘appeal’ may be requested and will be brought to an ‘appeal board’ composed of Moderators, the Super Moderator and the Kitco Administration. All decisions of the ‘appeal board’ are final. Those who are under suspension may view the forum but cannot post messages until the suspension has ended.

Complaints about posts and requests for an appeal decision can be made at any time but will be evaluated at the end of the month or, if deemed necessary, sooner, at Kitco's discretion.

Members must always take into account that some members who recommend particular stocks and investment strategies may have a vested interest in them, and members who highlight the risks of particular stocks and investment strategies may have a vested interest in the alternatives. Members should always do further questioning and research, i.e. DYODD (= Do Your Own Due Diligence) before following this type of advice.

Membership of the forum is open to people from all walks of life in all countries, including all religions and backgrounds. Members should therefore exercise tact when discussing sensitive subjects, e.g. military occupation and international ethnic and political subjects. Don't assume that readers will understand references to TV, movies, geographical references, or politics and current events in your country.

If another member breaks the rules, absolutely ignore the remarks- no response is the best response. Report the post through the "report post" icon so that an administrator or moderator can handle it.

New members should always read the forum for a few days to get a feel for the subject matter and discover what information is already available before posting their own questions and information.

When quoting another member, edit out anything that isn't directly relevant in the quotation, down to the minimum necessary to provide context for your reply. Nobody likes reading a long message in quotes for the Nth time, only to be followed by a one-liner.

Rules:

Rules are identified by title for the purpose of moderation and warnings.

Copyright Violation:
Copyrighted materials must be limited to 120 words and must give credit to the author. Members may include a link to material of interest to members, but such links must be accompanied by a short and accurate summary of the link in the post. Summaries must be limited to 120 words.

Forum-Specific:
Posts must follow any additional rules for each forum if posted in a rules thread in the forum.

Vulgar/Inappropriate/Offensive material:
Members must not post information, vocabulary, jokes, images, or links to external material that includes anything vulgar, inappropriate, or offensive. This includes avatars and signatures. Material should be safe for a work or family environment. If a post contains anything that most people would not want seen by their bosses, parents, children or teachers, or would be "bleeped" for public radio or TV broadcasting, then it is inappropriate. Posts must not include profanity, sexually-oriented material, nude and semi-nude images, or slurs based on racial, ethnic, religious, sex, sexual orientation etc. If you post a "bad word" with letters replaced by stars etc., it must be sufficiently opaque not to be readable by children/minors, but only by adults e.g. "F***". Attempts to avoid obscenity filters by replacing 'i' with '1', or by changing the spelling or something similar are not allowed.

Personal Attack:
Members must not post any messages that personally attack, harass, insult, belittle, threaten or flame another member. Members may post alternative opinions, but this must be based on a reasonable debate on the subject matter. The Golden Rule -- Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You -- is a good general basis for forum decorum.

Political Agenda:
Members must not pursue any political agenda that is not related to understanding how politics affects the markets.

Pro/anti war advocacy:
Members must not make statements that are pro-war or anti-war, other than "what if?" discussions of how the pursuit of a particular course of action may affect the markets.

Baiting/Trolling:
Members may not post messages that are libelous, that are obvious lies, or that are meant to 'bait' or 'troll' other members.

Off-Topic:
Members' threads must stick to the subject matter of the forum. Members' posts should focus on the subject matter of the thread and avoid engaging in off-subject discussions. If these become disruptive to the flow of the thread then Moderators, the Super Moderator, and the Kitco Administration may delete, hide, or move such posts.

Arguments:
Members must not start, or participate in, arguments, beyond a reasonable and relevant discussion of the subject matter.

Excessive Religious Elements:
Members must not bring in excessive religious elements, discussions, proselytisation or advocacy beyond what is acceptable in normal conversation.

Advertising/self promotion:
Members must not post links to websites for the purpose of advertising or self promotion. This includes signatures. Links to news and free information are allowed but must go to the page with the information content and must not be a generic commercial website address or "home" page. Members with personal websites may disclose them in their Member Profile and refer other members to their profiles for further information but this must not be done more than once per page of posts.

"Bump" posts:
Members must not post "bump" posts, i.e. posts that are used to keep messages high on the forum or to push down other members posts.

"Shouting":
Members must not make posts in all-capitals or use excessive capitalisation, as this is considered "shouting" and is widely considered bad "netiquette". The same applies to excessive use of large fonts, glaring colours, or fonts that are difficult to read.

"Flooding":
Members must not "flood" the forum by posting excessive numbers of posts in a short interval, or posts that are of excessive length.

Publicly questioning moderation actions:
Members must not post threads or posts to question or criticize moderator or administrator actions. This is not appropriate in a public forum. Please use the private message facility or email, if you wish to discuss such issues, and raise your concerns in a polite and mature manner to the moderator or administrator.

Clear English policy:
Members must make posts and set up their signatures in English. Other languages may be used providing an equivalent translation in English is made available. Links to non-English web sites must include a summary of the subject matter in English. Members must not use abbreviated formats such as those used in phone text messaging.

Unsuitable avatars and/or signatures:
Members must ensure that avatars and signatures are not distracting, inappropriate, vulgar or offensive.

Spam:
Members must not make worthless, disrupting or nonsensical posts; any such posts will be considered spam and deleted at the discretion of the forum moderators or administration.

Cross-Posting:
Members must not post the same information in multiple threads or forums, or post links to information in other forums or threads unless it is relevant to the subject matter of the thread.

Bad Titles:
Thread titles should give sufficient information for busy readers to clearly identify the subject matter and decide whether it is worth their time clicking on the thread and then following any link you have posted. Threads that do not have a well chosen title may be edited or deleted. Likewise, when posting a description of a link, descriptions should concisely and accurately describe what the link leads to so that readers can quickly decide whether it is of interest to them.

Generally Inappropriate Posts and Threads:
A declarative set of rules can not anticipate every future situation that may arise in a discussion group. For that reason, Kitco reserves the right to edit, move, or delete posts/threads and suspend any user at any time for any reason, should there be sufficient reason to believe that they are not in the best interest of the Kitco Forum and/or its members.