General Elsmar Cove Forum Participation Rules and Guidelines

[artjlewis]

General Rules and Guidelines for the Elsmar Cove forum​

We consider this a "family site", which also means *Office Friendly* for people who visit from their place of employment, and the guidelines we use to moderate the discussion forums are based on the "PG-13" rating for movies. Obviously, this means that there is a certain amount of subjectivity at work here. Moderators are given wide latitude and you can expect that we will make some mistakes from time to time.

We cannot please everyone all the time. Our goal is to establish a happy medium that will keep the largest number of people pleased with their experience here. One way for you to make a positive impact towards that goal is to remember that not all members here are alike. In addition to the range of opinions in the discussion forums, you will also find a wide variety of ages, native languages, nationalities and cultures. One of the most common sources of conflict is simply the failure to understand and appreciate who you are addressing. If you remember that when you post, and choose your words with a respect for our differences, many disagreements can be avoided.

While we do our best to listen to the concerns of every member, it is important to understand that if you feel attacked (by name calling, belittling, sarcasm, etc.), YOU need to Report the post in question. Verbal attacks will not be tolerated. Moderators will review a reported post, considering its content, context and tone. Additionally, we expect that you will not fuel the fires of offensive behavior by responding in kind.

Participants must understand, however, that relationships develop here that result in some fun between friends. At first glance, these may appear to be verbal attacks but they are allowed as long as they do not exceed the concept of good fun. What constitutes "good fun" will be determined by the Moderators and violations will be reprimanded. For this reason, then, if you are not the recipient of a verbal attack, please do not report the post -- it may all be in fun.

Other members may of course report a post that violates any of the site-wide Elsmar Cove forum TOS (Terms of Service). We do anticipate that violations will be self-corrected by the participation of our members. Like any environment, the discussion forums are healthiest when everyone involved is paying attention.

And we remind all participants that both the guidelines and the Report links here are not meant to allow you to try and enforce your personal feelings about appropriate behavior.

For the same reason, it's important to understand that some members here view these forums more as a playground; a place where they feel comfortable "unwinding." This can take a variety of forms, according to individual personality and style. As a consequence, you will find jokes and innuendo of all kinds scattered throughout these forums.

We chose the PG-13/'Office Friendly' guidelines to help everyone understand the limitations of acceptable content in their posts. But Moderators are not here to enforce a particular view of "taste." The "Ignore" feature of the software is provided to help each user do that for themselves. We expect each member to use it if they find another member to be particularly offensive. Similarly, we trust that each member is capable of choosing what kind of content is acceptable to them. If you find a topic or a post that you consider to be morally or ethically reprehensible, then our advice is not to respond to it unless you are willing to discuss your value system in a challenging exchange of opinions.

Marc, I want to be upfront. I am a 73 year old retired CPA/QM Consultant with over 40 years of auditing and QM consulting experience. I now earn passive income from writing QM courses on my website – askartsolutions.com.

My question to you is – Can I respond to questions that your readers post on quality management issues with value added content and solutions and then make a gentle reference to my ecourse “Understanding ISO 9001:2015” (without links) should they want to learn more about the ISO 9001 standard?

Here’s a couple of responses I posted today:
Qualprod, most businesses produce defective product. There are many ways to deal with it. Here is one approach. Does the defect occur repeatedly and perhaps relate to the same product, materials, machine, workers, process, etc. Then you should document the n/c followed by a c/a to eliminate or mitigate the issue. I cover this and many other approaches in my eCourse "Understanding ISO 9001:2015.

Shoyeb - here is a tiny extract from my eCourse "Understanding ISO 9001:2015 - Organizational knowledge includes among many other things - specific technical and procedural information required to produce conforming products and services and for controlling QMS processes needed to produce them. These may include product and service specifications, drawings, process flow diagrams, product and process steps, criteria, work instructions, or verbal instructions, etc.

I see my approach as win-win situation as I help your readers with their QMS issues and perhaps I get to earn a bit of passive income.
If this is acceptable or you have anoher approach, please let me know. Thanks, Art

 

[Marc]

Art,

Elsmar is a small community website which has gone through several phases including the Google "Panda" destruction not many years ago. Over the years, we have held to rather strict standards and rules here, one of which has long been no self promotion. The exception has been people who were, or are, very involved in helping others.

It is true that we are a bit relaxed these days. For example, on registering it is clearly stated that no company names may be used. These days I do look and if the person is a participant, especially if they are here asking questions and not promoting their product, we sort of over look it. See Forum User Name - Choosing a forum User Name (aka 'handle' or 'screen name')

One of the things we did do was evolved to allow people to use their "Custom User Title" to contain their company name. See: Title - Registered Visitor 'Titles' - How to and What is and isn't allowed

Users can also have a "Signature" for their posts, but in general we frown on using it for advertising purposes. See: Signatures - Registered Visitor 'Signatures' - What is and isn't allowed

I do not see a reason to change long standing policies at this time.

As you can see, there are a number of long term, very active participants such as @Jen Kirley , @bobdoering , @Sidney Vianna , and @Marcelo Antunes who pretty much have carte blanch in doing what they want, including self promotion. There are a number of others too numerous to mention such as @dsanabria. However, if you read through posts few actually self-promote even though they have the "right" to by virtue of their many, many contributions helping people with answers to their questions.

Let us look at one of your posts:

Shoyeb - here is a tiny extract from my eCourse "Understanding ISO 9001:2015 - Organizational knowledge includes among many other things - specific technical and procedural information required to produce conforming products and services and for controlling QMS processes needed to produce them. These may include product and service specifications, drawings, process flow diagrams, product and process steps, criteria, work instructions, or verbal instructions, etc.

I suggest that you do a Search on Elsmar and you will find that There are already a number of discussions on "Organizational Knowledge": Organizational Knowledge site:elsmar.com at DuckDuckGo - I seriously doubt your short blurb contains any information that is not already discussed here. To make matters worse, if I do a general Google (or Duck) search for "Organizational Knowledge"I come up with over 847,000 results, many of which are much more comprehensive than your short blurb.

It is a blatant advertisement (aka self-promotion) in which you essentially say "Here's a tidbit, but buy/pay for my eCourse". In short, you are wanting free advertising. I can understand that you believe giving a small tidbit here and directing people to your product is of value.

I see my approach as win-win situation as I help your readers with their QMS issues and perhaps I get to earn a bit of passive income.
If this is acceptable or you have anoher approach, please let me know. Thanks, Art

Unfortunately I don't see it that way for the reasons I stated above. Your get free advertising but are not actually contributing new material. This is, in part because ISO 9001:2015 has been out for quite a while now and there are hundreds (if not thousands) of articles about every aspect of it. Most of the people/companies still profiting off of ISO 9001:2015 are those with significant sales forces (food for thought). You have significant competition, obviously.

Another problem is that should we allow this type of advertisements in posts people would, as has happened, come out of the woodwork - Post a few (usually short) posts and include a reference or link to their material. Free advertising.

Note that we do, and always have, allowed references to outside resources by people. The "qualifier" is that it has to be by someone who has no affiliation with the company, and usually it is in the context of "I have used (or use) <name of company or software>and can say my experience was (is) ______________________" (and we do prefer a disclaimer).

73 year old retired CPA/QM Consultant with over 40 years of auditing and QM consulting experience

You have a few years on me, and I essentially retired some years ago, so I applaud you in your success over those 40 years. I can't say I have much knowledge of your website, but I'm sure it contains some valuable information. Then again, there are, these days, quite a few of us who are older and experienced with a lot of valuable insights. I did just take a look and I noticed 2 things: First I see no mention of Elsmar.com or its forum, and second I see "copyright © 2015" so I'm not really sure how up to date your information is. Of course, of note other than the date is the "Copyright" aspect. Elsmar is, and always has been "Copyright Free".

Elsmar isn't a business, and I am not a big believer in copyrights, although we do respect copyright laws: Copyright - Including Copyrighted Material from other Websites or Sources in Posts

Also see:

Elsmar Cove Forum ToS and Forum Policies
TOS (Terms of Service) - Elsmar Cove Forum Registration and Use TOS
The Elsmar Cove Lobby - Vintage Cove! You are running a business - Elsmar is not a company and prides its self as a free resource for people with no copyright restrictions:

The Elsmar Cove Copyright Policy - Copyright "Free"​

Everything in the Elsmar Cove is "Copyright *Free*". If you reproduce/republish information from the Elsmar Cove elsewhere, we do appreciate your citing the source (and maybe a link to the Elsmar source), however, in one way or another.​

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If you post in the Forums (this includes files and/or pictures attached to any post in a discussion thread or in blogs or picture albums, etc) you do *not* have a right to assert copyright claim(s) now or in the future. We don't assert that we own the rights to post content, including files and/or pictures attached to posts (or in blogs or picture albums, etc). However, once you post or you attach a file, you agree not to come back at a later date and require me to remove your post(s) and/or attachments(s) for copyright or other reason(s). This is a free system and my policy is to NOT be a money grubbing type with lawyers at hand, but rather to be a free resource for folks. If the contents of your posts, files and/or pictures attached to posts or in blogs or picture albums, etc. are 'golden' to you, I suggest you post elsewhere or write a book and sell it. If you post here, your question(s) and any and all answers to questions(s), as well as any attachments/file(s) you share, are essentially in the public domain. It is simply a matter of understanding that anyone who posts and/or attaches a file in the forum can not come back at a later time and demand that we remove their post(s) and/or attachment(s). By posting and/or attaching one or more files in the forum, the person is granting the Elsmar Cove the right(s) (if you will) to keep the content posted.​

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I appreciate your interest in Elsmar. Unfortunately, you do not quality for free advertising. I do wish you continued success in your consulting and eCourse business.

 

[Mohamed Reda]

Fair enough, and I believe avoiding any blue languages from any of the writings will help addressing respect within all participants or members.