Bogleheads

[Phoenix]

Welcome to the Bogleheads forum. Anyone can read and search the forums, but you must be a registered member to post. By posting on this forum, you agree to observe the following guidelines. If you find them unduly onerous, please seek an alternative forum that better suits your needs.

If you have any problems registering, or problems with accessing the site or posting, please email: bhadmin@diehards.org.

GENERAL

Discussions should be conducted without fondness for dispute or desire for victory." - Ben Franklin

This is a moderated forum. We expect this forum to be a place where people can feel comfortable asking questions and where debates and discussions are conducted in civil tones. Respect your debating opponents. Debates are about issues, not people. If you disagree with an idea, go ahead and marshal all your forces against it. But do not confuse ideas with the person posting them; at all times we must conduct ourselves in a respectful manner to other posters. Attacks on individuals, insults, name calling, trolling, baiting or other attempts to sow dissension are not acceptable. If you feel that someone has attacked you or otherwise violated the policies of this forum, do not respond in kind. Instead, contact a Moderator or Site Administrator by PM and ask them to review the problem posts.

Please remember that any poster can edit their own posts after submitting then, so comments made in haste can be rephrased. If you saw red and realized later that you should have counted to ten before posting, consider rephrasing before battle is joined.

We also request that you use meaningful titles on new topics and avoid posting in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS or otherwise using distracting formatting. Moderators may edit titles or reformat posts that do not follow these suggestions.

ACCEPTABLE TOPICS

This is an investing and personal finance forum. We also maintain a subforum that allow our members to discuss non-controversial topics of general interest including consumer issues, travel and leisure. Anything else is considered "Off Topic" and is not acceptable on this forum.

Examples of unacceptable topics include:

- US or world economic, political, tax, health care and climate policies
- conspiracy theories of any type including oil price manipulation
- whines and rants about the crimes, shortcomings or stupidity of politicians, celebrities, CEOs, Fed chairmen, subprime mortgage borrowers, federal "bailout" recipients, etc.

Questions on specific medical conditions are beyond the scope of the forum. If you are looking for medical information online, I'd like to suggest you start with the Top 100 List: Health Websites You Can Trust maintained by the Consumer and Patient Health Information section of the Medical Library Association.

The following guidelines are meant to help you get your post into the correct subforum and clarify the allowable topics. Please note that moderators may move posts without notice if they feel it was placed in the wrong forum.

Investing - Help with Personal Investments

This subforum is for all questions about your (or your friend's or family's) actual investments or investment planning. This includes retirement plan accounts, taxable accounts and tax issues related to buying and selling stocks. If you have a question about what to buy, what to hold, what to sell or how to set up an asset allocation plan, ask it here.

Investing - Theory, News & General

If it's investment related and it doesn't fall into the above category it goes here. Examples of acceptable topics include news about new fund offerings, pointers to academic papers about investing issues, questions about the proper role of a particular asset class in a portfolio, or questions about Vanguard policies.

Personal Finance

This forum is for personal financial issues that don't involve investments. Examples of acceptable topics are:

- insurance
- employment issues
- credit card and credit rating issues
- mortgage and loan issues
- legal issues that have a financial component like wills and pre-nuptial agreements

Note that topics must be directly connected to your (or your friend's or family's) financial life. General comments or complaints about these topics will be removed.

Lounge - Consumer, Leisure, and General Interest

This subforum is provided as a service to the Boglehead community, to be used by our members as a place where they can get to know one another with matters that go beyond their financial lives. Please note that the Lounge subforum has a much lower threshold for locking or removing posts than the financial and investing subforums. Controversial, offensive, divisive or mean-spirited posts or topics may be locked, edited or deleted (with or without notice) at the discretion of the moderating staff even if they do not otherwise violate forum policies.

Examples of acceptable topics include:

- consumer goods and services (e.g., dress shirts, laptops, software)
- home maintenance
- vehicle purchases and maintenance
- leisure and recreational activities: travel, sports, reading
- polling the bogleheads for demographic data or their opinions on these topics.

Forum Issues and Administration

Technical questions about the forum and forum policies go here.

MODERATION

Procedure

If Moderators are forced to step in, in most cases, they will do so through a Private Message or by a request on the thread in question. When posters are asked to back off, it is expected that they will. Often, the only way to defuse a situation is to have all participants cease and desist and move on. Failure to follow these policies or Moderator warnings may result in postings being edited or deleted, or referral to the Advisory Panel for consideration of a suspension or ban.

Locked Topics

Moderators or site admins may lock a topic (set it so no more replies may be added) when a violation of posting policy has occurred. Occasionally, even if there are no overt violations of posting policy, a topic (or thread) will reach a point where the information content of the discussion has been essentially exhausted and further replies are much more likely to cause distress to the community than add anything of value.

Topics are locked to give everyone a chance to cool down. Thus if a topic is locked, please do not start up another thread to continue the discussion, at least right away. Such follow-on threads may be deleted without warning.

Member Rights in a Dispute

If a member has a post edited or removed, or has a topic locked and feels that he or she did not in fact violate any of the forum's policies, the member has the right to have the dispute heard by the Advisory Panel. In such cases, the member should send a Private Message to any forum officer or an email to bhadmin@diehards.org. That officer will forward the message, verbatim, to the Advisory Panel for due consideration. A decision will be rendered within 48 hours, and will be conveyed via PM from a forum officer who was not involved in the initial dispute. Please be aware that moderator decisions will not be overturned lightly.

Notifying the Advisory Panel via PM or e-mail is the only acceptable outlet for complaints regarding Moderator action. Members do not have the right to take their appeal to the rest of the forum or to complain publicly about Moderator actions. Follow-up topics complaining of alleged ill-treatment by Moderators by the original poster, or any other member, will be deleted and may result in the member being referred to the Advisory Panel for further action. If you see such a post, please do not respond. Even if you support the Moderator's action, your post will be deleted with the rest.

OTHER POLICIES

Serious Violations

Certain violations, in particular posting or linking to spam, abusive, illegal, or obscene material, will result in removal of a message and may lead to an immediate and permanent ban of the user responsible.

Usernames (accounts)

Usernames must not be profane, rude, or otherwise inappropriate. Please do not sign up for more than one account (username). If there is a problem with your account, please contact a site admin via PM or send an e-mail to bhadmin (at) diehards (dot) org. If we discover that one person is using multiple accounts, the least active account(s) will be deactivated. Use of multiple accounts to circumvent forum policies, including suspensions or bans, will be considered a serious violation.

We do understand that there are certain situations in which holding multiple accounts is reasonable. If you feel you have a compelling reason for maintaining multiple accounts, please send a request with an explanation to a moderator or site admin.

Avatars

Avatars can be fun, but they are also potential sources for conflict and disruption. After much discussion, we have decided to continue to allow the use of avatars. But please note that an avatar may be deleted by a moderator or site admin at any time if it results in multiple complaints from your fellow members or if it violates any of the following rules:

• no animations
  
• no ads or commercial messages
  
• no misleading photos
  
• no offensive or disturbing images

Signatures and Location

To keep the forums readable and the signal to noise ratio high, Signatures and Locations must be free of commercial messages, short, and normal text only (no links, no images and no distracting formatting). Locations must be physical locations such as city, state, country or region. If you wish to provide further information about yourself, including links to your website, please place it in your public profile.

Politics and Religion

In order to avoid the inevitable frictions that arise from these topics, political or religious posts and comments are prohibited, even in the Lounge forum. The only exceptions to this rule are:

• Common religious expressions such as sending your prayers to an ailing member.
  
• Usage of factual and non-derogatory political labels when necessary to the discussion at hand.
  
• Discussions about laws or regulations that affect the individual investor. This exception does not cover proposed legislation. Proposed regulations may be discussed when they are published for public comments.

Quoting outside material

The forum is not a clipping service. Please keep copyright restrictions in mind and reproduce only materials that qualify under fair use and limit your quotation to the minimal necessary to make your point. When possible, provide links to the original so that those interested can read an excerpt in context.

Soliciting Business

Please do not solicit business or website traffic on this forum. A discreet link to your website in your profile is allowed. The moderators and administrators reserve the right to determine unilaterally what constitutes solicitation, to remove such material, and to ban a repeat offender if necessary.

GOVERNANCE

Advisory Panel

The governing body of this forum is the Advisory Panel, which will be solely responsible for all major policy issues and major disciplinary actions such as banning members. The Advisory Panel may take any actions the members feel are necessary for the good working of this forum. A private subforum has been provided for the exclusive use of the Advisory Panel to facilitate such discussions.

The Advisory Panel consists of all forum officers - Site Administrators, Moderators and Librarians - and at least two regular members of the community who are selected by general agreement of the forum officers and who will remain anonymous to allow them to participate in both the public forums and Advisory Panel without restraint.

Reference Librarians

In the Reference Library forum, Librarians have absolute discretion to edit and remove messages made by any member. They may also lock topics. In general, you should not post on any topic in the Library unless a Librarian has invited contributions.

Moderator responsibilities in disputes

Moderators should not moderate a thread in which s/he has been a participant. Whenever s/he is involved, moderation of the thread will be passed to another moderator.

For reference, a record will be kept of the original of all items edited or deleted by a moderator. (Periodic housekeeping, such as moving threads to a more appropriate forum or deleting duplicate posts, spam and porn may not be recorded.) Moderations and deletions must be clearly indicated in the text. When the entire text of a post is deleted, headers are to remain intact. If possible, the poster of the message is to be informed by email or PM of the modification. All changes are to be signed in a way which allows site management to identify the moderator responsible.

If a member has a post edited or removed and wants to argue about it, use a Private Message to another Moderator or a Site Administrator. Consider this fair warning: the moderators have been appointed because we have confidence in their judgment so the burden of proof is on the one making the appeal.

If a Moderator feels that a member is ignoring his/her actions or that additional steps short of banning a poster is necessary, s/he must refer the situation to either a Site Administrator (via the Moderator's private forum) or the Advisory Panel for further action. The referring Moderator may not take action once a matter has been referred; another Moderator or Site Administrator will be assigned to deal with it.

All cases in which a Moderator or Site Administrator believes that a ban is warranted shall be referred to the Advisory Panel for review and a decision.

The sole exception to this policy is for Serious Violations (the posting of spam, illegal, obscene, or abusive material), in which case action shall be taken immediately and the details reported to the Moderator's private forum.

COPYRIGHT POLICY

This forum makes no claim to the ownership of original materials in posts or replies submitted by our members: ownership solely resides with the original author. However to ensure the smooth functioning of the forum, by submitting a post or reply to this forum you agree to grant certain rights to the forum and to other forum members. Furthermore you agree that in any case where original ownership rights conflicts with the granted rights, the granted right shall take precedence. The specific rights retained and granted by original authors are listed below.

Definitions

• The term “forum” refers to any web forum located on bogleheads.org or its predecessors or descendants.
  
• The term "author" refers to any person who submits a post to the forum.
  
• The term “in good standing” refers to forum members who have not had their accounts terminated nor are under a current suspension for violations of forum policies.

Rights Retained by Authors

• Post authors (regardless of standing) retain the exclusive right to republish their original material in any medium or website outside the forum except where this right is limited by fair use and any applicable laws. In other words, no one can sell or reuse your words outside the forum without your express permission, but you can sell or reuse them without ours.
  
• Post authors in good standing retain the right to edit, modify or delete the contents of their posts as long as the forum remains fully operational (i.e., as long as the forum is accepting new posts).

Rights Granted by Authors

• Post authors grant the right for their work to be displayed on the forum without compensation.
  
• Post authors grant other forum members in good standing the right to quote all or part of their posts in other posts on the forum (and post authors understand that although they may later edit their own posts, such edits will have no effect on quoted extracts made by other forum members).
  
• Post authors grant forum officers the right to edit or delete or insert comments in post contents (including post titles) that the forum officers have determined are in violation of forum policies.
  
• Post authors grant forum officers the right to edit post titles for clarity and readability.
  
• Post authors grant forum officers and technical personnel the right to make as many non-public copies of their posts as necessary for maintenance or other functions necessary for the operation of the forum.

Changes to this Copyright Policy

The terms of this copyright policy may only be changed after 30 days notice is given in the form of a post on the Forum Issues and Administration subforum. Such post will include both the original and revised language and an explanation of the reason for the change.

Edit - revised 3/16/07, 4/1/07, 6/4/07, 10/1/07, 9/25/08, 2/23/09, 3/10/09 by site admin Alex Frakt