Airfield Research Group Forum Rules

Airfield Research Group Forum Rules

Summary of rules
1. Forum users must ensure that they comply with the forum rules listed here. 

2. When using the forum you are expected to be polite and respectful towards all forum users including the Forum Moderators.

3. Your posting must be appropriate to the forum and relevant to the discussion.
 
4. You must not post any message that could be considered unwanted, unprofessional, defamatory, slanderous, obscene, offensive, deliberately provocative, inflammatory, or unlawful.
 
5. Your posting must be your own comments; be factual, truthful and where an opinion is given, it must be clearly acknowledged as such.

6. Use of edit and delete functions. 

7. You must not post complaints on the forums.
 
8. Advertising of jobs, goods or services for commercial gain is not allowed.

9. Discussion of potential or actual legal proceedings is not allowed on the public discussion forums. 

10. Forum users are allowed one forum account only. 

11. Your registered screen name must not contain website or email address details, the name, or identifiable abbreviation of, an organisation, company, contact or location information, expletives, obscenities, religious statements or other potentially contentious terminology. 
12. Children of 16 years and under are not allowed to use our forum. 

13. Your posts must not be deemed as spam, or contain references to contests or chain letters.

14. Postings must not infringe copyright law. 

1.  Forum users must ensure that they comply with the forum rules.
1.1. It is your responsibility to make sure you are up to date with the forum rules.
1.2. Failure to respect these rules may result in a formal warning from our moderating team. If you receive two such warnings you will be banned from using our forums. Severe breaches may result in an instant ban.
1.3. All public and membership forums are moderated. Private messages are not moderated but remain subject to the same rules. Visit our forum FAQs page to find out more about private messaging.
1.4. ARGL members should note that breaching the forum rules could lead to the locking of your membership forum account. Members should also be mindful of our forum rules when using the forum.
1.5. Our moderators’ interpretation of the rules is final. Whenever they consider that you have breached the rules they will usually contact you by Private Message via the forum and explain why they have taken action. Find out more about how the forums are moderated.

2. When using the forums you are expected at all times to be polite and respectful towards all forum users including the Forum Moderators.
2.1. Please remember our forums are used by guests who might be new to the forum or to ARGL and at times may not have a background in military or civilian airfields or architecture .
2.2. Please do not indulge in personal criticism of other users, bullying, aggressive, discriminatory or nuisance behaviour. Impolite or inappropriate postings made towards other users will be removed without notification.
2.3. Your language use must remain professional and must not contain swear words. This includes the use of asterisks or other symbols to mask the spelling of an expletive and the use of acronyms and standard SMS text terminology to abbreviate the expletive.
2.4. Please remember our forum is used by people worldwide. Therefore it is important to take into account cultural differences and language. English may not be the first language of other forum users.
2.5. Humour is often difficult to use in forums. A lack of context can easily lead to misunderstandings or offence. Also, it does not translate across cultural boundaries. In some cases, its use may be considered inappropriate by the Moderators.

3. Your posting must be appropriate to the forum and relevant to the discussion.
3.1. The forum is for professional discussion and debate of military or civilian airfield or architecture . If your topic or posting deviates from these topics, or strays significantly from the original question, it may be moved to an appropriate forum, locked or hidden at the Forum Moderators’ discretion.
3.2. If you are not sure whether your message is appropriate, please ask the moderators or ARGL Board of Trustees.
3.3. Please select the correct topic thread when posting. We may move the message to the relevant topic and let you know by email or private message.

4. You must not post any message that could be considered unwanted, unprofessional, slanderous defamatory, obscene, offensive, deliberately provocative, inflammatory, or unlawful.
4.1. You must not use the forum to pursue or promote a grievance against any individual or organisation. This is not to stifle debate but to prevent unwarranted attacks on others. Members of ARGL may discuss ARGL business on the Members’ forum.
4.2. Discussion about comments made by public figures on military or civilian airfield or architecture topics may be allowed at the discretion of the moderators.
4.3. If you believe that content placed on our forum breaches this rule, you must tell the moderators as soon as possible.

5. Your posting must be your own comments; be factual, truthful and where an opinion is given, it must be clearly acknowledged as such.
5.1. You must not appear to deliberately misquote another person or make misleading statements.
5.2. You must not register to use the forum as another person or pose as another person when posting.

6. Use of edit and delete functions
6.1 Forum users must use these functions responsibly.
6.2 Whenever a post is either edited or deleted the user MUST give a reason for their action. Failure to do so will be treated as a breach of forum rules.
6.3 Posts should only be edited within a few minutes and NEVER retrospectively once the discussion has moved on by several other posts.
​​​​​​​​​​​6.4 Posts should only be deleted under special circumstances such as
• a duplicated post
• posting to the wrong forum (e.g. user wanted to post in Members but chose Public by mistake)
• immediately after posting and before any further posts are made.
6.5 Please also note that Moderators will, without notice, 'undelete' any posts that they consider have been incorrectly deleted by the forum user.
6.6 ARGL retains the right to review this policy should regular misuse of these functions become apparent.

7. You must not post complaints on the forum.
7.1. You must not post a complaint about identifiable users, ARGL moderators or moderating action.
7.2. If you are concerned about a moderating decision, posts or communications from a moderator, the forum rules or another user’s behaviour /profile/post/private message, please use the Report Message link available beneath every post. Make sure that you explain your concerns when using the report function - there is a text box on the report form for this purpose. This makes the task of the moderating team so much easier and thus will result in a more prompt response to any queries. Alternatively, you can email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
7.3. All concerns are considered by the moderators and then discussed by the moderating team where appropriate. We’ll get back to you in five working days.

8. Advertising of jobs, goods or services for commercial gain is not allowed.
8.1 Adverts that are a public service announcement and of adequate interest/use to forum posters may be allowed at the discretion of the Moderators. 

9. Discussion of potential or actual legal proceedings is prohibited on the public discussion forums.
9.1. Public inquiries, including where ARGL is a party to the inquiry, may be discussed on the Members’ Forum.

10. Forum users are allowed one forum account only.
10.1. If you attempt to use multiple accounts, we may remove your access to our forum without notice.
10.2. ARGL regularly checks the information we hold about our forum users. If we believe the information you’ve provided is incorrect, your account may be suspended.

11. Your registered screen name and avatars must not contain website or email address details, the name or identifiable abbreviation of an organisation or company, contact or location information, expletives, obscenities, religious statements or other potentially contentious terminology.
11.1. If your screen name does not follow this rule, or is otherwise objectionable, the moderator team will contact you and change your screen name as needed.
11.2. Before you upload an image to use as your avatar, you will need to check that the image does not breach copyright laws. You remain solely liable for any material, including avatars that you publish, display or transmit on the ARGL website.
11.3. Your avatar will be removed without notice if it resembles, or is believed to impersonate a moderator.

12. Children of 16 years and under are not allowed to use our forums.
12.1. If you are under 16 please ask your parent, guardian or teacher to post the question. You will still be able to read any responses without having to register for the forum.

13. Your posts must not be deemed as spam, or contain references to contests or chain letters.
13.1. All spam postings will be removed from our forums. If your posts are deemed to be spam your access to our forums will be removed without notice.

14. Postings must not infringe copyright law.
14.1. The forums must not be used to post, exchange or download material protected by copyright law.
14.2. You must fully reference any extracts from copyrighted material.
14.3. If you breach copyright laws your post will be removed.
14.4. You may be held liable for the content you post. Be aware of content on the World Wide Web that might be subject to copyright. For more information on copyright law, please visit the UK Intellectual Property Office website.
14.5 In accessing the Forum you agree that you will access the contents solely for your personal, non-commercial use. None of the content may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, transmitted, stored, sold or distributed without the prior written consent of the copyright holder. You are granted a limited licence to download and print of pages of the Site for personal, non-commercial home use only provided all copyright and trade mark notices are left in tact.
14.6 You are not permitted to use, reproduce, modify, display, publicly perform, distribute, or create derivative works in any other media, by any means and for any purpose without our prior written permission. In all cases, the Site must be acknowledged as the source of the material. Use of the materials contained on the Site on any other Internet site is strictly prohibited. The grant of this limited licence is conditional upon your agreement to and full compliance with these Terms. Any other use of any of the materials on the Site including reproduction (for any purposes other than those noted above), modification, distribution, or republication, without our prior written permission is strictly prohibited, and is a violation of our proprietary rights and/or the rights or our licensors.

How our forums are moderated.

Our public discussion forums and the ARGL Members’ Forums are moderated by a team of approved ARGL Members who volunteer to act as Moderators. Their key task is to make sure our rules are followed by everyone who uses the forums. Their work is usually completed confidentially through private mail with the relevant forum users. At least two moderators take part in any decision that involves interpreting the rules. The moderating team cannot edit forum postings on the website. They are supported in their work by the ARGL Board of Trustees. All other member-only forums are moderated by the same moderation team.

If the moderators consider that your message has broken our rules, they will remove it. Where possible, we will let you know that your message is unacceptable and why. If you have been formally warned in this way more than once, on the second occasion, your access to the forums will be removed.

The moderating team’s interpretation of the forum rules is final. If you are unhappy with their decision you must not make any comment on the forum. Please refer to our complaints procedure for guidance on how to complain.

Complaints & reporting procedure.
We are committed to providing a high quality, accessible and responsive service to our members and the public. However, if you believe that things have gone wrong, please send your complaints or comments to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  We will try to respond to any complaint within five working days.
If our response is not to your satisfaction, you may ask that it is referred to the ARGL Chairman, whose decision is final.

You must not post complaints on the discussion forums.

Postings made by forum users are personal opinions and not those of Airfield Research Group Ltd (ARGL). ARGL is not responsible for the content or accuracy of any of the information contained in forum postings. Please carefully consider any information or advice you receive.

All postings made on the ARGL discussion forum, including private messages, are the property of ARGL. Please refer to our terms of use for more information. We reserve the right to remove entirely at our discretion any contribution you post.

Our public forums are accessible to everyone and are ‘crawled’ by search engines such as Google and Yahoo on a daily basis. This means anything you post on one of our public forums could be indexed by a search engine and returned in search engine results. ARGL accepts no responsibility if you’re posting is returned in such results. Member-only forums are not crawled by search engines.

Your email address is not visible to other forum users. To contact another user outside of the forums you should use our private messaging service. If you disclose your email address in a forum posting or private message you do so at your own risk. We do not accept any responsibility if something goes wrong as a result of publicising personal details on forum.

The Moderation Team are able to view your email address. We will not publish or provide your email address to anyone unless they have a legal right to request such information. If we need to contact you about the discussion forum for administration or response to a complaint purposes we will use your email address provided at the time of registration.

The Moderator Team are able to see your Internet Protocol (IP) address when you post a message on our forum. This is the address used to connect your computer to the Internet. This information is for use by ARGL only and is only used to prevent misuse of the discussion forum. We will not disclose your IP address to anyone unless they have a legal right to request it.
Liability.
You remain solely liable for any material you publish, display or transmit on the ARGL website. You agree to indemnify (cover the costs of) ARGL and its Officers and employees against any claim, liability, cost, damage, other expenses or loss we may incur (including without limitation legal fees) as a result of any material you publish, display or transmit on the ARGL website or any violation by you of your obligations under these forum rules. ARGL expressly excludes liability for any loss or damage resulting from the use of the website by any person in contravention of this forum rules. We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to promptly remove, or to disable access to, any material which we think is potentially defamatory of any person, unlawful or in violation of the any third party rights or any other part of these rules.

By submitting content such as text or photographs (user generated content) to the forum, you grant ARGL a "perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty free, and non-exclusive license" to publish the contents that you submit and maintain the data within our files for use within the aims of the charity for an undetermined time.period.

Should you wish to leave the forum and request that your personal information is removed, ARGL will remove your personal data from the forum and your posts will become unidentifiable to others.