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PC World Community Standards

Welcome to PC World's community! We appreciate your participation in our discussion forums, user reviews, and other interactive areas of the site.

Your participation in the PC World community, including any comments, reviews, or other materials you post to our site ("your posts"), is governed by the standards described in this document and in our Terms of Service. Please familiarize yourself with them. By posting on our site, you indicate that you accept our Community Standards and Terms of Service.

If we believe you have violated these policies, we may take whatever action we consider appropriate, including but not limited to removing the material in question or, in the case of severe or repeat violations, revoking your posting privileges or terminating your PC World membership. Our decisions are final.

If you believe another user has violated these standards, please send an e-mail to forums@pcworld.com, and our moderators will review your report. This is a manual process, so please remember that we may not be able to edit or remove a particular message immediately.

  1. Be respectful of other members (including moderators) and their opinions, even if you disagree with them. We encourage subjective opinions and discussions of individual experiences and perceptions. A difference of opinion can be expressed without insults and bullying.
  2. Do not use harassing, threatening, insulting, abusive, violent, discriminatory (racist, sexist, etc.), hateful, hostile, obscene, profane, or defamatory language. This applies to user names and subject lines as well as to the text of your posts, and includes the use of characters such as *, #, or $ to replace letters in otherwise prohibited language. Do not use the PC World community to engage in online stalking. Behavior that we believe could threaten the safety of other community members, including stalking and threats, may be reported to the authorities.
  3. Do not post material (including language and images) that contains pornography or is sexually explicit.
  4. Do not post customer service questions to the community. We welcome your feedback on our site and magazine, but we ask that you contact one of the departments below for assistance:
  5. We take copyright infringement very seriously. When posting articles or news reports (including PC World articles or news reports) for discussion, please post only a few sentences or paragraphs and include a link to the rest of the content on the original site. Do not post articles, news reports, or other copyrighted material in their entirety unless you have written permission from the relevant copyright owners. If you believe that an article posted in our community violates your copyright, please report the problem to us by following our instructions.
  6. We may use your posts to promote the PC World community--for example, by featuring new or interesting posts on other parts of our site or in our print publications. By posting, you agree that we may publish and distribute your posts as described in our Terms of Service. You may reuse or republish your posts, but reuse of all other material on our site, including the posts of other community members, is subject to our Reprints and Permissions policy.
  7. Please post each question or request for technical assistance in one thread only. If you post the same question in more than one place in the community, it will be very difficult for other members to unite to assist you.
  8. Do not flood, spam, or post chain letters, pyramid schemes, junk mail, viruses, Trojan horses, worms, corrupted files, malicious code, active code, or any other materials that could damage another person’s computer.
  9. Do not use community areas to participate in or incite illegal activity. Violations of this rule may be reported to the proper authorities.
  10. Do not impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a PC World representative, and do not misrepresent your affiliation with any entity. Please be aware that members may claim expertise or status (legal, medical, etc.) that they do not possess; use discretion in following any advice.
  11. Always remember that any personal information you reveal can be obtained and used by others. Please do not post personal information that you do not want to be publicly available, and do not post the personal information of others.
  12. Do not repost something that was deleted from the community. These posts will be deleted as well, and posting privileges may be removed for members who continually repost deleted content.
  13. We encourage you to suggest products and services that may answer questions or solve technical problems for other members, and we welcome vendor participation in our community. However, we do not allow posts that simply advertise a product or service, and we require vendor representatives to disclose their affiliation when posting about their company’s or their competitors' products. We may delete posts that we believe are part of a campaign by a company or its marketing or public relations agencies to promote the company’s products or to disparage its competitors or their products.
  14. Do not link to sites that distribute software you know or reasonably should know is illegal or is being distributed illegally. Do not post warez or cracks, and do not link to warez or cracks sites. If you see a post in the community that contains such links, please report it to forums@pcworld.com, and do not follow the link.
  15. Do not knowingly post content that is false, inaccurate, or misleading.
  16. Do not publicly post content from private messages or e-mail sent through the discussion board interface.
  17. Do not post any trade secrets or confidential or proprietary information that does not belong to you, and do not post any content that violates a nondisclosure agreement.
  18. Do not engage in off-topic political discussion. If a news story is political in nature, then discussion related to the topic is allowed. Discussion of political issues that are not relevant to technology or to a PC World news story will be deleted.
  19. All signature files must comply with these community standards. Please do not repost the content of signature files in the body of the post.
  20. Do not post links to or URLs to sites that violate any of these standards.

Although we actively monitor postings, we are not responsible for the content of any posts other than our own. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any post, and if you decide to make system changes or to take other actions as the result of information posted in the community areas, you are acting at your own risk. Each post expresses the views of the author of that particular post, not necessarily the views of PC World, the administrator or moderator of this community, or any entity associated with this Web site.

Version 1.0

Last updated June 29, 2006