APNEA BOARD RULES
By participating in the Apnea Board
forums, you are agreeing to abide by the following rules and you acknowledge,
understand and agree to the legal information listed here:
1. No defamatory statements. In other words,
statements that contain untrue factual information about a person or a company
that is derogatory.
2. No flames, harassing posts,
“trash-talking”, personal attacks, spam or contentious off-topic or abusive
comments. The idea is to make Apnea Board a pleasant environment
to discuss Sleep Apnea related issues and exchange ideas, comments and
information.
3. Do not post using ALL CAPS.
It is considered to be shouting and it’s very hard to read.
4. Registered Apnea
Board members may post occasional short, informative, commercial
information or solicitations regarding Sleep Apnea related products and
services, in the "For Sale / Commercial Posts" area ONLY, as long as they are not offering “prescription-required” items for direct
sale or trade, such as CPAP machines. As an example, it would be okay to post, “I have an
Ultra-Mirage nasal mask for sale”; (this
does not require a prescription). It
would not be okay to post, “I have a Respironics CPAP machine for sale”; (this does require a prescription). Links to and recommendation of Sleep Apnea product web sites
(including sites that sell CPAP machines) are permitted, as long as the
recommended site is a legal distributor
of such prescription items. When
posting this type of information, please keep in mind that Apnea Board
exists for the benefit of Sleep Apnea patients, not for the benefit of
commercial entities. Commercial posting that becomes disruptive and/or
excessive will not be tolerated. For accountability
purposes, no commercial posting may be done by an unregistered user.
5. Inappropriate language will
not be tolerated. This would include, but is not limited to: Vulgar, foul,
offensive or sexually explicit language. Apnea Board is a
family-oriented discussion board; if it would not be appropriate for an
8-year-old grade school student to read, it's probably not appropriate for Apnea
Board. All posts must be made in the English language.
6. No inappropriate pictures or
graphics may be used at all on Apnea Board; no links to web sites
containing such images will be allowed either. Appropriate pictures may be
posted, but please keep them under 40 kilobytes in size.
7. Posting the same message to
more than one forum is not allowed. Please pick the most appropriate forum for
your message.
8. Posting a member’s personal
information (such as their real name, address, phone number, email address) is
not allowed unless that member gives permission to post it.
9. When posting using a
registered or unregistered "username", you may call yourself anything
you like, as long as the username itself does not violate any of our other
rules (for instance creating a username that is obviously profane). You don't
have to use your real name, but you must be consistent and use only one name.
You cannot post under other's names or attempt to impersonate another member.
Generally speaking, people like to know who is posting. Using the same name
over time builds credibility and allows people to better evaluate the relative
merits of each poster's contributions.
Legal Information:
Apnea Board is a non-profit, public discussion forum. It is open
to all, but subject to control of the moderators and administrators. We make a
promise to our members that Apnea Board operations will never be
influenced by commercial interests. Apnea Board exists for the
benefit of Sleep Apnea patients. All funding for operations comes from member
donations.
Apnea Board is not a publisher; we do not screen posts before
they are available for general viewing. Although the administrators and
moderators of Apnea Board will attempt to keep all objectionable
messages off the forums, it is impossible for us to review all messages. All
forum postings express the views of the author, and neither the owners,
operators, moderators or members of Apnea Board will be held
responsible for the content of any message. Any information, and content of a
forum posting is the sole responsibility of the user.
We do not endorse or guarantee the accuracy of any post made here and therefore
we assume no legal responsibility for any post. Any information on our website
or in our forums should not be considered as medical advice. Always seek the
advice of a qualified physician before seeking treatment for any medical
condition, including Sleep Apnea. Apnea Board will not be held
liable for any damage or injury caused by incorrect information published or
posted on our website or forums. We reserve the right to apply software filters
to automatically manage inappropriate terms, links, spam, words, etc. We also
reserve the right to edit or delete posts as necessary. All edited posts will
be noted at the bottom of the post and will include the editor's username with
a date and time stamp.
By posting, any poster expressly licenses Apnea Board or any
person subsequently posting on the board, for the use of that post, or any part
thereof, on the board, regardless of any other claims of copyright ownership
the author of the post may make. The decision of Apnea Board to
delete any post reflects the administrator's or moderator's view that the
deleted post is inconsistent with the overall goals and purposes of the board,
and is not a determination that such post is obscene, libelous, or is otherwise
in violation of law. Likewise, the decision to ban a poster reflects only our
conclusion that such poster has demonstrated an inability to conduct
him/herself in an overall manner consistent with the goals and purposes of Apnea
Board and is not a determination that such poster has violated any law.
Persons or businesses are always free to post a response to any post with which
they disagree or which they believe is factually incorrect. Apnea Board will
not entertain a deletion request by anyone claiming to be harmed by
misstatements of fact in a posting unless that person has first posted a
response correcting the alleged misstatement. Absent such a response being
posted, we will assume the complaining party either has no contradictory
information or is interested only in causing mischief. We will consider
qualifying requests that a post be deleted upon presentation of credible information
tending to show that the post is false in a material respect. We will not
entertain a request that a post containing nothing more than expression of
personal opinion be deleted (for instance, posting, "The ABC CPAP
machine is a piece of junk,") even if that opinion is highly
unfavorable.
Privacy on Apnea Board is of utmost importance. As such, all
information that is provided to us during registration is kept confidential and
will not be disclosed to third parties for any reason, unless required by law.