General Guidelines

[AmyS]

Welcome! If this is your first time here, you've found a wonderful, friendly place to talk about crochet. If you've been around for a while, thanks for stopping in for a refresher on our guidelines and our vision for Crochetville.

Crochetville Vision
We want Crochetville to be a warm, welcoming, friendly community for everyone who is interested in crochet. We hope all our members will feel free to share their latest projects, to ask any questions they may have, and to share their knowledge with others, all without fear of being flamed or attacked. We have many younger visitors who may read over their parent's shoulder, and we want to keep Crochetville a safe place for them to visit as well. So let's keep our posts PG rated.

However, we also realize we have built a community of friends here, friends who sometimes need support and reassurance about difficult situations (divorce, illness) in their lives, the details of which might not be appropriate for children. Therefore, we have decided to allow a bit more "adult" type of discussion in the Off-Topic Conversations folder and the Crochet-Along folder (which will not be accessible by our under-13 members or guests). Discussions in these folders only can be PG-13 rated, but graphic, explicit discussions will still be off-limits.

To help us achieve this vision, we have established the following set of guidelines for our members. By participating on this forum, you agree to abide by these guidelines.

Questions/Concerns About the Guidelines?
If you have questions or concerns about any of our guidelines or policies, please send me a PM. If you're not sure whether what you want to post complies with the guidelines, please send me a PM and ask before posting. I'll be happy to talk with you privately about any of these issues.


Crochetville Guidelines
These guidelines apply equally to all aspects of the Crochetville forum: posts, private messages, using the forum software to contact another member by email, etc. These guidelines are effective 5/14/09 and supersede all guidelines previously posted.

1. Be nice and no flaming. Please keep the words and tone of your posts respectful and polite. Encourage your fellow members and let them know what you like about projects they share. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Please reserve constructive criticism for when the original poster has asked for it.
2. No cussing/profanity. Please refrain from using curse words, abbreviations for curse words, or misspellings of curse words. If words are being filtered out, do not make attempts to get around the filters.
3. Do not start drama and do not contribute to drama that has already been started.Please refrain from correcting another member's behavior as this tends to further escalate situations. Instead, please bring the situation to the attention of an administrator or super moderator, and we will handle things just as quickly as we can.
4. No political or sexual discussion/debate and no religious debate. These topics usually result in heated, angry discussions. While these are important topics, remember, this is a crochet board. If you feel the need to engage in these topics, there are many other places on the internet where these discussions are more appropriate and appreciated.
5. Prayer/good thought requests are allowed. Do not use your response to evangelize to others. However, if you are sure of a person's beliefs, you may respond to them in a manner appropriate to those beliefs. Please accept all responses you receive gracefully. If you receive a response that crosses the line into evangelism (an attempt to convert you or others to the poster's personal beliefs), please bring it to the attention of AmyS via PM.
6. No copyright violations. Basically, this means if it's not yours, don't post it. That includes not posting text or photos you found while surfing the web. If you want to share something from another web site, provide a link to that website page instead. This also means that you may not copy a post, PM, or email that originated through Crochetville and post it elsewhere without the author's prior written permission (which should be included wherever you post that information). You may also not ask others to send you copies of patterns nor may you send/offer to send copies of patterns to others (originals only). If a pattern is no longer available on a specific website, please do not post a link to that pattern through the ******* Machine or any other internet archive or hint around at how people can find it through a search themselves as we are not clear on the legalities of this sort of pattern distribution. Also, do not post links to sites that feature scanned copies of patterns without the appropriate permission from the copyright holders.
7. No trademark violations. Most well-known cartoon and movie characters, sports team logos, as well as many other things, are trademarked. To protect Crochetville against legal action, we cannot allow the posting of patterns, links to patterns, or hints or instructions on how to find patterns of trademarked characters/logos for which proper licensing arrangements have not been obtained. If a site does not state specifically that their patterns are licensed, please do not post any information about how to find those patterns. (Leisure Arts patterns, for instance, are published with the correct licensing arrangements in place.) For more information on the trademark issue, please read this post.
8. No bandwidth theft! If you don't know what that is, go here to read about it. Really, bandwidth theft shouldn't be an issue if you're following Rule #6.
9. Avatars should be tasteful in nature, keeping in mind that we have younger visitors at times.
10. Signature guidelines: As our membership has grown, so have our signatures. To keep Crochetville clean and easy to read, we have decided against allowing images in signatures. It has been our experience that some members will inevitably choose large, distracting signature images. For more detailed information on signatures, please see this post.
    
    ---As a courtesy to all of your fellow villagers, signatures are limited to a maximum of 10 lines at a size 3 font.
    --Please do not use any political content or links that are controversial themselves or that have the purpose of creating controversy.
11. No cross posting! When starting a new thread, please select the most appropriate folder to post in. Please post your new thread in one folder only. Any cross-posted threads will be merged into one for ease in keeping track of information. Exception to the cross posting rule: If you are involved in a crochet-along (CAL), you may cross post your completed project in both the CAL and Show-and-Tell.
    
    
12. Items for sale/trade/purchase/free? Crochetville is now accepting paid banner ads and marketplace subscriptions. Business owners: Please see our Free Advertising Policies. You may use the Contact Us link at the bottom of any forum page to ask us questions about advertising at Crochetville. Regular non-business members: The privilege (yes, it is a privilege) of advertising items, patterns, etc. for sale or trade, looking to purchase items from individual (non-business) members, or asking others to give you things is limited to members who regularly and actively participate at this board (regular Villager status of 30 posts and 30 days of membership must have been achieved). If you've come here just to advertise in whatever manner, don't do it. Your posts will only be deleted. Please do not post any items you have for sale that are made from copyrighted patterns, unless you have permission from the copyright holder to sell those items or have advice from an attorney that the item in the pattern is not protected under copyright law. If you have a website or blog selling such items without permission, you may not include links to those sites in posts, signatures, PMs, emails, etc.
13. No solicitation: Please do not use Crochetville services (including PMs and email) for the purpose of soliciting our members for any reason. This includes, but is not limited to: offers to sell goods or services, offers of business opportunities, requests to join another site/group/email list, requests to sign petitions, requests to participate in chain letter schemes, asking for donations of money or other goods, etc.
14. Contests. Any contests sponsored by or taking place at Crochetville must follow Alabama state law (which is quite restrictive) and must be approved by Amy and Donna prior to being posted. In general, we do not allow posts about off-forum contests which members are conducting or in which they are participating. If you are involved with a contest that you believe is important enough that we should allow information to be posted here, please use the Contact Us form to ask us to make an exception. Exceptions may include, but are not limited to, contests being held by major yarn, pattern, or publishing companies.

Other Important Messages to Read:

1. Membership Level Guidelines
2. Free Advertising Policies
3. Advertising Policies
4. Advertise on Crochetville: Info and Rates
5. Avatar and Signature Guidelines
6. Copyright/Trademark Guidelines
7. Financial Transaction Guidelines
8. Fundraising and Solicitation Guidelines
9. Photo Posting Guidelines

Crochetville Requests
Pretty please?

1. Please share the details about your project. When you post a photo of your most recent creation, it would be very nice if you'd let us know which pattern and yarn you used. You don't have to do that, but if you do, it will save people from having to ask you. And they will ask!
2. Please provide a specific link; don't just say, "Go to my blog to see." If you're asking people to visit your blog to see a project you've done, please give a specific link to the individual post itself on your blog. People may be reading your post months later and it will be nearly impossible to find where on your blog that project was. If you're not sure how to link to a specific blog post, even just adding the date of the entry would help.

Reporting Forum Guideline Violations

If you see something you believe to be a violation of our forum guidelines (whether a post, a PM, or email you receive through the forum), you are invited to bring it to the attention of our administrative team by sending a PM to AmyS. You can also report a post by clicking the "Report Post" button: the little white triangle outlined in red at the top of the post.

Consequences of Violating Forum Guidelines

Accidental violations will occur from time to time. When this happens, an administrator or moderator will edit or delete the post as necessary, and issue a gentle reminder about why something was a violation. The reminder may be in the thread or via PM, depending on the nature of the violation, at the discretion of Crochetville staff.

Members who repeatedly violate forum guidelines may have their forum privileges revoked with or without warning. Depending on the nature of the violations, further action may also be taken by Crochetville staff, such as reporting the member's actions to any ISP whose services were used by the member to access our forum.

The Crochetville Administrator Team does NOT like having to emigrate members from our community. Sadly, sometimes this must be done to protect Crochetville's warm, supportive atmosphere and the safety of its members, moderators, and administrative team, when members decide they are unwilling to abide by Crochetville's guidelines during their visits to our community.

DISCLAIMER: My comments are not intended as a full and complete representation of federal copyright/trademark law and should not be construed as actual legal advice, as I am not an attorney. If you need an official opinion about the actual legal issues involved with copyrights or trademarks, please seek the services of an attorney who specializes in intellectual property. Our forum guidelines, while based on concern for respecting copyright/trademark law, are completely separate from such law.

These guidelines effective 5/15/09.

These guidelines supersede all guidelines previously posted.
These guidelines may be modified at any time without notice.

[AmyS]

Bringing to top of thread listing.

[AmyS]

Just a reminder for everyone to take a few moments to read the guidelines if it's been awhile since the last time you read them.

Please remember that all members are responsible for knowing and following these guidelines when they choose to use Crochetville services (posts, private messages, or email to other members).