Posting Guidelines

The Golden Rules for Contributing to The Chocolate Life

TheChocolateLife.com community ("TCL") consists of thousands of members in hundreds of countries. Members have all kinds of interests in chocolate and cocoa from the very general to very highly technical.

This diversity is one of the key benefits of being a member of the community - the chances are very high that there is at least one other TCL member who shares your specific interest with whom you can connect, share, and learn.

TCL is an open community. Members do not need to pass a test to join. However, people who want to join do have to be approved. This is done to erect some barriers in front of potential spammers, as the process of joining requires several steps and is not immediate.

COMMUNITY / POSTING GUIDELINES

0) >> READ THE TERMS OF SERVICE  <<

1) Pretty much anything can be posted, brought up, and discussed - as long as it's about cocoa and/or chocolate.

2) If you own a chocolate business you may (within the limits set forth below) promote it on your Member Profile page.

Members  may not  create Forum threads, Blog posts, upload photos or videos, or send message to groups on behalf of a business that sells products and services to confectioners and chocolate makers as this constitutes advertising . If you wish to promote your business to members, you may take out advertising in the  Member Marketplace  (prices are $100/mo or $1000/year) for unlimited impressions, and/or promote it in the Classifieds Forum upon payment of a Professional Classifieds Subscription fee ($89 per year) for up to 100 posts per year. Sponsorships are also available.

Members  may not  create Forum threads, Blog posts, upload photos or videos, post replies/comments, or send messages to groups that:

• promote or link to non-chocolate businesses;
• recruit members into any MLM/network marketing program;
• promote products sold by MLM/network marketing programs; or
• engage in any commercial activity (including invitations to participate in contests and polls)   without seeking the permission of the moderator first .

3) If you SPAM, your posts may be deleted and your membership in TheChocolateLife.com may be summarily suspended. Spam includes sending personal messages to members and posting comments, not just posting forum discussions and blogs.

4) Burying links is not cool. When you link to an external site the text that the link surrounds must be relevant (to TheChocolateLife community and to the external site) AND obvious. Members should know why the link is there and where it goes without having to guess or to read the status bar of their browser.

5) Discussions, blog posts, comments or other content must provide value to the community and not just contain a link off to another site. Discussions are supposed to promote discussion. In general, include at least one paragraph explaining why you think the content on the page being linked to is interesting; if it makes sense, cut and paste no more than one paragraph of content from the site. See #1 and #2.

6) TheChocolateLife is not a dating site.

7) Do  not  feel free to post/upload  off-topic  photos, videos, or animations anywhere on TheChocolateLife. You may think they're cute. They're not.

8) FLAMING of any sort is not appropriate and may be grounds for immediate suspension of a member's account.

9) If you find yourself engaged in extended (private) discussions with other members  consider using private messages or regular e-mail  instead of comments.

10) If you believe you have been contacted by another member in a way that is inappropriate, please contact the moderator.

ACTIONS / REMEDIES

The creator and moderator(s) of this site exercise sole discretion to decide when something crosses the fine line between appropriate and inappropriate content and behavior. The general approach is to engage a person who posts potentially unwanted content or behaves poorly (e.g., flames)  privately  to make a determination. In cases where it is truly obvious, unilateral action may be taken to revoke the person's membership which, at our discretion, may also delete all the content they have contributed.

If you believe that someone is using your copyrighted content without permission, >> please read the DMCA Notices page  << to learn how to notify us.

— Updated January 1, 2015