CafeSaxophone Forum

General Rules | Politics/Religion | AI Policy |Guidelines | Marketing Rules | Classifieds | Online safety | Privacy | Content Policy |
The rules below have been in place for many years, we urge all members to read them, in spite of the fact that you don't like reading T & Cs. neither do I, but in this case they really do help to keep the forum a nice place. Sorry.

First a note about Free Speech/Expression​

Although the term Free Speech (in its accepted sense as a political or religious concept) doesn't apply to online forums, we respect a right to Freedom of Expression in that we think everyone is entitled to politely and reasonably to express an opinion and we respect their right to it, and expect other members to do the same, even if we disagree with it.

We don't moderate arbitrarily and delete something just because we disagree or don't like it. As far as possible we go by the rules below. There are sometimes grey areas and sometimes we may get it wrong. If so you are welcome to question policies in general on the What's Wrong with the Cafe Thread, but for specific moderator actions regarding your self please use the private Contact Mods forum.

General Rules​

• You may not use Cafesaxophone for illegal activities

• You may not post anything potentially harmful, e.g. encouraging substance abuse or self harm
• You may not post anything offensive, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, abusive, harassing, aggressive, pornographic, insulting, or obscene. From January 2025 this now extends to anything covered by the UK Online Safety Act 2023. Please note that this forum is available to all ages, sexes, races, religions, orientations etc.
• Any objections to other members' forum behaviour or allegations of rule breaking should be made in confidence to moderators via the report button, not call them out or make personal attacks publically on the forums.
• Certain offensive words are automatically replaced with asterisks. Do not try to get around this by deliberately mis-spelling, using spaces, abbreviations or special characters.
• Do not post the same thread multiple times.
• The following are against our rules and may be removed or edited by admin:
  • one-word or short meaningless posts, redundant posts such as “PM sent”
  • email addresses, phone numbers (whether it is your own or anyone else’s), the contents of private correspondence without permission (Emails, DMs etc.) or any other member's private information or personal information that you do not have permissions to share.
  • ALL CAPITALS, emojis, or special characters (e.g. asterisks, chevrons etc.), in thread titles or usernames to draw attention to your posts.
  • Direct messages older than 3 years are automatically deleted. You may export DMs at any time.
• You may not join under more than one username (aka sockpuppet). If you have done this by accident please contact admin. Usernames may not be brand names unless you have a commercial vendor account.
• All members must have a valid email account logged with the forum.
• You may not edit your posts in such a way as to make other posts appear nonsensical, e.g once your post has been replied to. It is especially bad to delete the first post of a thread
• If you quote other members, you must not edit the text of what they said or remove any relevant context without which their meaning may be misconstrued.If you have
• If you post links to audio/video or files hosted on another site and subsequently remove the file/s, you must inform us so we can remove the dead link and/or replies as these will no longer be relevant once your link is dead. This is especially important when you have asked for a critique of your playing and other members have helped with advice. Repeatedly doing so will lead to removal of posting privileges or a suspension.
• If you are contacted by a moderator in regard to any perceived breach of rules or use of the forum, you must respond before making any further posts.
• The post report function is there to report posts that you believe infringe the rules. Frivolous reports waste moderator’s time so please include the specific rule that has been broken. Alternatively you may report your own post if you need it edited.

Politics & Religion.​

• No political canvassing, discussions, or political references in avatars, signatures or profile info. This may include (but not limited to) anything which appears to be encouraging such posts or topics. This includes anything that may have recently become "political" due to controversial political debate and/or legislation. Note that not everything is considered political in all territories but may be included due to the international nature of the forum.

• No religious discussions, or references in avatars, or profile info.

Artificial Intelligence and bots.​

Summary of our AI policy​

While we do not prohibit AI content on the forum it is strongly discouraged when used in place of human generated content. Anyone can now easily get answers from Gemini, ChatGPT etc but this forum about real human experience and opinions, human answers and human discourse. Our members visit in order to get and give advice based on human experience and want to know it is a person that they are talking to.

• We do not allow members who are bots, or who use wholly bot generated content.
• Using some AI to partially help write (e.g. translation) is permitted, but blatantly robot posts may be removed by staff.

Full disclosure​

• AI or bot generated text and/or images in posts that is used as an example is allowed, but all ai content must be declared as such and included in ai quote tags (see text editor insert dropdown).

See example here

• Notwithstanding the above, like many websites and forums with user generated content, we may make use of AI moderation resources via Sightengine NSFW content detection. This is used to aid compliance with child protection legislation. It is used purely to scan for potentially harmful images and grants no rights over your content to Sightengine beyond their specific service provision as outlined in their privacy policy.
• We do not sell your content for AI training and as far as possible we try to stop content from being scraped for AI training. We use Cloudflare to block bots apart from those required for search engine listing.

Copyrights & Ownership of Contents/data/media​

• Your post must be original text, ie not published anywhere else on the net and not copied and pasted apart from very small excerpts used as quotes/references. You may not embed audio/video files from another site unless that site specifically and legally allows linking or embedding, e.g. Youtube.
• You grant us the non-exclusive right to retain, move, edit or delete any content you post on Cafésaxophone (e.g. text, music, images, video etc.). We also have the right to republish or quote that content in full on our other sites or extracts on social media for marketing purposes. You will retain the overall copyright outside of these terms.
• You may not post, upload, link to or offer to share (whether free or paid for) copies of any copyright material. This includes
  • articles
  • lyrics
  • recordings
  • images
  • video
  • sheet music with any melodic notation (just chord sequences are OK)
• For more information please see the copyright guidelines thread here and the fascinating article about copyright in general.
• Note that ultimately we (Cafésaxophone) could potentially be held legally liable for any infringements of copyright included in members' posts so we respectfully ask you to make your best endeavours to check before posting. If you are in doubt about something you want to post please contact us

Guidelines & Etiquette​

• Please post an introduction when you join the forum.
• Above all please be polite. It’s fine to disagree and to point out when you think somebody is wrong, but please do so with respect and not in a rude, snide, snarky, aggressive, accusatory, or confrontational manner.
• If you want to delete or edit your posts after the initial time to do so has lapsed, then you can do this by contacting an admin. The same applies to discussion of moderator action such as post/thread deletions, disciplinary decisions, account suspensions etc.
• If possible posts should be written in the English language (which may include native dialects such as UK, US, Australian etc). You may post in other languages providing you also include an English translation.
• Please take some time to see if a question you have has already been asked and has an answer that is still relevant. If you have something new to add to that discussion please do so in the thread rather than starting a whole new thread on the same thing.
• Please use thread titles that are descriptive of the topic, this helps with searches and the likelihood of getting the best responses. No emojis in thread titles, it just looks a mess in the thread list. Please don’t be offended if we edit thread titles that do not comply, or move off topic content.
• We politely ask members to follow normal online etiquette re: using all caps or large text. Also note that using coloured text is likely to be illegible for members using the forum in a different light/dark mode.
• If you want to leave our community, please do not make a big deal out of it and post publically about it (aka YAGE - Yet Another Grand Exit).

Marketing (inc. Educational resources and sites, retailers, promoters, manufacturers, endorsers/affilliate brands)​

Endorsers

Note that this term includes both official and "unofficial" endorsers. If you were given a free item or discounted item outside of a regular sale, then you need to disclose that when discussing/reviewing that product or posting videos.

Affiliate brands

Cafesaxophone relies on affiliate income (commission on sales) from certain brands. From time to time we may promote these via discount coupons. You may not advise, promote, encourage or link to any affiliate schemes/coupons for the same brand as a Cafesaxophone affiliate.

Commercial Vendors​

This includes manufacturers, retailers, schools/colleges and event promters.

• No commercial posting is allowed on the general forum pages, however businesses may post in the commercial announcements section. Please contact us for further info about advertising. Notwithstanding, you may reply to direct questions in the forums that related to your product provided your replies are factual and not promotional in any way.
• Members wishing to sell commercially (vendors) should arrange a commercial account upgrade.
• You may still offer any personal single used items in the “Yard Sale” section (see below), provided the sales are connected directly to your business.
• You may not promote any product or service in which you have an interest without first discussing with admin. e.g. masquerading as a “happy customer” (shill). This also applies to promoting of, or soliciting registration at, a competing forum without first discussing with admin.
• All vendors must include a public customer support physical address, telephone number, or link to email contact form.
• Manufacturers’ Product Announcements should be made in the appropriate forum and should be original content, not copied and pasted ads.
• Links: You can link to your own (non-commercial) website, social media etc. in your profile, signature or posts, but we appreciate appropriate link from that site to cafesaxophone.com. Any such links must be on a home page or page directly linked in your main navigation. Links to commercial must be with admin permission and must reciprocate as advised by admin.
• Your username cannot be a website URL or an email address
• Do not solicit members via Direct Message for business purposes, unless they have expressed an interest specifically via the forum. Anyone receiving such solicitations should report to admin.

Yardsale (Classifieds)​

The Yardsale subforum is for selling of personal items only. Commercial vendors must use the appropriate forum.

The buyer pays the seller directly. The seller pays a 5% (or optionally more) contribution to the fundraising* based on the advertised value or the value of any offer accepted (voluntary maximum £150/$200). For trades or part exchanges the amount is based on the estimated monetary value.

* For wanted ads, the purchaser pays the contribution.

Fees are payable only when a transaction is successful.

• To qualify for posting for sale ads members must either
  • have at least 40 posts and been a member for at least one month.
  • or upgrade their account with an annual subscription. This is for access without needing the 40 posts. The contribution after a successful sale still applies.
  • or pay the 5% contribution on the initial listing price in advance.
• No soliciting of sales/trades or advertising outside the Yardsale (e.g. on other forums in the Café, via DM or signature). You may link to a Yardsale ad in from another thread provided it is in answer to a relevant question.
• Please don't ask buyers to use the Paypal Personal (Friends & Family) option for transactions. Apart from contravening Paypal policy and being possibly fraudulent, the normal Paypal protection is not included. Always take any fees into account with the price.
• For all sales completed we ask for a contribution to our Cafesaxophone fundraising. We suggest minimum 5%, but you are free of course to donate more if you wish. Please use the YARDSALE button at the bottom of the page
• Sales transactions and shipping arrangements should be via DM not in the thread
• Payments should be made within one week of buyer confirming safe receipt of item. Please advise Jeanette if this will not be possible. Failure to pay in a timely manner may result in exclusion from the yard sale and other listings being removed.
• Public discussion/debate regarding the asking price or accuracy of description is not allowed. Report the post if you think it is inaccurate or discuss with the seller privately.
• No Off Topic posts unless the seller specifically allows this.
• No links to items you have for sale outside the Cafe (e.g. eBay, Reverb) etc.
• No product announcements, event promotion or business advertising. The Yardsale is for one-off private sales of used items, not for advertising a product range.
• Sellers must provide an accurate detailed description of any items offered for sale or exchange.
• No counterfeit or stolen items.
• No sales of any software, media files, e-books etc. unless the licence or T&C attached to them explicitly allows this.
• No gratuitous bumping of your posts within any two week period (e.g. "still for sale," "sale pending"). Posting to mention price reductions > 2% are fine.
• When an item is sold, you should mark it as sold by editing the thread and changing the title prefix.
• All sales are conducted between the seller & buyer at their own risk. No warranty, liability or responsibility is accepted by CafeSaxophone for transactions conducted. Any problems/disputes are the sole responsibility of the buyer/seller concerned.
• If trading internationally the buyer is responsible for any duty/VAT/tariffs.
• You may only offer for sale or exchange goods which you own, or have the owner’s permission to trade on their behalf. If you are selling on behalf of someone else you must disclose this in the ad.
• Auctions are occasionally allowed for lots of several items when 100% is a paid to Cafe, but please ask first.

Any breaking of these rules could lead to automatically being suspended or banned from the forum with no warning.

Although the administrators and moderators of Cafe Saxophone Discussion will attempt to keep all objectionable messages off this forum, it is impossible for us to review all messages. All content expresses the views of the individual author of the content (forum messages, resources, profile etc.) and not the owners of Cafe Saxophone who may not be held responsible or liable for any damages resulting from advice given by individual members or content authors, or from any material linked to.

The owners of Cafe Saxophone Discussion reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason with or without notice.[/I]