CaféSaxophone Forum Rules

[Pete Thomas]

General Rules​

General Rules | Marketing Rules | Yardsale (Classifieds) Rules

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.

• You may not use Cafesaxophone for illegal activities (as defined under any national or international laws), whether it is directly illegal, or promotion of or supporting/condoning/encouraging illegal activities.
• Please note that this forum is available to all ages, sexes, races, religions, orientations etc. You may not post anything offensive, abusive, harassing, aggressive, pornographical, insulting or obscene.
• Any objections to other members behaviour should be made in confidence to moderators via the report button, not 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.
• No political or religious discussions, or references in avatars, signatures or profile info.This may include anything which appears to be or could encourage or incite such posts. This may include topics that may have become politicised in different territories due to recent or recently controversial legislation such as gun law or hunting. 2020 update: this now includes COVID related politicised topics such as discussing the efficacy or not of medical authority recommendations including masks and vaccinations.
• Posts must be written in the English language (including native dialects such as UK, US, Australian etc)
• The following may be removed:
  • posts in languages other than English, (including "text language" or other shorthand.
  • one-word or short meaningless posts, redundant posts such as “PM sent”
  • duplicate posts
  • email addresses, phone numbers (whether it is your own or anyone else’s), the contents of private correspondence without permission (Emails, Pms etc.)
  • ALL CAPITALS or special characters (e.g. asterisks, chevrons etc.), especially in the subject header to draw attention to your posts.
• You may not join under more than one username (aka sockpuppet). If you have done this by accident please contact admin.
• You may not edit your posts in such a way as to make other posts appear nonsensical, e.g once your post has been quoted. Unless it is to fix a typo. It is especially bad to delete the first post of a thread or to remove links to soundfiles.
• If you post any links to your own files hosted elsewhere, you must inform admin if you remove those files and so cause dead links in your messages
• 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.

Guidelines & Etiquette​

• If you want to delete or edit your posts after the initial time to do so has lapsed, then you should do this by contacting an admin. The same applies to disussion of moderator action such as post/thread deletions, disciplinary decisions, account suspensions etc.
• Please use thread titles that are descriptive of the topic, this helps with searches and the likelihood of getting the best responses. We reserve the right to edit thread titles that do not comply, or to move off topic content.

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 on our other sites or on social media, provided that we credit the authorship. 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
• 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

 

[Pete Thomas]

Marketing (inc. Educational resources and sites, retailers, 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 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.

• Do not post any business or educational marketing material without prior permission, apart from single used items which can be offered for sale in the “Yard Sale” section (see below). Any replies you make in which you mention your products must be completely on topic, e.g. answering questions, and should not include any sales information. The above applies whether you have a direct interest in the business or indirect as an affiliate or endorsing artist
• Members wishing to sell commercially (vendors) should arrange a commercial account upgrade. Contact us for details.
• 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 have a public customer support physical address and telephone number
• You may not mention or link to any competing affiliate schemes/coupons for the same brand. See here for affiliates
• Any marketing which is considered to be off topic or goes beyond useful information in the context of a thread will be removed.
• Multiple posts which appear to be gratuitous marketing or repeated recommendation of the same product may be viewed as spam
• Manufacturers’ Product Announcements should be made in the appropriate forum and should be original content, not copied and pasted ads. You should contact admin before posting.
• 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 Personal Conversation for business purposes, unless they have expressed an interest specifically via the forum. Anyone receiving such solicitations should report to admin.

Yardsale (Classifieds)​

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.

It would be hoped that the other party in the trade or part exchange would recognise the benefit they had received in effectively selling an item and make a voluntary donation.

* For wanted ads, the purchaser pays contribution to the fundraising.

Fees are payable only when a transaction is successful.

• The Yardsale is not intended for use by people joining the forum purely to sell an item, so members must have at least 40 posts. However new members may post if they either
  • upgraded their account with an annual (not monthly) subscription. This is for access to sell without needing the 40 posts and the contribution after a successful sale still applies.
  • or pay the 5% contribution on the initial listing price in advance then a listing will be allowed.
• No soliciting of sales/trades or advertising outside the Yardsale (e.g. on other forums, via profile or signature). You may link to a Yardsale item in a 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
• 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.
• Items you have for sale in auction should not be posted in the Yardsale, but in the ‘Your Ebay Auctions’ section
• No product announcements 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.
• You must include your asking and shipping price, or estimated value in the case of trades or part exchange. Unless stated otherwise it is assumed you will ship anywhere in the world.
• No gratuitous bumping of your posts (e.g. "still for sale," "sale pending"). Price reductions > 5% are fine.
• When an item is sold, you should mark it as sold via the thread prefix and notify admin
• 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.
• You may only offer for sale or exchange goods which you own, or have the owner’s permission to trade on their behalf.
• When an advert has been placed failure to respond to enquiry posts on the thread or via PM may result in the advert being removed.

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.

 

[Pete Thomas]

As we know there has been a no politics rule in place right from the start. It's not that we want to stifle discussion and debate, but experience has shown (both here and another saxophone forum) that it always ends badly. A few years back we tried it to allow discussion of a big UK issue (B*****) and it didn't go well. It causes divided.

Also, during family get togethers we have learnt to never discuss T**** it seems the best way to keep friendly relations.

One thing that can catch us out is when something otherwise innocent seeming, gets "politicised" and so we have to now add another topic to the no-politics rule because it just causes conflict and unfriendlyness. We've temporarily closed down the thread/poll on COVID testing, but will prune a few inflammatory or potentially inflammatory posts from there and then open it up again. But urge you all to keep it on topic and about testing, or at the very least to steer clear of what may seem innocent references to masks. (This would also apply to arguing about which scientists are right/wrong or possibly affiliated with political agendas)

So here is the updated version of that rule:

• No political or religious discussions. This may include anything which appears to be or could encourage or incite such posts. This may include topics that may have become politicised in different territories due to recent or recently controversial legislation such as gun law, hunting or wearing of masks as prevention against spreading or contracting COVID.

Slightly related I'd also like to mention that a couple of months back we received a warning from Google that the site could be penalised as its algorithm had detected what to them appeared to be promoting fake COVID remedies. This was of course nonsense but as we rely on Google for the survival of the site, we erred on the site of caution and removed that thread (but I have now put it back and keeping a close eye on the Google warnings). I don't think that will happen i this instance though.