Guidelines
Welcome to Impact OASIS! Our site was created for our members to
share, connect, and communicate with other members anywhere in the
world. Please read the following rules and guidelines for community
participation.
Guidelines for Community Participation
1. Do not post any advertising, promotional materials, referrals, press releases, junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation.
2. Do not post with the intent to disrupt or disturb the community or to interfere with other members' use and enjoyment of our community.
3. Do not attack the character or damage the reputation of other members, name-call, insult, ridicule, harass, mock or otherwise verbally assault other members of this community. This is a professional network and all behavior should reflect accordingly.
4. Do not bully or intimidate other members. Constructive criticism is welcome, but language that can be construed as belittling or rude is not.
5.Do not post anything hateful — including targeting race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, weight or disability.
6. Do not create a screen name to hide your identity while you are violating our guidelines.
7. Do not post or link to inappropriate content. Inappropriate content is anything Impact OASIS deems obscene or vulgar, harassing, humiliating, defamatory, libelous, untrue or invasive of someone else’s privacy. This content includes including graphics, images, stories, blog posts, discussion threads, events or videos.
8. Do not post anything you do not have the right to publish or violate any copyright or other proprietary rights in your posts. That includes published articles, images or videos, without the author or owner's permission.
9. Do not transfer issues or posts from one group to another with the intention of drawing negative attention to the post.
10. Do not hit and run. Please do not go to a group where you do not ordinarily post simply to point out the wrongness of another poster or group's actions, beliefs, or comments.
11. Do not use all capital letters in your postings unless you REALLY MEAN TO YELL!
12. Do not post the same message more than once in multiple forums (such as blogs or discussion threads) or on groups.
13. Do not flood. This includes repeatedly "bumping" a thread, disrupting an online chat event by entering the same phrase over and over again, or otherwise using up bandwidth for no reason.
14. Do not post on behalf of banned members. If you do this, you may be banned without notice or warning.
Self-promotion
We understand the desire for members to use Impact OASIS as a way to promote themselves and their businesses. We want to encourage and foster this, but there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to do this:
1. You may not directly advertise or promote yourself en masse to the membership via messaging, in any comment, blog post, discussion thread, group, or any media, including both photos and videos. The content in question is subject to removal at Impact OASIS’s discretion. Additionally, this content should not resemble that which you’d normally find on a press release or advertisement or late-night infomercial.
2. The appropriate way to attract attention is to be a periodic contributor of valued content to the site. In the blog posts, discussion threads, photos, videos of groups started by you or fellow members, share your expertise, knowledge and thoughts with the group as you would with any friend.
3. In blog posts, photos, groups, discussion threads or videos, you are welcome to link back to your member profile page only. You may not include any contact information, including the name of your business, in these areas. Acceptable language includes “Please stop by my home at Impact OASIS” or “Visit my member profile page for more information about me.”
4. A serious violation is poaching or directly soliciting Impact OASIS members using Impact OASIS itself. We are not against competition. However, using the Impact OASIS internal email messaging, our technology or platform to post a self-promoting blog, discussion, or comment on any profile wall with the intent to solicit members to or advertise a competitive site is in violation of our community guidelines and you will be subject to an immediate ban, and open to legal prosecution. Banned members lose all points.
Membership Profiles
1. Your profile should include your name and an avatar, and some simple, clear details that let us all know a little bit about you, including your city and state. An avatar is your computerized representation of yourself, like a headshot or image. Remember this is a network! If you want to connect, communicate, collaborate, and be found by colleagues and friends, a more complete profile will help.
2. Using your company logo for an avatar is perfectly acceptable, but again, make sure somewhere on your profile is a spot to let people know the identity of the person behind the company profile if your member profile name is, for instance “ImpactOASIS.com.” We like to encourage as much real-person interaction as possible, as opposed to interacting solely with a nameless, faceless brand.
3. You may use your member profile page to promote your company or business, including any links to company Web sites, blogs or contact information.
4. You may not alter your page so dramatically that it competes with any ImpactOASIS.com-branded materials, including any and all advertisements posted by ImpactOASIS.com, anywhere on the site. Such alteration of Web pages – which includes banner ad-like promotional materials running atop membership profiles – is strictly forbidden, subject to review and will be removed.
5. You may set up widgets to use as promotional materials on your member profile page, as long as the branding is clear that any and all material is solely that which you are providing and are not ImpactOASIS.com-created content or endorsements.
Discussions
A discussion thread is more of a short topic or question posed to the community where replies are generally desired. You can also create a new topic for discussion or ask a question by clicking on the Start a New Discussion link. Here you can give it a title, write the discussion text/question and even upload file attachments if desired. We encourage you to pick a category that's applicable or general if none apply and to add tags that help people find your discussion!
1. You may include pictures or images in your posts.
2. You may include content from previously published, print or online, materials with proper attribution. If you can, provide a link to where the content originates.
3. Unlike a blog, which is more directed towards personal commentary, discussion threads are used to solicit feedback. There is no right or wrong application here.
Groups
Groups allow you to invite or include people who have a common interest around a particular topic. You can share it, socialize it, communicate to other members in the group, edit and manage. It’s your group… make it special. For instance, those who are interested in issues surrounding restaurant marketing would want to join a group that focuses on those issues. If no such group exists, feel free to create one, using the following guidelines:
1. Groups will be approved for content before they are published on Impact OASIS
2. If you start a group, you are responsible for that group and to ensure that it remains lively and active. The Impact OASIS staff will remove any group that appears to be inactive for more than 60 days.
3. When you start a group, make sure that you include a headline, appropriate avatar and a brief description of the group. Also included should be at least one or two discussion threads that tackle an issue the group – or you - may want to discuss. Any group started with no discussion threads in it will be removed after 60 days of its creation.
4. Groups themselves may not be promotional in nature. For instance, if you work for Company A, you may not start a group that is called "Company A." This is considered promotional in nature and will be removed. You are welcome, however, to start a group about menu boards in general.
5. As group creator, make sure to visit your group frequently and chat with your fellow members, no matter the discussion thread. Create new discussions daily. The direction your group takes, and the conversation within, is up to you. Reach out to your fellow group members directly by asking them to join in on conversations.
6. Group landing pages or discussion threads may not include promotional links or feeds to your company or personal blog. You are welcome to use feeds as long as they are not promotional in nature. You are welcome to link to your member profile within a discussion thread, but not on the landing page of a particular group.
7. Invite Impact OASIS friends to join your group, or promote your group within your blog.
8. Participation in any group is similar to that in a blog or discussion thread. Language and content in groups should adhere to the same policies as blogs and discussion threads. Please review the “Self-promotion” section of these guidelines for more information.
Violations of Community Guidelines
If you violate the Impact OASIS community guidelines, expect to be contacted individually by community staff. Your actions may result in a warning, a suspension, or permanent banning from participation in our community.
1. Impact OASIS has adopted a “Three Strikes” policy when it comes to banning. Impact OASIS will contact you directly to inform you of a violation of the community guidelines. After three violations, you will be banned from the community. Impact OASIS reserves the right to handle each violation on a case-by-case basis and, if the situation warrants, to ban any member at any time, for any reason, with or without warning.
2. Members who have been reprimanded for violating any Impact OASIS community guidelines will have 48 hours to rectify the violation. If no action is taken during this period, members will be reprimanded again and the action will be counted against their “Three Strikes” allotment.
3. Banning is done at the community staff's discretion and is the result of our sole determination of a member's demonstrated inability or disinclination to follow our guidelines.
4. If you poach and solicit Impact OASIS members using Impact OASIS messaging, you may be prosecuted. We do not publicly discuss or announce warnings, suspensions or bannings.
5. If a thread that contains a violation of these guidelines has information that's useful to the original poster or other members of the site, it may be edited or locked. However, if in our sole judgment a thread was created for the purpose of violating the guidelines, violates enough guidelines to be irredeemable, or contains no otherwise useful information, it may be removed.
6. Because of the size of our community, we can't monitor all posts on the site. If you see a message you believe violates our guidelines, please contact us.
Your Rights and Responsibilities
Please bear in mind that all of the material you read in our community areas comes from other members. Because of the size of our community, Impact OASIS doesn't monitor or verify all the information posted by our members. The comments, opinions, and statements posted on our bulletin boards, forums, groups and chats do not necessarily reflect the views of Impact OASIS. The information posted on our boards and blog postings, including advice and opinions, is the responsibility of those members who create the posts.
Please consult your business advisors or other qualified professionals before relying on information you find in the community areas. Impact OASIS is not responsible for the accuracy of posts and is not liable for any damage or loss that may result from your reliance on what other members have said.
All Impact OASIS communications, including blogs, group discussion and forum posts, are public and not private communications. Impact OASIS has the right to modify and publish, both on our site and in other media, any information you post in our community areas. Please note that the material you post may be indexed by search engines such as Yahoo and Google.
Community staff and volunteer hosts may use your membership e-mail to contact you regarding your messages in our community. You're responsible for keeping your e-mail address active and updated. Failure to keep your e-mail address updated may result in your being banned until we can confirm that you have a valid e-mail address associated with your Impact OASIS membership.
Keep your login information, including your password, private. Sharing of memberships or screen names is not allowed and may result in your being banned. Impact OASIS accepts no responsibility for use of your membership or computer by third parties, with or without your permission.
We reserve the right to modify or change these guidelines without notice.
Privacy Guidelines
Never provide your password, telephone numbers, or home address to anyone online. Be very careful about responding to solicitations for interviews or research. Note, however, that Impact OASIS editors might invite you to respond to such solicitations from time to time. Never divulge any private or personal information about another person online. That includes the person's real name or address, e-mail address, and any other personal information that the person has not asked you to make public. Do not forward or post private messages that someone has sent to you unless you have his or her permission. Only send e-mail to another Impact OASIS member if he or she has given you expressed permission. Please do not solicit other members' personal information.
The e-mail address you provide is for our use only, unless you provide it to other members. By accepting friendships on Impact OASIS, you take full responsibility for any e-mail you receive. Impact OASIS does not monitor such communications and will not intervene between members who use this function. The only way to keep from receiving undesirable e-mail is to remove the offending member from your friends list and not share your e-mail address.
Impact OASIS reserves the right to resend invitations by members, and will only resend invitations once per month. Impact OASIS will do its best to resend invitations only once. Members of the Impact OASIS community sometimes organize donations, gift exchanges, reunions, and other offline activities. Such arrangements are private and are not sponsored, vetted, or hosted by Impact OASIS. You participate at your own risk.
Guidelines for Community Participation
1. Do not post any advertising, promotional materials, referrals, press releases, junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation.
2. Do not post with the intent to disrupt or disturb the community or to interfere with other members' use and enjoyment of our community.
3. Do not attack the character or damage the reputation of other members, name-call, insult, ridicule, harass, mock or otherwise verbally assault other members of this community. This is a professional network and all behavior should reflect accordingly.
4. Do not bully or intimidate other members. Constructive criticism is welcome, but language that can be construed as belittling or rude is not.
5.Do not post anything hateful — including targeting race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, weight or disability.
6. Do not create a screen name to hide your identity while you are violating our guidelines.
7. Do not post or link to inappropriate content. Inappropriate content is anything Impact OASIS deems obscene or vulgar, harassing, humiliating, defamatory, libelous, untrue or invasive of someone else’s privacy. This content includes including graphics, images, stories, blog posts, discussion threads, events or videos.
8. Do not post anything you do not have the right to publish or violate any copyright or other proprietary rights in your posts. That includes published articles, images or videos, without the author or owner's permission.
9. Do not transfer issues or posts from one group to another with the intention of drawing negative attention to the post.
10. Do not hit and run. Please do not go to a group where you do not ordinarily post simply to point out the wrongness of another poster or group's actions, beliefs, or comments.
11. Do not use all capital letters in your postings unless you REALLY MEAN TO YELL!
12. Do not post the same message more than once in multiple forums (such as blogs or discussion threads) or on groups.
13. Do not flood. This includes repeatedly "bumping" a thread, disrupting an online chat event by entering the same phrase over and over again, or otherwise using up bandwidth for no reason.
14. Do not post on behalf of banned members. If you do this, you may be banned without notice or warning.
Self-promotion
We understand the desire for members to use Impact OASIS as a way to promote themselves and their businesses. We want to encourage and foster this, but there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to do this:
1. You may not directly advertise or promote yourself en masse to the membership via messaging, in any comment, blog post, discussion thread, group, or any media, including both photos and videos. The content in question is subject to removal at Impact OASIS’s discretion. Additionally, this content should not resemble that which you’d normally find on a press release or advertisement or late-night infomercial.
2. The appropriate way to attract attention is to be a periodic contributor of valued content to the site. In the blog posts, discussion threads, photos, videos of groups started by you or fellow members, share your expertise, knowledge and thoughts with the group as you would with any friend.
3. In blog posts, photos, groups, discussion threads or videos, you are welcome to link back to your member profile page only. You may not include any contact information, including the name of your business, in these areas. Acceptable language includes “Please stop by my home at Impact OASIS” or “Visit my member profile page for more information about me.”
4. A serious violation is poaching or directly soliciting Impact OASIS members using Impact OASIS itself. We are not against competition. However, using the Impact OASIS internal email messaging, our technology or platform to post a self-promoting blog, discussion, or comment on any profile wall with the intent to solicit members to or advertise a competitive site is in violation of our community guidelines and you will be subject to an immediate ban, and open to legal prosecution. Banned members lose all points.
Membership Profiles
1. Your profile should include your name and an avatar, and some simple, clear details that let us all know a little bit about you, including your city and state. An avatar is your computerized representation of yourself, like a headshot or image. Remember this is a network! If you want to connect, communicate, collaborate, and be found by colleagues and friends, a more complete profile will help.
2. Using your company logo for an avatar is perfectly acceptable, but again, make sure somewhere on your profile is a spot to let people know the identity of the person behind the company profile if your member profile name is, for instance “ImpactOASIS.com.” We like to encourage as much real-person interaction as possible, as opposed to interacting solely with a nameless, faceless brand.
3. You may use your member profile page to promote your company or business, including any links to company Web sites, blogs or contact information.
4. You may not alter your page so dramatically that it competes with any ImpactOASIS.com-branded materials, including any and all advertisements posted by ImpactOASIS.com, anywhere on the site. Such alteration of Web pages – which includes banner ad-like promotional materials running atop membership profiles – is strictly forbidden, subject to review and will be removed.
5. You may set up widgets to use as promotional materials on your member profile page, as long as the branding is clear that any and all material is solely that which you are providing and are not ImpactOASIS.com-created content or endorsements.
Discussions
A discussion thread is more of a short topic or question posed to the community where replies are generally desired. You can also create a new topic for discussion or ask a question by clicking on the Start a New Discussion link. Here you can give it a title, write the discussion text/question and even upload file attachments if desired. We encourage you to pick a category that's applicable or general if none apply and to add tags that help people find your discussion!
1. You may include pictures or images in your posts.
2. You may include content from previously published, print or online, materials with proper attribution. If you can, provide a link to where the content originates.
3. Unlike a blog, which is more directed towards personal commentary, discussion threads are used to solicit feedback. There is no right or wrong application here.
Groups
Groups allow you to invite or include people who have a common interest around a particular topic. You can share it, socialize it, communicate to other members in the group, edit and manage. It’s your group… make it special. For instance, those who are interested in issues surrounding restaurant marketing would want to join a group that focuses on those issues. If no such group exists, feel free to create one, using the following guidelines:
1. Groups will be approved for content before they are published on Impact OASIS
2. If you start a group, you are responsible for that group and to ensure that it remains lively and active. The Impact OASIS staff will remove any group that appears to be inactive for more than 60 days.
3. When you start a group, make sure that you include a headline, appropriate avatar and a brief description of the group. Also included should be at least one or two discussion threads that tackle an issue the group – or you - may want to discuss. Any group started with no discussion threads in it will be removed after 60 days of its creation.
4. Groups themselves may not be promotional in nature. For instance, if you work for Company A, you may not start a group that is called "Company A." This is considered promotional in nature and will be removed. You are welcome, however, to start a group about menu boards in general.
5. As group creator, make sure to visit your group frequently and chat with your fellow members, no matter the discussion thread. Create new discussions daily. The direction your group takes, and the conversation within, is up to you. Reach out to your fellow group members directly by asking them to join in on conversations.
6. Group landing pages or discussion threads may not include promotional links or feeds to your company or personal blog. You are welcome to use feeds as long as they are not promotional in nature. You are welcome to link to your member profile within a discussion thread, but not on the landing page of a particular group.
7. Invite Impact OASIS friends to join your group, or promote your group within your blog.
8. Participation in any group is similar to that in a blog or discussion thread. Language and content in groups should adhere to the same policies as blogs and discussion threads. Please review the “Self-promotion” section of these guidelines for more information.
Violations of Community Guidelines
If you violate the Impact OASIS community guidelines, expect to be contacted individually by community staff. Your actions may result in a warning, a suspension, or permanent banning from participation in our community.
1. Impact OASIS has adopted a “Three Strikes” policy when it comes to banning. Impact OASIS will contact you directly to inform you of a violation of the community guidelines. After three violations, you will be banned from the community. Impact OASIS reserves the right to handle each violation on a case-by-case basis and, if the situation warrants, to ban any member at any time, for any reason, with or without warning.
2. Members who have been reprimanded for violating any Impact OASIS community guidelines will have 48 hours to rectify the violation. If no action is taken during this period, members will be reprimanded again and the action will be counted against their “Three Strikes” allotment.
3. Banning is done at the community staff's discretion and is the result of our sole determination of a member's demonstrated inability or disinclination to follow our guidelines.
4. If you poach and solicit Impact OASIS members using Impact OASIS messaging, you may be prosecuted. We do not publicly discuss or announce warnings, suspensions or bannings.
5. If a thread that contains a violation of these guidelines has information that's useful to the original poster or other members of the site, it may be edited or locked. However, if in our sole judgment a thread was created for the purpose of violating the guidelines, violates enough guidelines to be irredeemable, or contains no otherwise useful information, it may be removed.
6. Because of the size of our community, we can't monitor all posts on the site. If you see a message you believe violates our guidelines, please contact us.
Your Rights and Responsibilities
Please bear in mind that all of the material you read in our community areas comes from other members. Because of the size of our community, Impact OASIS doesn't monitor or verify all the information posted by our members. The comments, opinions, and statements posted on our bulletin boards, forums, groups and chats do not necessarily reflect the views of Impact OASIS. The information posted on our boards and blog postings, including advice and opinions, is the responsibility of those members who create the posts.
Please consult your business advisors or other qualified professionals before relying on information you find in the community areas. Impact OASIS is not responsible for the accuracy of posts and is not liable for any damage or loss that may result from your reliance on what other members have said.
All Impact OASIS communications, including blogs, group discussion and forum posts, are public and not private communications. Impact OASIS has the right to modify and publish, both on our site and in other media, any information you post in our community areas. Please note that the material you post may be indexed by search engines such as Yahoo and Google.
Community staff and volunteer hosts may use your membership e-mail to contact you regarding your messages in our community. You're responsible for keeping your e-mail address active and updated. Failure to keep your e-mail address updated may result in your being banned until we can confirm that you have a valid e-mail address associated with your Impact OASIS membership.
Keep your login information, including your password, private. Sharing of memberships or screen names is not allowed and may result in your being banned. Impact OASIS accepts no responsibility for use of your membership or computer by third parties, with or without your permission.
We reserve the right to modify or change these guidelines without notice.
Privacy Guidelines
Never provide your password, telephone numbers, or home address to anyone online. Be very careful about responding to solicitations for interviews or research. Note, however, that Impact OASIS editors might invite you to respond to such solicitations from time to time. Never divulge any private or personal information about another person online. That includes the person's real name or address, e-mail address, and any other personal information that the person has not asked you to make public. Do not forward or post private messages that someone has sent to you unless you have his or her permission. Only send e-mail to another Impact OASIS member if he or she has given you expressed permission. Please do not solicit other members' personal information.
The e-mail address you provide is for our use only, unless you provide it to other members. By accepting friendships on Impact OASIS, you take full responsibility for any e-mail you receive. Impact OASIS does not monitor such communications and will not intervene between members who use this function. The only way to keep from receiving undesirable e-mail is to remove the offending member from your friends list and not share your e-mail address.
Impact OASIS reserves the right to resend invitations by members, and will only resend invitations once per month. Impact OASIS will do its best to resend invitations only once. Members of the Impact OASIS community sometimes organize donations, gift exchanges, reunions, and other offline activities. Such arrangements are private and are not sponsored, vetted, or hosted by Impact OASIS. You participate at your own risk.
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