Loach Forum Policies

General Membership Rules of the Road

The Loach Forum and the Freshwater Forum are moderated forums on the care and natural history of loaches and other freshwater fish. They are part of the Loaches Online website at http://www.loaches.com, where the membership's love of loaches is celebrated on a daily basis. We encourage fish keepers of all levels of experience to gather here and share their knowledge and experiences, to ask questions, and to discover why loaches are such great fish for the right aquarium. The moderation team and site owner (comments@aquaweb.pair.com) wish to foster a sociable and comfortable learning environment. All posts will be treated with great respect and courtesy. We are confident that we can offer good, up-to-date advice on any challenges faced by loach keepers.

Please remember that Loaches Online (aka "LOL") attracts a diverse community from all over the world, which spans a broad range of opinions and culture and varying proficiency with the English language. Be considerate of the differences in time zones, culture and English fluency. If your post does not get an immediately response, check back often. All members here have "real" lives outside the forums.

Helpful Guidelines

• Please try to post with punctuation. It makes reading of a subject clearer and may help get more responses to your question.
• The use of CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis is permitted, but total use of capitals within a post is conventionally regarded as shouting on the Internet and is considered rude. Therefore, please do not use all capital letters.
• We encourage the use of one user-name per poster.
• Include pertinent subject lines for new posts. You will generate responses from people who are familiar with or specifically interested in your topic.
• We encourage all posters to indicate (in a general sense) where they are posting from. Considering the International membership on the forums, this will help with providing location appropriate information.

General Rules

• Treat all members with respect.
• Do not harass or post personal attacks against other members in the forum or through the Private Messaging system.
• Do not post messages or PMs that are inflammatory, extreme, divisive, incoherent, or otherwise inappropriate.
• Advertising, trollish behavior, and abuse will not be tolerated
• Do not post bigoted, racist, sexist statements or pornographic material. Any member posting pornography will be banned, no discussion.
• Posts that are found to be deliberately misleading, abusive, repetitive on same subject in different threads by the same poster, or threatening may be deleted at the discretion of the forum moderators.
• Posters who abuse the services provided by this forum will be given 3 warnings via email or private message that describe the nature of the abuse and how they can avoid such problems in the future. The third warning will result in them being asked to leave all of the forums.

Forum Administration

Please respect the moderators and their decisions, as they freely give considerable time to the forums because of their love of the hobby. Members should not send rude or abusive messages to the moderators. The forums are not appropriate places for posting messages attacking the moderators. Rather, if you have concerns about forum moderation, please email the site administrator at comments -at- aquaweb.pair.com.

Discussions on the moderated Freshwater and Loaches forums of topics pertaining to specific enforcement actions by the moderators are not allowed. In addition, do not publicly post private correspondence you receive from moderators and administrators.

Although rarely exercised, we reserve the right to delete posts and discussion threads for any reason deemed appropriate. The reasons for any such action will be clearly stated within the thread and the moderator taking that action will identify themselves.

Please understand that moderating errors and inconsistencies are inevitable on an active forum. Human error is unfortunately inevitable. If you have a question about forum policies, or some other concern, please do not hesitate to contact one of the moderators through the Private Message system.