Conditions of Forum use

1. The discussion area is intended for short postings in line with the purposes mentioned above. Substantial technical submissions should be sent to our editorial department, for possible inclusion in our publications and/or the magazine section of our Knowledge Network site.
2. The discussion areas may not be used for the promotion of products and services of any kind, nor for recruitment advertising; potential advertisers are invited to contact our Advertising Department. However, this condition should not discourage users from suggesting a product that may assist a genuine enquirer who has raised a specific problem. In such circumstances, users should obey the custom among professional engineers of declaring any interest.
3. Please do not post the same message to multiple forums. This practice leads to replies from others being distributed in several locations, and therefore diminishes the usefulness of the discussions to all concerned.
4. IET members and other participants in this forum are happy to share their experience. However, you are more likely to get a helpful response if you can show, from your question, that you have already made reasonable efforts to investigate the problem yourself. For example, enquiries from students who have difficulties with a particular aspect of an assignment are generally welcomed. By contrast, those who simply submit the entire problem and request a solution may find that busy working engineers do not give their time so willingly.
5. Messages, whether posted by IET members or others, should comply with the relevant sections of the Institution's Rules of Conduct. This includes, but is not limited to, those Rules that concern objectiveness, concern for the reputation of others, declaration of interest, and the making of statements outside one's area of professional expertise. In the context of a discussion forum, this stipulation is not intended to prevent the offering of informal suggestions, provided that it is clear on what basis these are made. The use of swearing, or of offensive language or links, is not in the spirit of the Rules and will not be permitted.
6. Users are reminded that text, images and other information created by third parties will be subject to the laws of copyright, and that this includes material found elsewhere on the Internet. Messages posted to the discussion area must not include such material without the copyright owner's permission, and links to other sites should comply with those sites' conditions for such links.
7. Discussion postings are subject to the terms of the IET's Legal and Copyright Statement.
8. The IET reserves the right to remove messages at its discretion. In addition, a message may be moved to another area of the discussions if, in the view of the webmaster, the message is more relevant to that area.
9. However, the responsibility for the content of messages rests with the authors. The IET makes no warranty with respect to the validity of the information supplied in messages, and readers should make their own assessments before using such information.
10. It is expected that contributors will register one account only, and in doing so will provide genuine names and contact details, in order to take responsibility for the messages that they post. These details are not shown to other users. Accounts that do not meet this condition may be denied permission to post or may be deleted along with any associated messages.
11. In this spirit, and since usernames can be obscure, contributors are encouraged to use the signature system to identify themselves to other users.
12. Logged-in users may use the facility to report messages to the moderator where they appear to conflict with these conditions. Alternatively, please contact the webmaster.

Reviewed 10/10/2008 (revised rule 5)