Steamboats.org Message Board Guidelines

The Steamboats.org Message Board is a moderated discussion board for exchanging relevant information about steamboats, paddlewheelers, riverboats, the US inland rivers and related stuff.

All kinds of inquiries and discussions are welcome here from "which is the best time of the year to take a Delta Queen cruise on the Upper Mississippi?" and "can someone identify the boat on this picture?" to "announcing: Golden Eagle River Museum Farewell Gathering".    Who knows, maybe somebody shares your interest, or has that key bit of information that will fit your research together, or is happy to get some useful information from you.

Guidelines

• Steamboats.org Message Boards's primary purpose is to facilitate the exchange of information, advice, suggestions, and discussion about facts and history, not to serve as a forum for chatting and exchanging personal messages (please use e-mail for these purposes).
  
  
• The Steamboats.org Message Board requires all posters to adhere to a high standard of courtesy and civility. Polite, constructive criticism, and polite responses to same, are acceptable. Insulting or inflammatory language; argument and debate for their own sake; and personal attacks on other posters ("flaming") are all prohibited. Please note that this standard is inherently subjective, and is considerably more restrictive than the standards on many other forums. Some people may not find it possible to express their full views and stay within this guideline. Other people may have legitimate philosophical objections to posting under inherently subjective moderation. In either case, we must respectfully ask them to express their views in other forums than this one.
  
  
• Defining what constitutes uncourteous, uncivil, or unconstructive speech, and deciding when continued discussion of a subject is no longer constructive, shall be within the sole discretion of the moderators. They may choose to issue a back-channel warning, may delete posts without warning, or may close threads to new posts. Where possible, the moderators will try to explain the cause for their decisions, either back channel or through an announcement on the board.
  

• Only postings with your real name (first and last name) in the "Name:" form field will be accepted. Please contact franz-neumeier@steamboats.de before posting when you have a good reason for posting anonymously. The purpose of this guideline is to try and keep information posted on the Steamboats.org Message Board as accurate as possible by asking people to stand behind their posts.
  Anonymous posters, please be aware that there is a law about anonymous posting on the Internet, the "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act". Basically it says the following: "Whoever ... utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet ... without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person ... who receives the communications ... shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."

• We strongly prefer that you give a valid e-mail address with your post.  However, this does create the potential for being picked up by a "Spam Spider."  If this is a concern for you, may we suggest obtaining a separate e-mail account for use on the Steamboats.org Message Board only.  Free e-mail accounts are available from numerous sources on the Internet such as Yahoo and Hotmail. The purpose of this guideline is to give parties with conflicting opinions the opportunity to resolve differences off-line.  Although posting without a working e-mail address won't of itself result in removal of a post, posts by unreachable parties will receive increased scrutiny from the moderators.
  
  

• No profanity.  There will be zero tolerance for this, and posts containing profanity will be deleted on sight.

• Commercial advertising is allowed on a case-by-case basis. In general, we do not want to see a great deal of regular commercial advertising on the board. However, do encourage people to announce the availability of products and services of immediate relevance to other posters. If you have something for sale that may be of interest to the list, please ask the moderators for permission first.

• We encourage our visitors to help maintain the Steamboats.org Message Board as a unique place for the sharing of information and knowledge, as well discussion of news and issues, in the paddlewheel steamboat community.  If you have any questions of suggestions, or to report problems and/or abuses, please contact the Board Moderator:
  Franz Neumeier

Special thanks to Erik Ledbetter from the Railway Preservation News message board "Interchange" for letting us adope their well formulated guidelines.

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American Queen
Aug 30 - Sept 6

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