Accounts
- We reserve the ability to delete your account without reason or for any reason generally.
It is required that your account be associated with a valid e-mail address to facilitate being contacted by a member of the moderation team. - Your account name must not be offensive or derogatory. If reported, names will be considered on a case-by-case basis. We may change your handle name under rare circumstances, handled on a case-by-case basis for a bona fide reason.
- “Your” website listed may be for your personal website only. If your personal website involves commercial products, we may ask that you remove it if the content is not related to the forum on a case-by-case basis. For example, Matt K is a programmer and mentions some services he offers. This is fine. However, if the link was misleading about it’s content or caused some other kind of nuisance etc. he would be asked to remove it or would have it removed automatically. It may not link to “adult” websites or websites with overtly controversial subject material (as determined by the moderation team on a case-by-case basis).
- Your account name may not imitate that of a public figure unless it is your actual name! (There are several members who have common names already that are not only shared with a public figure, but shared with a public figure that is also a trombonists!)
- You may only have a single account. Members who are suspected of being duplicate may be subject to any form of reprimand up to and including permanent banishment from TromboneChat. (Note: This does not count the members prefixed with “ttf_”, such as ‘ttf_Matt K’. These were brought in for archive purposes and only the administrators have access to those accounts.)
Posting
Our intention is to provide a safe and encouraging atmosphere for players of all walks! The following guidelines are provided to help maintain a pleasant conversational and educational site for all users that can be a resource in the years to come.Styling
While anyone is allowed to participate internationally, this is an English language site. Posts containing only or substantively in another language may be subject to removal. Exceptions are:- Posts translated into another language in parallel for the sake of clarifying to someone in another language.
- Posts about a text originating in another language (such as musicological manuscripts or information about trombones from a foreign source)
Cordiality
Be respectful – while there may be disagreements, we expect civility in all correspondences. Members who show a pattern of obnoxious, anti-social, or disrespectful behavior may be banned on a temporary or permanent basis, determined by the site administrators. Such behaviors include, but are not limited to, personal attacks, demeaning the character of another individual, public or non-public, or engaging in speech that is knowingly false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, harassing, sexually oriented, threatening, or otherwise a violation of law.While members of the community come from a variety of cultural backgrounds, we insist that profanity be kept out. We’re talking about trombones, after all. If you wouldn’t want your 10 year old reading what you have to say, take a step back and think about it before posting. Posts may be edited or removed by the moderation team without notice and subsequent offenses may result in punishment up to and including a permanent ban.
Promotion or perpetuation of negative racial, ethnic, sexual, religious, or cultural stereotypes are not allowed, as determined by the moderation team. Posts may be edited or deleted without notice. In addition, any post may be removed or edited by members of the moderation team for any reason, including for any reason not yet covered in this section or for no reason whatsoever.
Again, if you wouldn’t want your child reading what you posted, you probably shouldn’t be saying it here!
Content
Remain on topic – When we designed sections for this site, we intentionally attempted to make it as simple as possible to navigate. However, everyone makes mistakes. We may move a post at any time if it is in an inappropriate section (for example, selling a mouthpiece goes in the Classifieds section, not the Mouthpiece section).Further, any topics tangential to music should be placed in the “Tangents” section. However, we are limiting the subject material strictly to topics that do not involve politics, religion, sciences, economics, or anything that has the potential to lead to contentious discussion. While these subjects are indeed worthy of discussion, there are many places that one can go on the internet (for free even!) that are better equipped to handle these types of discussions. The moderation team has received many, many complaints over the years from members who, upon seeing a particularly contentious discussion refrained from even recommending the site to students. Given the scarcity of places that are well archived and easily searchable for content specifically about the trombone, we are emphasizing that type of discussion to the exclusion of others.
The choice to not include off-topic subjects exists for several reasons. Among them:
Feedback from teachers and professionals. Many of the complaints (and account deletions!) historically received about content on other fora concerned either, directly or indirectly, contentious, off-topic discussion. As a result, they have forsook contributing themselves as well as recommending that area of discussion altogether.
Additionally, this site wishes to remain as neutral as possible towards all subjects. Allowing subjects of contentious nature may ultimately require intervention. This will be, by definition, at a place that many find unpalatable but others find tenable. Thus by not intervening, TromboneChat would be required to either tacitly endorse, or at least indicate acceptance of positions or viewpoints up to and including that line. Alternatively, intervention would be a move in the other direction and be an explicit disapproval of the situation.
Finally, "guilt" by association. not everybody who participates in TromboneChat can put themselves in a position where they may be involved in an organization that implicitly or explicitly holds political or religious opinions for professional or legal reasons. For example, a trombonist who lives in a region where a certain political practice is popular and they are seen interacting with views counter to theirs may find a diminished ability to engage with other musicians or prospective employment because of association. Similarly, many members choose to participate with TromboneChat during lunch breaks or other off-time in the workplace. This may be against company policy or in some cases break certain laws such as the Hatch Act of 1939 (amended 2012) which contains language that restricts employees from engaging in political activity while:
- on duty
- in a government office
- wearing an official uniform
- using a government vehicle
Exceptions to this rule are those specifically related to the trombone. For example, David Vining’s book What Every Trombonist Needs to Know About the Body covers many aspects of anatomy and could qualify as Biology. However, since it is specifically related to the trombone, it would be okay. Similarly, topics discussing why certain business models are profitable is okay. However, discussion of the ethics or morality of purchasing or not purchasing domestic products is off-topic. Similarly, discussions demeaning ethnic groups or prejudices against those due to country of origin are off topic. Discussing the benefits or negatives about joining a musician or teachers union in an individual circumstance is acceptable, but bromides about unions (pro or con) generally are off-topic.
Solicitation
Vendors and manufacturers are welcome and indeed encouraged to contribute information, so long as it is musically relevant! Please disclose any association with your company somewhere. Your bio is sufficient but it would be likely beneficial to include it in your signature as well. Publication of prices is acceptable, but only to the extent that a marketable item is mentioned once and not consistently updated. E.g. “Sale” prices are prohibited to avoid spam. However, you may post aggregations of items for sale in the classifieds. But if your company introduces a new line of trombones, you can post the prices to that thread and later edit it to reflect current prices.Posts must have content other than a link to an external source. This means that if you are attempting to garner site traffic, please include an explanation and justification for making a post about your content. Posts without the proper context may be deleted by moderators at their discretion.
Illegal & Illicit Activity
There shall be no discussion of topics which violate the law, especially in the United States. This includes asking for copies of copywritten material, distributing copywritten material, discussions related to sites or sources of illegal material, accounts & recommendations for illegal activities, etc. Posts that ignore this rule will be deleted immediately and the user may be punished up to and including permanent banishment for posting about illegal activity.Citations
When using copywritten material as a source, properly cite the document in whatever format is the most convenient. When possible, provide a hyperlink to the material as well. Ideally, seek permission from the copyright holder as well. Make a concerted effort to make sure any paraphrased content parallels what the author had intended to write and avoid intentionally distorting the words of others.Additionally, please be mindful of the source of others’ content. We do enable direct linking to images for the sake of expedience and several of us have our own servers for hosting pictures etc. However, direct links to other content might go against the wishes of the content provider. With the exception of cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Drive or other site intended to provide hosted content publicly (YouTube, Imgur, etc.) please refrain from directly linking material unless you have explicit permission from the content owner (unless it’s yourself, in which case, give yourself explicit permission first).
Reporting Violations
Use the hazard with an exclamation point to call out offenses and have a moderator deal with the situation. Please do not call out violations publicly. This includes violations both about the manner of the communication (such as profanity and anti-social behavior) as well as the content (such as solicitation).Disclaimers
The content on TromboneChat is given by the community and comes with no warranty that anything presented here is accurate or actionable. Please use caution when acting upon the advice or recommendations from anyone on TromboneChat.Any opinion expressed by members of TromboneChat reflect only the individual expressing that opinion, including the moderation team, and not TromboneChat.
Minors 13 years of age and younger are not permitted to use the site.
Future modifications
This document is not exhaustive. Any user may be terminated for any or no reason and any post may be locked, edited, or deleted by a member of the moderation team for any or no reason.*This TOS draws heavily on other Terms of Service, in particularly those from The Trombone Forum.