Short answer: Generally speaking, play nice. Promotional posts have strict guidelines since we're hobby vendor funded - this funding approach allows MRH to maintain a high standard of quality (read: pay staff and authors), yet remain forever free to modelers. Click here to read the guidelines for promotional posts.

Long answer: The MRH forums and blogs help build a strong community of modelers by fostering discussion and sharing information. Messages posted by subscribers are solely the opinion and responsibility of the person posting the message. All susbscribers posting to the MRH site must be familiar with these posting guidelines.

Posting to the forums or blogs constitutes your agreement to the terms outlined in these guidelines.

General guidelines

Please treat all Community Leaders and their decisions with respect. As volunteers helping users and moderating the MRH site, they deserve your courtesy as much as we feel you deserve theirs.

While we’re the first to admit we’re not perfect, we strive to be impartial and conduct ourselves in the fairest manner possible for all. In order to provide you with a safe and positive experience on our site, some moderation actions taken by our Community Leaders may not be explicitly covered under these guidelines if we feel certain posts are not in the best interest of our community.

Violation of these guidelines is grounds for immediate post removal, forum sanction and/or suspension of your MRH subscriber account.

Please note: The moderators of the MRH site reserve the right to remove any post we deem as inappropriate without warning.

If at any time you feel a Community Leader, or another user treats you unfairly or inappropriately, please send an email to abuse@mrhmag.com.
 

Prohibited activities on the MRH site include:

Advertising, “Spamming”, or Promotion

MRH prohibits the posting of advertising links, images, or content for the purpose of promotion outside of the MRH Advertiser forum or the Hobby event notices forum. Hijacking or creating a new thread for the purpose of solicitation or advertising of content/posts may also be interpreted as a solicitation and are prohibited outside of their relevant forums.

Model Railroad Hobbyist advertisers are permitted (and even encouraged) to promote their products via the MRH Advertiser forum. Promotional posts by advertisers outside of this forum will be moved to this forum so they are clearly identified as promotional posts that are sactioned on the MRH site.

Hobby event coordinators may freely post notices of their hobby events on Hobby event notices forum. Only non-profit organizations hosting events may post in this forum - all other event organizations must purchase advertising and post in the MRH Advertiser forum. For the magazine, we offer ads to non-profits at a 50% discount of our regular rates.

The solicitation or advertisement of web content, goods, services, or other information not published on the MRH site or in the MRH magazine is considered “spam” and not allowed.
 

Flaming & Trolling

Posting intentionally hostile or insulting messages meant to incite arguments, a.k.a. “flame wars” is not considered a positive contribution to the MRH community and will be removed. We do not discourage heated debates, but as the line between passionate discussion and “trolling/flaming” is often subjective - determining what is and is not acceptable will be determined solely by our moderators (Community Leaders and Staff).

Whether provoked by another member or from other reasons, aggressive retaliatory responses to trolling/flaming are not excusable acts under any circumstances. If another member of our site is personally attacking you, please report it via email to abuse@mrhmag.com. DO NOT RETALIATE or respond aggressively to an abusive comment.

Offensive remarks made in retaliation to an abusive post are likewise subject to removal/sanctions.
 

Profanity & Obscenity

We prohibit the posting of material (graphics, text, links, and other references) containing profanity, vulgarity, hate speech, threats of violence, obscenity, or pornographic/adult material. Using a vulgar, profane, or otherwise offensive username is also prohibited. While we encourage free expression, we also expect our members to be respectful of the sensibilities of other users. The determination as to what is and is not considered acceptable posting on our forums is totally at the discretion of the moderators.
 

Discussing or reposting of deleted, locked posts or banned members

Respect the decisions of our moderators and staff. If a topic is locked or deleted or a user has been banned, discussion of these subjects will not be allowed to continue. Comments, questions or concerns on such actions within the forums can be submitted to the site moderators or staff by sending an email to abuse@mrhmag.com.

DO NOT post such comments on the MRH web site.
 

Posting contact information about another individual

Posting personal contact information on MRH subscribers Community leaders, MRH staff, and non-subscribers is not permitted, regardless of the source of that information. If you want to pass on contact information to others please post it via private email offline.
 

Using multiple accounts for fraudulent or deceptive behavior

While there is nothing wrong with having multiple aliases on our site, we prohibit using such aliases to deceive other users or moderators, to “bump” or promote a topic in a thread, or for any other reason we consider a misuse of our site.
 

Contacting other members regarding business by unauthorized methods

Searching for and making use of contact information the person did not otherwise willingly provide themselves is a violation of these guidelines and may result in disciplinary action.
 

Posting copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owner

To report copyright infringement or inappropriate content to our administrators, please email abuse@mrhmag.com and bring it to the attention of our moderators.
 

Malicious or Disruptive Code

The use of JavaScript, activeX or other coding, making repetitive posts, or other actions that interfere with site operations is forbidden. Any malicious code or employment of a robot, spider or other process or device to harvest e-mail addresses or other user information or to monitor the activity on MRH web site is also forbidden.
 

False Representation and Endorsements

Posting with the intent to impersonate MRH Staff or another member through the use of similar IDs or any other method or device is prohibited. Postings which falsely suggest that MRH Staff or Community Leaders have in any way approved of, or are involved in the promotion of given content is prohibited.
 

Data Mining/Harvesting & Employing Bots

Using the MRH site as a means to acquire private information from other community members through any methods is prohibited.

Posts promoting or encouraging activities that violate these posting guidelines is also prohibited.

Disciplinary Actions

MRH may block an account from posting without removing the subscriber from the site. MRH may block a subscriber from the site who has been previously warned of policy violations, though we reserve the right to remove a subscriber immediately depending on the violation.

Sanctions/blocking may range from 1 day to indefinite. A block or suspension of one ID applies to all IDs of that member and may, at our discretion, apply to members of the same household.

The use of false registration information or creating multiple accounts for use on the MRH site for the purpose of disruption or to avoid detection may result in permanent deletiion of all associated registrations, a permanent blocking of your IP address or us reporting you to your ISP as a spammer.