Forum Rules

To minimse misunderstandings and to maintain a polite and professional atmosphere we have a set of Forum Rules to govern and control the manner in which the Forum is used by all. There are also legal ramifications that can arise from Forum posts so these rules serve to protect you. Your use of the Forum assumes you have read and agree to these rules. You also accept to have your post(s) moderated for any breach of these rules as outlined in the Moderation Policy.

This Forum is for discussing issues relevant to self-drive camping/caravanning adventures in Australia. Do not post about current affairs, local news or personal interests that are not relevant to this sites' themed content. Posts containing links to another website without giving sufficient clarification as to the relevance of the information to be found there are also considered "off topic".

This site offers a specific facility for users to post For Sale, Wanted to Buy, and Free/Giveaway notices. See Classifieds. If you are a Member and have ads running there, your Forum postings will automatically contain links to each ad. If you are not a Member you are not permitted to promote your ads in the Forum.

We love to help businesses promote themselves on ExplorOz but this can ONLY be done if you have subscribed as a Business Member. Forum Advertising in the form of Keywords & Graphic Ads is available to Business Members as optional advertising but self-promotion and advertising within discussions within Forum Threads is not allowed. Two key rules relate to the Forum: 1) Your Screen Name cannot contain a Business Name, Brand, or Product Name unless you have subscribed at a Business Member. 2) You cannot post a link to your website within any Forum Thread (Business Member Profiles contain auto-filled footers with a link that includes stats tracking. This is the only link allowed). Please contact us to discuss Business Members/Advertising during business hours Monday - Friday.

Forum Users are asked to respectfully refrain from having covert conversations in the Forum that only mean something to a few in the know. Users should also refrain from having prolonged “to and fro” reply exchanges in forum threads. These types of conversations often detract from the intent of the post and result in a barrage of unwanted noise in threads. Alternatively, we provide our Members with a private messaging service called Member Messaging (MM). This is only a short text-message service so for longer, private conversations you should probably swap email addresses or phone numbers!

All swear words (heavy & common) are prohibited - including words with letter substitutions such as astericks, dashes or any other symbol. Posts containing any words of this nature are subject to moderation, furthermore a selection of heavy-weight swear words has been programmed to be automatically replaced with the word "bleep".

Abuse, insults and personal attacks directed at other people, particularly other site users, or Forum moderators, are unacceptable. Alert a moderator immediatley if you, or another person is receiving Personal Attack.

Trolling is activity that incites controversy, conflict, causes annoyance or offence. Trolling is unacceptable on this Forum.

General inappropriate activity for this site is listed in the Site Terms of Use, within the Communications Facilities section. Other inappropriate activity includes making posts on the same topic as an existing active post, & attempts to debate with BOG staff and moderators. If you have a complaint or issue with the operations of the site, you must send email using the site Feedback form, or send a direct email.

Spam abuses electronic messaging systems to indiscriminately send/transmit unsolicited messages. Spamming on this Forum is unacceptable.

On this Forum, we aim to protect individuals and businesses alike from the threat of defamation and our moderators will use their discretion to remove posts that could potentially be viewed as such. Note that our Moderators are volunteers and whilst all care is taken we do not guarantee to review every post. Anyone who feels they have been defamed, or they believe a post contains defamatory information about another person, should send a Moderator Alert to ensure the post is reviewed.

Quite simply, if your post has been moderated, or you disagree with the fact that someone else's post was moderated, don't retaliate. Check the email you were sent, which explains why the post was removed. If you are upset over the handling of a moderated post, respond to the moderator using email (not online) and state your case politely. If you retaliate with threats, you will simply be ignored or banned for a period of time. See our Legal Threats Policy.

The Forum Moderators (Modsquad) also remove posts for administration reasons that are not related to breaches of the above Forum Rules. These are as follows:

Modsquad have removed a post upon request from the original poster.

Modsquad have removed a post due to an identified duplicate. This often occurs unwittingly by the original poster, and is usually due to the poster clicking Submit post more than once when loading the post to the Forum.