Ground rules...

[Bergie]

Hello,

It's odd for me to be in the Garden Railways portion of the Trains.com forums... I'm used to policing the Trains or MR portions instead. You guys are typically the model citizens... however...

For those who don't know who I am, I oversee the entire Trains.com site. Rene, bless her heart, does all the GR.com updates and participates in the forums... which helps me greatly.

For those who have heard my lecture about the general guidelines of our forums, please bear with me...

Basically, we give you free reign to discuss your hobby, with the following exceptions:
- no swearing
- no name calling
- no discussions about politics or religion (nothing will be gained in either case... these are topics that will only ruin friendships, so we don't allow them)

Now, when I say you have free reign to discuss your hobby, I understand that conversations will occassionaly stray from discussing our hobby. While we'd like you to discuss your hobby, we understand that friendships are built and fostered via our forum and there are going to be times when off topic discussions arise. We simply ask that they don't go overboard.

Finally, concerning your freedom of speech... If you say something that we deem inappropriate, it will be removed. We're not going to let name-calling flame wars ruin the otherwise great exchange of ideas and information. So, say whatever you want, unless it's inappropriate and lacks complete disregard for other members. If you get so mad at a statement that someone else made, get up from your computer, go outside, and walk around the block. You'll be amazed who easy it is to cool off. This isn't life and death, it's a hobby. We're all in this together, after all, isn't that what brought us to this forum?

As always, if you ever see anything inappropriate, please let us know. I think that the best feature of our forums - besides the great exchange of information -is that our readers actively help police them. If you need to contact us, e-mail Rene at [e-mail] or me at [e-mail].

Thanks for all your great contributions to our forums.

Erik

[I've locked this so we can move on...]