The Voice of Tennessee Real Estate

Tennessee Real Estate Network Community Guidelines

Tennessee Real Estate Network Community Guidelines

Welcome to the Tennessee Real Estate Network. Feel free to share, connect, communicate and contribute to the conversation about Tennessee real estate. Before you participate, please take a few minutes to read our guidelines.

The Tennessee Real Estate Network is the place to talk about Tennessee real estate online. It is a forum where real estate agents can communicate to the public about the state of their local real estate market, and it is also a place where clients, consumers, colleagues, friends, family, residents and others can talk back and contribute to the conversation about living the Tennessee lifestyle.

A great place to start is building your online profile, because you want to have a face that represents you and your interests. Whether you’re a local, a second-homeowner, a client, a buyer, a seller or a friend, start a profile for you personally and your business separately if you like. Announce to the world what you stand for, and bring something to the conversation. But please refrain from blatant self-promotion.

We want our community to be comfortable, thought-provoking, helpful, safe and easy to use. The Tennessee Real Estate Network is deeply committed to including a wide range of views in our forums, groups and blog postings.

The Tennessee Real Estate Network offers an unprecedented meeting place online where people from all walks of life can discuss the Tennessee real estate market and this region’s unique lifestyle. Our community policies are based on our belief that everyone has a right to free expression, and that by talking openly with others, we can all become better informed and make more educated decisions about buying, selling or living in Tennessee.

To that end, we respect individual differences in philosophies, beliefs, opinions, and work styles, and we expect our community members to do the same. Please note that users who violate these guidelines may be sent a warning and, if necessary, be banned from the network.

Your Rights and Responsibilities

Please bear in mind that all of the material you read in our community areas comes from other members. Because our community is large, the Tennessee Real Estate Network doesn't monitor or verify all the information posted by our members. The comments, opinions, and statements posted on our bulletin boards, forums, groups and chats don't necessarily reflect the views of the host and sponsor, which is the Career Institute.

The information posted on our boards and blog postings, including advice and opinions, is the responsibility of those members who create the posts. Please consult your business advisers or other qualified professionals before relying on information you find in the community areas. The Tennessee Real Estate Network and the Career Institute is not responsible for the accuracy of posts and is not liable for any damage or loss that may result from your reliance on what other members have said.

The Tennessee Real Estate Network communications, including blogs, group discussion and forum posts, are public and not private communications. The Tennessee Real Estate Network reserves the right to modify and publish, both on our site and in other media, any information you post in our community areas. Please note that the material you post may be indexed by search engines such as Yahoo and Google.

Community staff and volunteer hosts may use your membership email to contact you regarding your messages in our community. You're responsible for keeping your email address active and updated. Failure to keep your email address updated may result in your being banned until we can confirm that you have a valid email address associated with your Tennessee Real Estate Network membership.

Keep your login information, including your password, private. Sharing of memberships or screen names is not allowed and may result in your being banned. The Tennessee Real Estate Network accepts no responsibility for use of your membership or computer by third parties, with or without your permission.

Post honestly and in good faith, with the intention to support, share, and inform. We don't welcome people who disrupt our community and create additional work for our hosts or staff. If we believe that you're posting with the intent to cause disruption or harm to your fellow members' community experience or enjoyment, you may be banned.

The Tennessee Real Estate Network has the right to delete any post and ban any user, with or without notice, at any time and for any reason, including, without limitation, our judgment that the user has violated these community guidelines.

The Tennessee Real Estate Network has no obligation to delete content that you find personally objectionable or offensive. By using the community areas you are agreeing to abide by our guidelines and to submit to their interpretation and enforcement by our staff.

We reserve the right to modify or change these guidelines without notice.

Privacy Guidelines

Never provide your password, telephone numbers, or home address to anyone online. Be very careful about responding to solicitations for interviews or research. Note, however, that the Tennessee Real Estate Network editors might invite you to respond to such solicitations from time to time.

Never divulge any private or personal information about another person online. That includes the person's real name or address, email address, and any other personal information that the person has not asked you to make public.

Don't forward or post private messages that someone has sent to you unless you have his or her permission. Only send email to another Tennessee Real Estate Network member if he or she has given you expressed permission. Please don't solicit other members' personal information.

The email address you provide is for our use only, unless you provide it to other members. By accepting friendships on the Tennessee Real Estate Network, you take full responsibility for any email you receive.

The Tennessee Real Estate Network does not monitor such communications and will not intervene between members who use this function. The only way to keep from receiving undesirable email is to remove the offending member from your friends list and not share your email address.

Members of the Tennessee Real Estate Network community sometimes organize donations, gift exchanges, reunions, and other offline activities. Such arrangements are private and are not sponsored, vetted, or hosted by the Tennessee Real Estate Network. You participate at your own risk.

If you're looking for subjects to interview or participants for a study, please contact the Community Manager to ask for permission before querying the Tennessee Real Estate Network community.

Screen Names

We are building a community for personal and business interaction, so we encourage you to use your real name. Adding a last name is up to you.

If you choose to be anonymous, please choose a screen name that's in good taste. If you select one that we deem to be vulgar, obscene or that misrepresents you to others, we'll ask you to change your name. If you do not change your name within seven calendar days we may ban you.

We also map your general location using a Google Geo-mapping feature to give members a general sense of where you live. This is for networking and to shrink the universe.

Anyone who tries to impersonate a Tennessee Real Estate Network staff member, writer, expert, host, or other user — or who creates a screen name in order to hide their identity while violating our guidelines — will be banned immediately, permanently and without notice.

Profiles

Nothing contained in a member's profile may violate the Tennessee Real Estate Network's community guidelines in any way. Examples of violations include, but are not limited to links to inappropriate material, advertising other than your real estate related home page and foul language.

Images and Video

You are welcome to share photos, videos and audio on the Tennessee Real Estate Network, as long as they're consistent with our guidelines and relevant to the conversation about Tennessee real estate or Tennessee lifestyle.

Be sure you own the rights to post these images online before uploading them to the Tennessee Real Estate Network. Content found to be in violation of copyright will be deleted immediately and without notice.

We strongly encourage uploading a photo of you or an image that reflects you and your business or personality.

Insults, Libel and Threats

Insulting another community member is never acceptable, even in the liveliest of debates. Please note that in a debate, you can state that another member's point of view is wrong, misguided, or uninformed and still be within the guidelines.

We take personal attacks and insults on debate threads very seriously. We reserve the right to end or delete any discussion if, in our sole judgment, it has wandered from being a healthy discussion into an exchange of attacks and insults.

We do not allow religious or political debates on the Tennessee Real Estate Network with the exception of real estate related legislation and the rules and policies of the Tennessee Real Estate Commission including lobbying efforts by organization w.

External Web Sites

It's fine to mention, link to, or discuss other web sites, including your own, that may be of interest to our members, as long as the websites you refer to are consistent with our guidelines and not intended to blatantly promote or advertise.

Blatant advertisements are not allowed in blog posts and will be deleted without notice.

Community Areas

To participate in our community areas (forums, groups, etc.) you agree to the following:

Don't post any advertising, promotional materials, referrals, junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation.
Don't post anything obscene, vulgar, sexually explicit, illegal, harmful, insulting, threatening, abusive, harassing, humiliating, embarrassing, defamatory, libelous, untrue, invasive of someone else's privacy, or objectionable (in our discretion).
Don't post with the intent to disrupt or disturb the community or to interfere with other members' use and enjoyment of our community.
Don't attack character or damage the reputation of other members, name-call, insult, ridicule, harass, mock, or otherwise verbally assault other members.
Don't post anything hateful — including targeting race, class, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, weight, or disability.
Don't create a screen name to hide your identity while violating our guidelines.
Don't post or link to inappropriate content. Inappropriate content is anything the Tennessee Real Estate Network deems obscene or vulgar, including graphic images or stories.
Don't post writings, photos, or videos that you don't have the right to publish, or violate any copyright or other proprietary rights in your posts. That includes excerpting published articles without the author or owner's permission.
Don't transfer issues or posts from one bulletin board to another with the intention of drawing negative attention to the post.
Don't hit and run. Please don't go to a board where you don't ordinarily post simply to point out the wrongness of another poster or group's actions, beliefs, or comments.
Don't use all capital letters in your chat or bulletin board postings unless you REALLY MEAN TO YELL!
Don't post the same message more than once multiple forums or on groups. Having, for example, five groups on Nashville is not going to benefit anyone, unless, of course, it’s defined uniquely. For example: Nashville versus Memphis is unique and may attract unique members.
Don't flood. This includes repeatedly "bumping" a thread, disrupting an online chat event by entering the same phrase over and over again, or otherwise using up bandwidth for no reason.
Don't post on behalf of banned members. If you do this, you may be banned without notice or warning.

Spamming and Self-promotion

We understand the desire for members to use the Tennessee Real Estate Network as a way to promote themselves and their businesses. We want to encourage this to some degree, but there are acceptable and unacceptable ways to do this.

You may not directly advertise or promote yourself en masse to the membership (unless they are your friend or in a group) in any comment, any blog, any forum discussion or any media. The appropriate way to attract attention is to be a periodic contributor of valued content to the site. A brief plug at the end of contributed content is generally acceptable.

If you would like to advertise your company, products or services to the membership at large, please contact us about a potential partnership.

The Tennessee Real Estate Network is sponsored by and hosted by the Career Institute which is a provider of TREC approved pre-licensing and continuing education. A serious violation of the Tennessee Real Estate Network community is poaching or directly soliciting Tennessee Real Estate Network members using Tennessee Real Estate Network internal messaging technology for competitive purposes. We are not against competitors or competition, present and future. However, using the Tennessee Real Estate Network internal email messaging and the Tennessee Real Estate Network technology or platform to post a self promoting blog, discussion, or comment on any profile wall with the intent to advertise a competitive web site is in violation of our community guidelines and subject to immediate ban, and probable legal prosecution.

Violations of Community Guidelines

If you violate the Tennessee Real Estate Network community guidelines, you may be contacted individually by community staff. Your actions may result in a warning, a suspension, or permanent banning from participation in our community. If you poach and solicit Tennessee Real Estate Network members using Tennessee Real Estate Network messaging, you will be prosecuted. We do not publicly discuss or announce warnings, suspensions or banning.

Banning is done at the community staff's discretion and is the result of our sole determination of a member's demonstrated inability or disinclination to follow our guidelines. We reserve the right to ban any member at any time for any reason, with or without warning.

If a thread that contains a violation of these guidelines has information that's useful to the original poster or other members of the site, it may be edited or locked. However, if in our sole judgment, a thread was created for the purpose of violating the guidelines, violates enough guidelines to be irredeemable, or contains no otherwise useful information, it may be removed.

Because of the size of our community, we can't monitor all posts on the site. If you see a message you believe violates our guidelines, please contact us.