The Elance Water Cooler is a place where Elance customers gather to connect and meet one another as well as learn and share information. Because the Water Cooler relies on the active participation of Elance customers and employees, we have created a set of Guidelines to facilitate a welcoming and supportive environment in the Water Cooler area, and we ask that you abide by them.
The Guidelines are of critical importance because we believe that a positive, nurturing environment will enable our community of Elance customers and Elance employees to share, grow and learn with each other. You can help create a rich learning environment by maintaining a positive attitude and learning spirit when posting on the Water Cooler.
Keep in mind that your posts are visible to all of our members and visitors, searchable by topic, keywords and phrases. In the future, they will also be linked to your service provider or buyer profile page.
Elance regularly monitors and moderates content on the Water Cooler area. Violations of the Guidelines or the Elance Terms of Service or Site Policy may result in removal of the offending content, issuance of a warning to the offending person and/or a temporary or permanent ban from the Elance Water Cooler area. Please note that decisions on violations are considered final.
Content that is no longer moderated or could be confusing to new members because it is inaccurate or outdated is moved to the Archives section of Elance Talk. Content moved to Elance Archives remains accessible and searchable, but new comments are not accepted.
DOs
- Join the conversation, or start a new one! Elancers are interested in your experience and would love to learn from you. Please contribute your knowledge, questions, insights and experience, including links to relevant content that will help inform the conversation. Remember, only post copyrighted material when you have the permission of the copyright owner.
- Be a good co-worker and treat others with respect. Always be polite and professional when interacting on the Water Cooler. Elancers are your co-workers, and should be treated with respect, even if there is disagreement. Also, please help maintain the privacy of others by not posting another member’s picture or text without their permission.
- Keep it clean. The Elance Water Cooler is a public forum and our workplace. Please help keep the Water Cooler clean by clicking the ‘inappropriate’ link next to potentially offending content. Also, do not engage in spamming the forums with multiple posts of the same content or with unrelated content such as non-Elance contests or giveaways. Also, part of keeping it clean is categorizing your remarks in the appropriate category.
DON'Ts
- Do not post unless you are over the age of 18 and are a current registered Elance member.
- Profanity will not be tolerated.
- Do not post disparaging remarks about another member, project description, person or business.
- Do not post content from private emails.
- Do not post adult content of any kind.
- Do not post threatening, racist, abusive, hateful, violent, or obscene language.
- Never post any personal contact information of yourself or others.
- Do not promote, advertise or solicit services outside of Elance.
- Do not promote, advertise or solicit bids on currently posted Elance projects.
- Do not include links to your own website.
- Do not include links to buyer's project descriptions.
- Do not post a "laundry list" or "rant" about a set of issues without recommending or suggesting a potential solution.
- Do not post a new topic in the Buyer Community Help Desk category unless you are an Elance buyer or are asking questions about becoming an Elance buyer. If you are a service provider, you can reply to topics in the Buyer Community Help Desk, but you cannot originate a topic.
Elance reserves the right to remove any post at any time.
