Hi Guys,

Sorry about all of the confusion with this. Just as you are all getting used to a new forum, so are we. Some valid issues have been brought up regarding appropriate forum content and we should probably discuss this a bit further. I'll try to explain our stand while answering some questions...(not to pick on this one poster, but you hit some key points)...

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Since no rules had ever been posted, and no one ever objected before, I thought we were ok until told otherwise.

Okay, we dropped the ball here. You are correct, these things should have been brought up much earlier and we will try to bring up any issues in a more timely manner.

This does mean that we moderators will be a bit more of a presence on the forums, but we have no intentions of smothering you guys. Have fun here. If a pic or something is out of line, we'll edit it and perhaps send you a message. Please just take it in stride, learn and move on. It really isn't a major infraction. At least the pics we've seen so far weren't too major.

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I thought we were pretty much all adults here. I thought I was probably one of the youngest members. I didn’t think kids would visit here, since they probably couldn’t afford / would have no interest in high end knives.

While we use the statement that children should be able to browse this forum, and Dan mentioned that his children actually do, take this as a simple guideline for you to judge your content. Whether forumites browse the forum with children sitting on their knee or even just a coworker or spouse looking over our shoulder. Pick a similar circumstance to use to guide the content of your posts. I can't imagine that any of these would be circumstances where a picture of dog genetalia is appropriate, for example.

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...AND relevent to knives? Come on, please don’t make it that boring. There’s more to life than just knives. And what about the outdoors & fieldcraft forum? That would mean no pics at all there because it’s not a knife forum? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> What about nature photos? That mean they aren’t ok unless there’s a knife in them?

What about pics related to the post being discussed? For instance, I started a post about dehydrators, and posted some related dehydrator pics. It makes for much more interesting reading when you have pics related to the posts being discussed. And sometimes you don’t understand what’s being discussed unless you see a pic to help you understand.

Sometimes we want to show some outdoor gear that we have purchased, or are considering. It helps others to better understand with pics. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say.

And we could post comedy pics too or whatever and keep it clean. Just needed to know the boundries is all. I’ve had over 1000 posts at Rat Chat with no warnings about content. How about pics are ok as long as we keep it clean and family friendly? Pleeeeeeeeease?

While we are certainly a different company and different group of people, the Rat Chat forum is a great environment and could safely be used as a guide for the appropriateness of forum content. In short, if it won't fly on Rat Chat, it won't fly here. There are certainly many examples of appropriate postings and pictures that are not directly knife related. The examples that you mention here are all very good.

Again, if we edit your posts, please just take it in stride and learn from it. Be aware that this is a gray area and we will all need to use our best judgement. We will learn these boundaries together.

Feel free to let us know if you have any questions about this and thank you all for your cooperation.