GoatWorld and Goat 411 Terms of Service and Access

Certain rules and restrictions are necessary to ensure the smooth operation of the GoatWorld Message Forum. These rules and restrictions are for the good of the Message Forum members and each of us are expected to abide by them accordingly. Each broken rule or restriction is dealt with on an individual basis.

1) Membership Costs
The GoatWorld Message Forum is a password protected, fee-based subscriber system. Cost to join the GoatWorld Message Forum is $12.00 per year, per family. Collected membership fees are used to further fund the GoatWorld web site as a whole and further develop other web site features as needed. The $12.00 fee is non-refundable but does allow you access to read and post messages in the Message Forum 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I feel this is a very small price to pay for the outstanding quality our members provide with their information and messages.

    1a) As stated above, Full Year Memberships at $12.00 are non-refundable. Subscriber Based Memberships at $6.00 per half-year are also non-refundable with the following exceptions:

      1b) Since "Subscriber" memberships are accomplished and paid through PayPal, there is a 3 day grace period in which your PayPal account has been charged for a recurring $6.00 membership subscription fee. If you request that your membership be cancelled within a 3 day period from when the PayPal charge was made to your account, that $6.00 charge will be returned to your account, and your account moved to the non-member category, or, deleted from the GoatWorld membership database entirely.

        1c) In dealing with PayPal subscriptions, if you wish to cancel your subscription at any time for any reason, you must do this through your PayPal account at the PayPal web site. I cannot manually delete your subscription from end at this time and will not be responsible for any charges incurred due to subscription difficulties with the PayPal system.

2) Account Duration and Expiration
Every account, either paid or unpaid, is periodically checked for login activity. To maintain an active account, the account must show a record of login activity not more than 45 days old otherwise that account will be deleted completely from the system. Inactive accounts which reside on our servers utilize valuable resources which can bog the performance of the overall system. No refunds either partial or in full are given to those accounts which have been deleted for inactivity.

3) Acceptable Use Policy
The use of profanity, vulgarity, or language that can be considered offensive to a "general audience" is strictly prohibited. The exception to this rule is that those terms which are defined as "medical" in nature are allowed. Please keep in mind that GoatWorld and the network it serves is a General Audience rated network. Your messages may be viewed by minors. There are many children and young adults who use the GoatWorld network for 4H, FFA and other educational purposes.

4) Libelous content is strictly prohibited to include messages that disparage other individuals, groups, opinions, companies, web sites, religious or politcal beliefs, lifestyles, goat management practices, etc. Example: a message contains information where person A discusses the actions, behaviour or opinions of Mr. B. - "Mr. B has no right to own goats because he is stupid and doesn't worm his goats with SafeGuard." This type of behavior is strictly prohibited.

5) Messages promoting other web sites, companies or services (see #8 for further details regarding this rule) are strictly prohibited. This includes using the Message Forum for trying to sell or promote your own products or services. I have specifically set up a FREE classified ads section which allows for this. The Message Forum is for information dealing with goats and any indirect care or concern for them as a result.

    5a) The GoatWorld Message Forum Free Classifieds is for posting ads which relate to your goats, products, or services. Links to other sites similar in nature are not allowed. For example, if you post a link to another Ad Service. What this means is that if you are only trying to post a link to another ad service without actually trying to post an ad for something you are offering, this is not allowed. However, if you have a goat, product, or service and the information for that goat, product, or service is contained within another ad service framework, that is allowed. If you have any question regarding this policy, please email before posting the ad.

      5b) In addition to the policy outlined in 5a, certain content and items are not allowed to be posted in the free ad service. Items that promote cruel or unusual treatment or practices to animals in general are not allowed. Items and content outside the everyday scope of GoatWorld is not allowed. An example would be the selling of body parts (there is a small section of people who seem to thrive on the purchase of goat skulls), or devices that could be injurious to the health and welfare of a goat. Again, if you have any question regarding this policy, please email before posting the ad.

6) The Message Forum is password protected in which each member is given his or her own account. Accounts are non-transferable between members. Revealing your username and password to others so that they may gain access to the Message Forum is strictly prohibited and will be dealt with by immediately terminating that members access privileges indefinitely with no refund of membership fee in any extent.

7) The use of all capital letters in a message body or subject line is strictly prohibited. Using all capital letters makes it very difficult for me to edit these types of messages and therefore, any messages that violate this rule will be deleted. Further action will be taken to terminate the offending members membership if this violation is continually repeated.

8) Links to other web sites are permitted. However, I reserve the right to delete those messages that contain direct links to web sites which are known to, or can be considered direct competitors of GoatWorld.com, especially in light of product sales or services. There is a very fine line for this rule and I do not wish to deter you from "recommending" other sites products or services, especially if they are helpful. But the bottom line for this rule is that if you are fully aware that GoatWorld sells thermometers and you post links to other sites that sell thermometers, this action will be viewed as detrimental to the focus of GoatWorld which is operating only to serve the goat industry as a whole. Every little bit of your support helps to achieve this mission.

9) In the past it has been optional to include your real name and email address with your messages. Since the Message Forum is now password protected and therefore secure from email harvesters, I feel that it is best (but not required) to include your real name and email address so that it helps to promote a spirit of trust and camaraderie amongst Message Forum members. First names only are acceptable as are first and last names - please use your own judgment. If you know that there are two or more members with the same first name, it is recommended that you use your first name and intial of your last name.

10) Monitoring, Moderation, Suspension and Deletion of Accounts may be accomplished by either the Board Moderator and/or other assigned Moderators. Should you encounter a message that is not prurient to the scope of the Message Forum, you are encouraged to contact a moderator at any level to report the message so that it may be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

11) The GoatWorld Message Forum Terms of Service and Access may be revised at any time to reflect the continuous changes in Internet Technology. Any changes that are perceived to be necessary will be discussed from time to time within the Message Forum itself and ammended to this page as required.

These registration requirements and policies are current as of February 23rd, 2008.

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