Online Challenge Forum Posting Guidelines

[Ashwini]

First things first
The Forum is lightly facilitated by Google representatives based on
the guidelines outlined below. The moderators post with clarification
and additional information as needed, and remove spam and uphold these
posting guidelines. Such oversight is not guaranteed; we ask that you
take the initiative to read, follow, and remind others of these
guidelines.
• Avoid self-promotion. This user-to-user community is not intended as
a place for members to promote their products or services, even if
AdWords-related.
• Please read Google's Universal Terms of Service, the Terms of
Service for Google Help Forums, and the AdWords Terms and Conditions.
It's a lot to read, but we encourage you to take the time to learn the
terms.
• Check the AdWords Help Center and the Online Challenge FAQ. It pays
to know and use existing resources, so please become familiar with the
AdWords Help Center. We invite you to share any Help Center feedback
here, by the way, whether positive or negative.
• Search for the answer to your question before you ask it here.
Google loves search, and we think we do it pretty well. Still, if
everyone uses the great big search box at the top of the page, we can
avoid the repeat questions which sometimes make our regulars a bit
cranky. ;)

Ground rules

By posting in this forum, you agree to honor these ground rules.
Ignoring these ground rules may result in your post being removed as
spam. Repeat spammers will be removed from this group's membership and
may be subject to harsher penalties under the applicable Terms of
Service. We reserve the right to revise these rules at any point in
our efforts to keep the Forum clean, user-friendly, and safe - so
please check back from time to time. It's always been our goal to have
as few rules as possible, and we ask your help in making that
possible.
• Keep the conversation on the forum. Please don't contact other users
offline or ask others to contact you. This is key to protecting the
safety, security, and privacy of our members. In particular, please
don't use this community as a place to ask for - or offer - offline
assistance with AdWords accounts. There are serious security risks
inherent in doing so.
• Be respectful of forum member and advertiser privacy. Please don't
refer by name or provide information of any sort regarding other
members of this community or other AdWords advertisers.
• Be respectful of AdWords Support team privacy. If you've been in
contact with an AdWords employee, please don't name them in the forum.
And while you may certainly paraphrase the support responses you've
received, please don't quote them in full.
• Posts must be made by a person. We love nicknames (as long as
they're appropriate), but unless your legal name is a business name,
an email address, a URL, a phone number, etc, please don't use one of
these as your screen name. Also, please post under only one user name.
• Posts must be related to AdWords. Makes sense, right? If you have
questions about other Google products, check out other forums here by
clicking on the 'Help' link.
• Use of signatures. Please don't use your signature as a means of
overtly promoting yourself, your products, or your services. Please
keep your signatures short and sweet, with a maximum of one link, and
no other contact information. Detailed contact information may
certainly be included in your profile.
• Posts must be in English. We have forums in many other languages,
but this is the English forum - so please post in English.
• Posts must be labeled with the most appropriate category. For
instance, if your question is about billing and payments and your
discussion category is something other than 'billing & payments,' your
post might be removed.
• Post a question just once. Duplicate posts or very similar posts in
multiple categories might be removed.
• Posts must be family-safe. Posts with language likely to offend
might be removed.
• Posts must contribute to the discussion. Posts that promote products
or services might be removed, even if AdWords-related. Similarly,
personal attacks on other community members aren't allowed. Use links
in a post only if the link is truly necessary to the question being
asked.
• Refrain from mentioning email addresses. We want to protect the
privacy and security of our users. So, do not mention your email
address or any of the participants' email addresses.

Other best practices

• Be careful. Remember, your posts may be widely read - so please
don't post personal information of any kind. Especially, never post
your AdWords account ID or password, your mailing address, your phone
number, or bank account information of any sort.
• Be nice to each other. This is a community of people helping each
other with the Challenge, and we'd like to keep things friendly. Heck,
let's even aim for fun and upbeat. Posts which include strong personal
attacks on other group members might be removed. Also, refrain from
using strong language against each other. Let's keep the forum civil.
• Phrase your subject line as questions. This is a Q&A forum, and if
you make your question clear up front, you're more likely to get an
answer quickly.
• PLEASE DON'T SHOUT! Internet convention is that posts in ALL UPPER
CASE are the equivalent of SHOUTING AT YOUR READER, and they're
considered to be impolite.
• Be prepared to fight spam. We are all the 'owners' of this
community. To keep it healthy and fun, the moderators ask for your
help marking spam. To mark a question or an answer as spam, click on
the 'Report Abuse' link next to that post. Please check out the ground
rules (above) and the community spam rules (below) to determine which
posts are considered spam in the Forum.
• Enjoy yourselves! Build a great community - and become an even more
successful AdWords advertiser while doing it!

Community spam rules

In this forum, let's all make ourselves responsible for keeping the
community spam-free. Here are a few guidelines to help you decide
what's spam and what's not. This doesn't cover everything, of course,
but we hope it will help you make good decisions.
Spam:
• Any promotional, commercial, or adult content
• Multiple instances of the same post
• Mislabeled posts (example: a post about being billing & payments
that is labeled anything but billing and payments)
• Posts in languages other than English
• Posts outside of the 'Chit Chat' category that don't actually ask or
answer a question
• Posts which are overtly self promotional in their text and/or
signature
• Any other post that violates one of the ground rules above
Not spam:
• Posts that are negative toward Google and still related to AdWords
(it's OK, we can take it)
• Posts with content you don't agree with, excepting personal attacks