Background

This Message Board, and the entire site of which it is a part, is served from a University of California, Riverside computer. Because of the public funding which supports this computer, there can be no commercial advertising on the board.

This board has been in operation since November 1996 as part of my Baja California Information Pages website. Due to my increasing retirement travel, the burden of moderating the board has fallen more and more on the shoulders of the other moderators. Much of the credit for a successful board goes to those volunteers.

The personnel who keep this board running - ourselves, and the many others who provide information and, occasionally, maintenance support - do so as a volunteer effort. Irresponsible use of the message posting facility requires that we take time out of our normal activities to "clean things up." We all appreciate not having to do this.

Prohibited Postings

If you wish to post a message which you feel might be "borderline" relative to the prohibitions listed below, please correspond with the moderator by email so any misunderstandings can be cleared up before the message is actually posted.

Advertisements

For the reason cited above, we cannot allow (free) advertising space for either commercial or private interests. Offering "for a fee" advertising puts us in competition with commercial sites, and operating a business off a publically-funded computer - another area we must stay away from.

There are other formats for posting classified ads - see, for example, the Classifieds Board at the Amigos de Baja site: www.bajanet.com/Classified.

Non-Baja California postings

Such postings do not fit the basic goal of this site, namely, to provide information to travelers to Baja California. Furthermore, they clutter up the message board, leaving less space for the Baja-related postings.

Some of the most flagrant examples of this, which are removed immediately, are:

• Announcements of "get-rich-quick" schemes.
  
  
• Political speeches.
  
  
• Religious speeches.
  
  

In such cases, no effort to contact the poster will be made.

Personal Chatting

When two posters begin a personal conversation using the Message Board as the medium for their correspondence, the board can get overloaded with postings which have no relevance to the other readers. If we notice such congestion developing, our policy is to remove such postings. In such cases, the individuals should shift to email, which is where such back and forth chatting should have been taking place.

Copyrighted Material

We cannot allow copyrighted material to be posted to the board. Such postings will be immediately removed, probably without notification to the poster. This policy has to extend to any materials which the moderators feel might be copyrighted - we're not willing to spend time researching the background of materials which might be copyrighted. Nor are we in the position of simply being able to accept a poster's assurance that the material is not under copyright protection. Common example of this involve the posting of maps or articles taken from the Internet site of a newspaper or magazine.

"Irresponsible" Postings

This is generally a difficult call. If a posting is Baja-related and non-commercial, yet seems irresponsible for some reason, an effort will usually be made to contact the poster prior to removal of the posting. (If the poster does not leave a valid email address, the posting will be removed immediately.) One thing to note is that any follow-up messages in the thread headed by the irresponsible posting will vanish without notice.

There are several ways in which this problem arises. One is the unnecessary "wisecrack" or "flame." If the comment contributes nothing useful to the discussion, then the posting will be removed. Typically, such postings are done anonymously, or with a false email address.

Another area where this has come up is in what might be called mud-slinging. A posting which simply slanders some person or persons, or a business, without discussing the background of the problem, is a candidate for removal. If such slandering is done anonymously, the posting will be removed immediately.

Fred Metcalf