Marketplace rules — vendors must be staff-approved

Marketplace rules — vendors must be staff-approved

Marketplace & Listings is a small room with a long memory. These are the house rules; they are short because we would rather enforce a few things properly than list twenty and mean none of them.

The rules

1. Argue with the claim, never the person. Hard disagreement is the point of this board. Contempt is not, and it is the one thing that gets a post removed without discussion.
2. Say where it came from. A clinical claim needs a source, and “I read it somewhere” is an invitation to go and find where. Nobody is asked to cite their own experience — only to label it as experience.
3. No purchase links, anywhere. Not in a post, not in a signature, not by private message. Vendor discussion belongs in the review sections; vendor traffic belongs somewhere else.
4. Nothing here is medical advice, including anything written by a member who tells you what they do for a living. Take it to somebody who can examine you.
5. Declare an interest. If you have any commercial relationship with a supplier, say so in the post. Undisclosed promotion is the only offence here with no second chance.
6. Search first. Most questions have been answered at length, usually better than they will be answered again today.
7. Correct yourself in public. Editing a mistake away helps nobody; a correction underneath it helps the next person who made the same one.
8. No politics, no religion, and no diagnosing strangers.

How this is enforced

First time, a note from a moderator. Second time, a week off. Third time, permanently, and we do not debate it in the thread. Undisclosed promotion and scam posts skip straight to the third step.

Disagree with a decision? Message the moderators. Arguing about moderation inside a thread derails the thread, which is the actual harm.