Forum Rules

General

The Astrodienst Forum is part of the Astrodienst website and is open to all registered users. In the forum you can discuss astrological topics and give feedback concerning products and services of Astrodienst as well as the website www.astro.com.
The forum is moderated. Moderators are authorised to block, move or delete posts and to move or close threads. Posts can be deleted by moderators without justification. This applies especially to posts which are:

racist, offensive, dishonourable, hateful, harmful to young people, politically, religiously or otherwise extremist, pornographic or sexist, criminal, defamatory, damaging to business, or otherwise unacceptable or against the law. Predictions of death or fatal deseases are not permitted, and such questions should not be asked in the forum.

The same applies if you use the forum for business or advertising purposes, including offers of free astrological, psychological or healing services. Users who do not abide by these rules, will be barred from the forum.

Violation of Forum Rules

In order to ensure smooth functioning and a friendly atmosphere in the forum, we ask forum members who notice a violation of forum rules to inform the forum master by e-mail forummaster@astro.com. Please indicate in which thread the violation took place and which rules were violated.

Protection of Personal Data

Astrological data are highly sensitive. We therefore ask you to take the protection of personal data of third persons very seriously. If you wish to post the chart of a person known to you, you must have their permission to do so or anonymise the name and all birth / personal data. If this is not the case, please refrain from posting this chart. Please respect the privacy of those around you!
You may, however, post charts of public persons whose birth data are generally known.

Data Protection Policy

E-mail addresses of forum users will not be published, unless they decide to do so when they register. However, we do not recommend this. It is prohibited to collect e-mail addresses from the forum for advertising purposes or other forms of mass communication. We also recommend to NEVER publish credit card data, invoice or customer numbers, phone numbers or other private data in the forum!

Publication of PMs or E-mails

Sometimes forum moderators or administrators send emails or private messages to forum members which may also contain criticism of a forum member's posting practice or content.

It is customary on the Internet to reply to private emails in private and not to publish them without permission by the sender of the email. We also expect this from the forum users in respect to any messages they receive privately from other forum members or moderators. Publishing a private message is considered a violation of forum rules.

If a recipient feels offended or harassed by private messages from other forum users, please complain by email to forummaster@astro.com or webmaster@astro.com so that we can review the case. Please include a copy of the offending message. This is also applicable if the sender is a forum moderator or administrator. We guarantee that we will discuss the issue openly within the moderation team.

Names and Nicknames

It is recommended that users use their real names as forum names. Users are generally free to choose the name they wish to use in the forum. However, should there be a danger of confusion (whether intentionally or unintentionally) with the name of a moderator or other established and important forum member, the moderator has the right to change this name or demand it to be changed. In this sense, there is not a free choice of name. It is always possible to choose your complete personal name (first name and surname) if it is not taken. If it is taken, a number may be added. Any member has a right to this name but to no other.

If there have been conflicts which involve aggressive postings, the forum administration may ask a forum member to use only his/her full real name for any future postings. This is because protection by anonymity can with sompe people induce a behaviour which they would never display under their full open name.

Please note that the forum user name can only contain letters and digits, including up to two spaces or underscores and up to one dot (.) character. The user name must begin with a non-accented letter or a digit.

It is not allowed to take part in discussions under multiple identities. Each user of the forum must not have more than one forum identity. Violation of this rule results in immediate banning from the forum. Forum moderators are excepted from this rule, they usually have a private identity aside of their moderator role.

Important note: Forum Administration can request from anonymous forum members that they provide proof and documentation of their real identity, including full name, address and phone number. This information will be kept confidential by the forum administration.

Copyright of third party text and images

All text and images published in books, articles and websites is subject to copyright, it is somebody's intellectual property. Unless it is clearly stated by the holder of the copyright that republication is permitted, it is not allowed to take text or images from one publication and publish it elsewhere, for example on this forum.
Before any copied material can be published in a forum posting, the permission of the holder of the copyright must have been obtained. An exception are a few lines of quotes, where the original contribution of the person posting must be considerable longer than the quoted material, and the number of quoted lines does not exceed ten.
Astrodienst cannot watch all postings for violation of copyright, but once Astrodienst is informed of such a violation, it is obliged to remove the copied material to avoid legal consequences.

Indicating sources for quoted text

It is vital that even for legally obtained text published on the forum which does not originate from the posters themselves the original source is given. This applies particularly to quotes from astrological software, astrological interpretation handbooks or courses, etc. Quoting third party text disguised as one's own is considered a severe violation of copyright as well as forum rules and can lead to immediate exclusion from the forum.

Private Messages and access by forum administration

Private messages (PM) serve the purpose of private communication between forum members, invisible to the public forum. This medium allows the exchange of confidential information, discussion of details or uttering opinions which one would not utter in public.
The forum administration and moderators respect the private character of this means of communication. They do not usually read PM other than their own. There are, however, situations in which (global) moderators access PM of a member. This happens, for example, when they are informed about insults or harassment in PM. There have also been cases of people launching advertising campaigns via PMs. And unfortunately, there have been incidents of organised distribution of rumours and campaigns against individual forum members or moderators.
When forum administration or moderators find out about such situations, they can access the private messages of this particular sender in order to verify the facts of the case before possibly intervening. This is also part of the duties of the website and forum operators.

No Chatting

The forum is intended for meaningful discussion of astrological subjects. It is not a chat room, where two or several members exchange short messages in fast sequence. Chatting in this style is allowed via PM between individual members, within limits, but not in a public forum thread. The better choice is to publish one's chat contact information in the profile, and to use chatting software outside the astro.com website. Sex chats or exchange of links regarding sexually explicit content are not acceptable even when kept strictly within the PM system.

Feedback

You can write feedback to Astrodienst in the respective board. However, do not post questions, problems or complaints concerning a product you have purchased. Please contact our order department in such cases. Technical problems can be reported by using the 'report a problem' link at the bottom of the page.

Copyright

All content a forum member writes in his/her forum postings remain under the copyright of the forum member. This applies also to images a member uploads to the forum. The forum member grants however the right to publish the posting in the forum to Astrodienst. Astrodienst is free to delete the posting at a later time.

Aside of that, all content of this website is subject to Astrodienst copyright.

Limitation for new users at www.astro.com

To be allowed write in the forum, a new member must have been an active user of www.astro.com for a certain period of time. Being an 'active user' means that this user has stored a certain number of natal data on the website, that he or she has used a certain number of charts or other services and that a certain amount of time has passed since the first visit under the same identity at www.astro.com.

If you feel unfairly restricted by this limitation, please write to webmaster@astro.com to request an exception. Please include the email address you used for the forum registration, your forum nickname and your real name and location in such a request.

The purpose of this limitation is to protect the forum from intruders who are not really part of the community but want to post in the forum in total anonymity, using a very recently created profile. Such users have sometimes contributed offensive messages, and the forum community needs to be protected from them.