Cramster Q&A board – Terms of Service and Conduct
The following sets out the terms and conditions of service and conduct ("Terms of Service and Conduct" or "TSC") governing your access to and use of the Cramster Q&A board ("Q&A board"). These Terms of Service and Conduct are in addition to, and are incorporated into, the Terms of Use for the Cramster.com web site ("Web Site").
The Q&A board permits Premium Members and Free Members to submit and review questions, responses and commentary on solutions and their associated problems, including for review and response by Cramster subject matter experts ("SME") or by other Members and Visitors. Premium Member and Free Member categories are defined in the Terms of Use, including the registration and subscription requirements for each level of membership and the rights of access of each Member level to the various Web Site services and facilities.
Submissions, Responses and Karma Points
Submissions should contain only one topic or question, for example, one or more related queries about one full problem or its solution (or part of thereof), as and also should contain the statement of the problem or the attempted solution calculation, as set out or in or in reference to the applicable course, homework, class or lecture material, such that an SME or Member without the applicable material may understand the submission. It will be considered a violation of these TSC to (a) submit more than one topic or question per submission, or similarly to respond to more than one topic per posting, (b) to make submissions or postings containing merely a request or a response for a solution to a particular problem, or (c) to submit or post a response that does not provide a solution or answer to a problem or question but merely serves to hold the "first response" classification for the problem or question (for example, submitting responses such as "I'm working on it" or "I'll provide solution soon," etc.), including so as to gain or preserve Q&A board status or rating, or gain Karma Points, without providing a solution or answer. Further, Members are prohibited from submitting wholesale any course, homework, class and lecture requirements to the Q&A board. Cramster or the applicable SME or moderator may reject any such submissions without notice. Without limiting the foregoing, and as set out in the Terms of Use for the Web Site, the Q&A board is made available merely as an informational and study aid and should not be considered a substitute for applicable course, homework, class and lecture requirements, assignments and related materials or for applicable course, class and lecture attendance.
Cramster will give priority to those submissions made by Members based upon their "karma points" status on the Q&A board, as further described in the
Karma Points web page, wherein Members earn karma points based upon their responses to questions posted by other Members, and lose karma points based upon submissions or responses (including responses to submissions by other Members and Visitors) that are in violation of these TSC, as further described below, or are considered an abuse of the Karma Points Program, as further described in the Terms of Use. Premium Members also get priority response on the Q&A board whereby a Member is awarded 1 additional bonus point for answering a monthly-subscription Premium Member's question and 2 additional bonus points for answer an annual-subscription Premium Member's question (as such Premium Member level is identified in the question posting).
Members may review and respond to any Q&A board submissions posted for all Members thereby earning karma points. When a forum is moderated by an SME, questions to which the SMEs respond are prioritized based on the board status of the Member submitting the question. As you earn karma points when you respond to submissions of and help other Members, as indicated in the table below, your priority for getting a response from an SME to your submission is higher when you respond to and help other Members. You earn karma points when your answer is rated by the Member who asked the question. The Member "asker" has 7 days from when you provided the answer to rate your response. After such time, an SME will rate the answer. If the Member "asker" fails to provide a rating within the 7-day period, the Member's Respect Rating ratio (based on the number of questions asked and the number of answers rated) will be reduced proportionately by Cramster.
A Member's karma points are a numerical representation of a Member's board status, as indicated in the Karma Points web page, with each level of board status corresponding to a Member's total karma points (including Karma Points that are redeemed). You may redeem your karma points for items listed on the Karma Points Rewards web page on the Web Site, but remember that you can also lose karma points for submissions that violate these TSC, as also indicated in the Karma Points web page and the Terms of Use, as well as face termination of your access to the Q&A board and/or your Cramster account, as described in the section "User Conduct" below. However, you do not lose any board level status as a result of redeeming your karma points, whether for credit towards Premium membership or for other redemption items. Cramster may assign board levels of karma points in its sole discretion, as well as determine karma point credit and redemption amounts and requirements in its sole discretion (as further described in the Karma Points Program).
If you make a submission to Cramster for review by its SMEs, Cramster will endeavor to respond promptly, however, Cramster makes no guarantee or warranty as to review or response periods, times or service levels nor makes any warranty as to the quality, accuracy or completeness of the content of any such review and response. Further, Cramster makes no warranty as to review or response periods, times or service levels, quality, accuracy or completeness of the content of any review and response by Members. You acknowledge that SMEs and other forum managers are not authorized agents or spokesperson for Cramster and are not authorized to bind Cramster, and their communications do not necessarily reflect those of Cramster.
User Conduct
The Q&A board is a facility for submission and review of questions, responses and commentary on solutions and their associated problems only, and not for submission, posting, discussion, disclosure, statement, discourse or other communication on any other matters or issues. In using the Q&A board, including making and responding to submissions and postings, you agree not to use the Q&A board in violation of the following user conduct prohibitions and restrictions.
1. Offensive Postings and Prohibited Statements
You may not make submissions or postings of an offensive nature, including those that contain:
vulgar, profane, or sexually explicit language
race, religion, sexual orientation or preference, culture, ethnicity, handicap, nationality, or gender as a means of insult
threatening, harassing, defamatory, hate-speech, or libelous language, or
descriptions or details about any sexual act or sexual organs
Further, you may not make any:
Posting of or for links to or material from pornographic, obscene, or hate-speech web sites, or
Posting of or for links to web sites with offensive content as similarly described above
In addition, you may not make submissions or postings that contain statements, phrases or terms indicating or expressing a racial, religious, sexual orientation, cultural, political, social, ethnic or national position or preference of any kind.
2. Censor Bypassing
You may not attempt to bypass the Q&A board's censor used to help prevent offensive submissions and postings. The Q&A board is programmed with a list of words that are considered vulgar and are not permitted in submissions or postings, including in titles or information pages. Attempting to bypass the censor, such as by misspelling, inserting spaces or symbols, transposing letters, using look-alike symbols, is prohibited.
3. User Flaming
You may not make submissions or postings that are insulting, directly or indirectly, to other board Members or Visitors, individually or as a group, including direct or indirect insults, insinuations and name-calling.
4. Trolling or Inciting Flames
You may not make submissions or postings intended to annoy or offend other Members or Visitors, individually or as a group, including by:
Provoking other Members and Visitors users to respond with flames
Making misleading topic titles
Asking obviously useless questions
Posting false information as fact
Performing or Inciting Illegal Activities
5. Performing or Inciting Illegal Activities
You may not make submissions or posts that violate or incite others to violate any applicable law, including postings of or for (including links to):
Illegal copies of copyrighted software (ROMs, Warez), music (MP3s), movies, videos, or any other type of media
Methods of circumventing copyright protection (Cracks, No-CD Patches, CD Keys, mod chips)
Illegal copies of copyrighted materials, including books, lecture notes and solution manuals
Infringing reprints of content or material from other web sites
6. Spamming
You may not make submissions or posts that advertise any other service or product than Cramster products or services or other products or services advertised with permission on this Web Site, including:
Unsolicited commercial or personal web site advertisements
For-Sale/For-Trade/For-Auction/Wanted notices
"Make Money Fast" scams, chain letters, and pyramid schemes
Advertising for other answer or message boards
You are prohibited from including a web site address in a posting signature, requesting comments on one's personal site, or providing an interesting or relevant link to another site more than once.
7. Irrelevant or Disruptive Posting
You are not permitted to make submissions or postings that are unrelated or disruptive to the purposes of the Q&A board, including postings designed to get multiple posts with little or no content or have nothing to do with the Q&A board's, or the particular forum's, subject matter, or postings that contain items or content intended to disrupt the Q&A board for other users, such as:
Message posts or topic titles that force browsers to scroll horizontally
Large blank or content-free posts
"Bumping" multiple older topics (posting in them well after the last post)
Posting multiple identical or near-identical messages or topics, including "fad" topics
Hard-to-read topic titles (e.g., ALL CAPS, AlTeRnAtE cApS, no spaces, no or excessive punctuation)
Posting multiple hard-to-read or nonsensical messages in a single or multiple topics
8. Impersonating or Harassing
You may not make submissions or postings that attempt to impersonate, falsely make claim to be, or appear to be coming from, other Members or Visitors, for example, by creating or using a user account with a name clearly intended to impersonate, mock or antagonize another Member or Visitor. Further, you may not make submissions or postings that are intended to harass or intimidate individuals or groups or create an offensive or hostile environment on the Q&A board, even where the submission or posting does not contain an explicit or implicit threat.
9. Unauthorized Accessing or Posting
You may not access any other Member's account, nor post another's private or personal information without appropriate permission.
10. Bugs, Robots and Other Automated Programs
You may not use or introduce bugs, robot or other any other automated browsing or posting programs on the Q&A board server at any time.
11. Other Prohibitions
In addition to activities prohibited above or elsewhere in this Q&A board TSC, aAny other activity that is clearly detrimental to the flow of submissions and postings or permitted activities of the Q&A board and the Members and Visitors, including abuse of the Karma Points Program as described in the Terms of Use, is prohibited.
In the event of one or more violations of any of the above prohibitions or restrictions, including via the use of a user name, any part of the user profile (i.e., signature, email, instant message), or a feedback form, or of any other prohibition set out in these TSC, Cramster may reject the submission deduct karma points, terminate the Member's access to the Q&A board and/or terminate the Member's Cramster account, as determined by Cramster in its sole discretion.
Service Limitations
Cramster may limit Q&A board activity at any time, including identifying selected subjects, problems and solutions on which Cramster will accept submissions for review by Cramster SMEs. Cramster reserves the right to reject and/or return a submission or posting to the Q&A board, including for violation of these TSC.
Without limiting the foregoing, Members acknowledge and understand that Cramster accepts no responsibility and shall have no liability for submissions, responses and commentary posted by Members, including those made in violation of the conduct prohibitions and restrictions set out above. Furthermore, you acknowledge that community services on this Web Site such as the Q&A board are public and not private communications and your communications may be read by others without your knowledge. Always use caution when giving out information about yourself to others in such any communication.
For more information on Cramster's policies on content or material that may be submitted to Cramster and on Cramster's disclaimers on and exclusions and limitations of liability for any content or materials submitted to Cramster, made available on or through the Web Site, or provided by Cramster or other third parties, please refer to the
Terms of Use