Forum Rules and Policies

[The White Coat Investor]

1. Forum participants are expected to behave appropriately as though you were speaking with others on the forum face to face in polite company with small children present. If you wouldn’t say it in my living room with my kids playing on the floor, you shouldn’t type it here. Pornography, profanity, belittling, ad hominem attacks, trolling, spamming, sock puppeting and similar rude behavior is not permitted. It is okay to disagree, but focus your disagreement on the ideas presented, not the person presenting them. If it is obvious you will never convince someone with whom you are arguing, agree to disagree before the argument becomes personal. Avoid topics and responses that generate more heat than light. Use extreme caution starting and contributing to threads involving religious, political, or professionally controversial topics, realizing that moderators will have a very low threshold to close, moderate, and even delete such posts. All users should be treated respectfully, even if you disagree with the value of their profession. Message a moderator or simply flag the post if you see something that you think does not comply with forum policies.
2. Forum participants are expected to clearly disclose their financial conflicts of interest. If you are a financial professional, author, professional blogger, or otherwise own a significant share in a relevant business, that information should be present in your signature and/or profile. It is okay to place a link to your site or your business in your signature, but it is not okay to publish posts or comments primarily as a method of soliciting business nor to send out multiple private messages soliciting business. Signatures are limited to 250 total characters and no more than 2 lines. Your signature may contain only one URL and no more than 2 methods of contacting you (including the URL.)
3. Forum participants are expected not to spam the forum. Do not post the same thread in multiple forums. While it is hard to define spam, like pornography, moderators know it when they see it. Avoid posting photos, and links excessively. Do not post .gifs or videos. If the "album" feature is abused, it will be turned off.
4. Moderation policies are not up for public debate. If you have an issue with a step a moderator took, PM that moderator or another one and it will be reviewed. Do not re-post a moderated thread. Do not start a thread complaining about moderator actions or policies. Remember that moderators are volunteers and their decisions, while not necessarily always final, will generally be supported by other moderators and by the owners of this site--mostly because we don’t want to do all the moderating ourselves.
5. You should have particularly excellent behavior when you first start participating on the forum. Moderators may use their discretion to be more lenient with someone who makes a minor infraction but has posted hundreds of helpful comments over months or years.
6. Penalties for infractions will generally include a warning with a first offense, a one week suspension for a second offense, and a permanent suspension for a third offense. At the moderators’ discretion, if you have not had an offense for at least three months, you may start over with a warning. Particularly egregious infractions may result in immediate permanent banning.
7. You are not permitted to sign up with more than one profile, especially if you are under suspension or have been banned. This will result in lifetime banning.
8. If you have a question you want asked anonymously, PM a moderator or email [email protected] (you can even do it from a new email account) and we’ll get it up.
9. You are expected to have thick skin. It would be unusual to participate on a public forum for long without ever feeling offended. Please remember the words of Brigham Young in this regard: He who takes offense when no offense is intended is a fool. He who takes offense when offense is intended is a bigger fool.
10. These policies also apply to the “Lounge” forum, although moderation policies will generally be more lenient there. If you are easily offended, stay out of the Lounge.
11. You are allowed, and even encouraged, to change your "title" (words under your username) from "Member" to one of the following:

• Physician (Specialty okay)
• Resident
• Dentist (Specialty okay)
• Student
• Financial Advisor
• Insurance Agent/Advisor
• Real Estate Investing Advisor
• Student Loan Provider/Advisor
• Attorney
• Accountant
• Physician Assistant
• Nurse Practitioner
• Pharmacist
• Other Professional
• Spouse
• Retiree

You may NOT change your title to anything that is not on this list, particularly moderator, administrator, or founder. If you think your preferred title should be allowed, contact a moderator and it may be added to the list. Changing your title to appropriately reflect your profession is MANDATORY for financial professionals such as advisors, insurance agents, and others with an obvious conflict of interest. This change is made under the first page of your user settings at the upper right ("profile.")

Moderators on the forum include:

• ACN
• DMFA
• Doc Spouse
• Hank
• Hatton
• JFoxCPACFP
• Jim
• nachos31
• tjroyce
• Larry Ragman
• CordMcNally
• MPMD

If you have an administrative issue (password reset, can't log-in etc) contact WCIMichelle by private message or email [email protected]