Moderation procedure

Our moderation team will determine if a comment or posting needs to be edited or removed from the site.

Sometimes it may be necessary to remove an entire thread or conversations from the site, though only in the most extreme cases in order to preserve the flow of conversation on the site.

We will contact members via the Private Message system on the site if we remove or edit a post. If appropriate, we will also issue a warning at this time.

Members who continue to break the community rules after a warning will incur a temporary ban on their access to AccountingWEB. Members who are welcomed back after a temporary ban will be asked to post within the guidelines as stated here. Failure to do so will result in a permanent ban.

We are willing to review permanent bans after six months. Each case will be assessed individually and no precedence will apply.

We promise to review any offensive or inflammatory posts within 2 working days of a post being reported.

We promise to respond to member queries and requests reasonably and responsibly, but ask that our members allow us time to deal with each request – some things may take us longer to investigate.

Moderation of off-topic posts:
When threads are taken off-topic, to streamline the moderation procedure and to ensure members are always aware of the moderation process, the standard response to rule violations is as follows (note: each step represents a single, related infraction):

1. Informal notice posted in the affected thread.
2. Formal, private notification of moderation & initial warning.
3. Formal, private notification of moderation & final warning.
4. Temporary (5 day) ban.
5. Permanent ban (with option for review after 6 months).

More extreme, one-off issues will be dealt with on an ad-hoc basis at the moderators' discretion. Threads may be locked temporarily or permanently while under moderator investigation. A notification will be posted at the end of any locked thread, alerting members to the fact.

Our commitment to members
We want to make AccountingWEB a safe, professional and interesting place for you to ask questions and make comments.

We promise to afford members freedom of expression within the reasonable confines of US law and appropriate behavior.

Where possible, we promise to protect the anonymity of those members who prefer to remain anonymous on AccountingWEB.

If you have any concerns about the decency of content on the site, please contact help@accountingweb.com, and one of our site moderators will be on hand to discuss anything in relation to the AccountingWEB community.