Core Tenets

REVITFORUM CORE TENETS

In the following, RevitForum.org will be referred to as "RFO"

RFO Site Policy

Open and transparent communication.
Members maintain full control of their contributions to the site.
Privacy of membership information will be maintained.
Protection of the forum data.
Welcome and encourage communication and sharing of Revit knowledge and ideas.
Communication

The primary RFO Core Tenet is open and transparent communication with its membership.

RFO will communicate any significant changes to the forum or its policies. The Core Tenets indicated in this RFO Site Policy document will not change.
RFO will, in most circumstances, open up topics of discussion that affect the forums to the community. Please understand that RFO can't take a "poll" for every adjustment to the site. However, RFO will listen to the feedback of its membership and take appropriate action if possible.
To the best of its ability, RFO will communicate scheduled site maintenance that will be known to affect site availability. Please understand that websites occasionally "go down", and RFO does not have a team of IT professionals on call. Additionally, the uptime of the webhosting facilities are completely out of RFO's control.
It's Your Data

RFO in no way assumes "ownership" of the contributions made by its members. As a public forum, RFO operates on the principle that knowledge and ideas are contributed to be used freely by all.

RFO allows members to own and maintain full control of their posts in perpetuity. This includes the ability to edit or delete their own posts. However, please use this functionality for the betterment of the forum and take care to not disturb the continuity of threads.

While everyone has the right to edit or delete their posts, we request your very careful consideration in taking any action that would diminish the usefulness of threads to which others have contributed.

Your Privacy

Under no circumstances will the email address or personal contact information provided to RFO ever be sold or provided to a third-party without your expressed consent. That's an RFO Core Tenet. However, RFO cannot be held responsible for private information posted on the forums, or in the event of a website security breach, stored in the database. If a known security breach ever takes place, RFO will communicate the known extent of the breach to the forum membership as soon as possible.

Passwords and Private Messages are stored in plain text form within the database. While Administrators can reset passwords, there is no mechanism within the vBulletin software to view passwords or Private Message content directly. However, while Administrators would not under typical circumstances do so, it is technically possible to "hack" the database to view content. As with all public forums, it's good practice to use a unique password for your log-in, and avoid discussing extremely sensitive information on the forum site.

RFO respects the right for members to remain "anonymous" (i.e. refrain from using their "real name") if they so choose. We ask forum members to respect the right of their fellow members to remain anonymous. Purposeful attempts to publicly identify forum members who choose to remain anonymous will not be tolerated.

However, please be aware that RFO Administrators and Moderators may have access to site information (e.g. IP Addresses) that could in some instances reveal personal information or identify individuals or company affiliations. Further, Site Administrators and Moderators retain the right to identify individuals who are suspected of abusing the Forum Rules.

Web Hosting & Data Backups

The contributions of the membership are extremely valuable to the Revit community, and RFO will take whatever practical safeguards are necessary to protect the data that makes up the RFO forum site.

RFO is presently hosted at, ServInt - Managed VPS Hosting, a commercial, secured, webhosting provider, operating out of Virginia, United States, together with a Data Center in Washington D.C., United States.

The official name and domain of RFO is revitforum.org. RFO has also registered revitforums.org, revitforums.net and revitforums.com, which are redirected to revitforum.org. revitforum.com is a German Revit support site that is not affiliated with RFO.
Automated backups of the RFO Database and File System are done on a daily basis, at server level.
Backups are stored on the host server, as well as automatically being copied daily to a FTP server contro11ed by the admins, presently located in Australia.
Financial Considerations

Revitforum.org is funded by voluntary donations from the members and visitors. At each “Donation Rally” we’re aiming to collect funding for a full year. Once that goal is met, the “Donation Rally” will be ended, and won’t reappear until the savings reach approximately 3 months of expenses or at other times as special needs arise. Currently (November 2011) the estimated yearly costs for hosting, domains, software, etc. is $800 USD.

More info provided in this thread: Important Announcement on Future Funding Of Revit Forum

The RFO Administrators & Moderators
The RFO Administrators are the Site Administrators who administer and moderate the site and forums.

The RFO Moderators have been selected by the RFO Administrators to help moderate the site. Moderators are not generally involved with site administration, and do not have direct access to the web hosting, forum software or forum data.

By being part of the RFO Administrator and Moderator team, they are obligated to abide by and uphold the RFO Core Tenets and Forum Rules to the best of their abilities. While RFO would like to think of the entire membership as the "guardians" of this forum, the RFO Administrators and Moderators are the front line.

Site Administrators have full access to the domain name registration, web hosting account, FTP servers, forum database, and backups.

Administrators and Moderators are here to help the community. Please don't hesitate to contact us to discuss any issues you may be having with the forum site or its membership. Also, as a registered member, you can publicly comment about this web site in the "Forum Feedback & Suggestions" sub-forum.