Corporate Representatives Rule - Effective December 13th, 2010

[hugh]

The Digital Forum now has specific rules regarding the membership and behaviour of corporate representatives.

Simply speaking, a "corporate rep" is a member who has a self-interest in the thread they are posting on, either because they work at the company being discussed or because they are a competitor of a company being discussed.

For example, if you are a Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Telus employee and are posting in any of the Bell, Rogers, Shaw or Telus forums then you are considered a corporate rep.

If you work for Bell, Rogers, Shaw, Telus, but only post from home and do not post in your company or your company's competitors forums then you will not be considered a corporate rep and will not be subject to the following rules. Note that if you post from a known corporate IP, you are considered a representative.

Corporate Representatives posting on the Digital Forum must adhere to the following rules.

• Corporate Representatives are required to have a corporate email address on their profile. (Your profile is private and can only be seen by you and the admin of the site. The use of a corporate email is proof that you are a member of the company and not an imposter)
  
• Corporate Representatives must identify their affiliation with the company in their posts. This can be done by placing a small disclaimer in your signature or by placing the words <Company you work for> Employee in the location field of your profile.
  
• Corporate Representatives are encouraged to assist our members with any technical, contractual or billing problems, however, Corporate Representatives are not allowed to promote, advertise or attempt to sell their company's products or services.
• Corporate Representatives are not allowed to link to their corporate websites (violation of our anti-spam rules), or encourage users to bypass the forum by having users contact them via Private messages, emails or phone.

Effective December 13th, 2010, any Corporate Representatives who does not adhere to this policy will have their accounts suspended immediately and without warning.

Feedback

If you have any questions or comments about this policy, please post in the Member Feedback Forum.

Hugh

[hugh]

Some members have asked why we have this rule.

There are three reasons:

The primary reason is to stop shills.

A shill, plant or stooge is a person who helps a person or organization without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with that person or organization. Shill typically refers to someone who purposely gives readers the impression that he or she is an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller that he or she is secretly working for.

The second reason is to prevent Phishing.

If you are PM'ing personal information to a "company representative", don't you want to know that they actually work for the company?

The third reason is to protect the company from trolls

We have had instances where people pretend to be from a company when, in fact, they are employed by a competitor. They spread false information and alienated users in an effort to drive members to the competitor.