Community Rules

PhantomPilots.com Community Rules

Registering and participating in the PhantomPilots community constitutes agreement to abide by the Drone Pilots Network Terms of Service. We reserve the right to modify these rules at any time without prior notice. There is no charge for joining this community. This is a community of individuals who share a common interest in Phantom drones and uavs. Please think before you post and keep your comments limited to the topic at hand and above all - be nice. If you come across any violations to these guidelines or have any problems navigating the site, do not hesitate to let us know.


General Rules

We aim to ensure that the community is an enjoyable place that people want to visit repeatedly. The PhantomPilots community should be a virtual reflection of how we all hope the community of Phantom drone enthusiasts would act in the real world. Treat each other with respect just as you would if you were meeting in person for coffee before enjoying a day of flying together in shared airspace. This is a community of friends and partners who are collaborating to encourage and support a growing Phantom community.

1. Our rules extend to all sections of the website including private messaging.

2. Personal attacks on others will not be tolerated. Challenge others' points of view and opinions, but do so respectfully and thoughtfully. Excessive sarcasm, belligerence, insults, profanity, anger, offensive comments about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and national origin, are not acceptable.

3. Do not post libelous remarks or misleading information.

4. Stay on topic by keeping discussions relevant and on-track.

5. Participants may not post or bump threads to pad post counts. Bumping is posting useless information, posting one-liners or any other action to deliberately keep a thread hot.

6. Do not post the same discussion more than once or in more than one forum.

7. Posts containing rude, explicit, obscene or vulgar language or abbreviations, images or links to websites with adult content/images or special characters designed to "trick" our obscenity filter may be removed.

8. Be mindful of yourself and others. This community is not a democracy; it is privately owned and we determine the rules. If rules are violated we retain the right at our discretion to remove, edit or delete posts and if necessary ban or remove members. Any abuse toward our team may result in immediate suspension of your account.

9. Public discussion about moderation or moderator decisions is not allowed. If a moderator deletes or edits one of your posts and you disagree with the action, contact the moderator concerned. Do not repost deleted material.

10. Our user base is not a resource to be "mined" by individuals, groups, or businesses, for profit or not for profit. Participants (excluding paid advertisers) may not post affiliate links or links to direct others to any pages at their own commercial website or website in which they have a commercial interest. Exceptions to this may be found in the Classifieds or other explicitly designated commercial areas.

11. Do not use posts to promote your blog, videos, surveys, polls or contests. This includes Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. You may place a single link in your signature to an outside website. *Fundraising topics (GoFundMe, etc), must be approved by an administrator. *Contest/Promotions must be approved by an administrator.

12. Trolling and cyber stalking are not allowed and are grounds for account restriction or banishment. Trolling includes posting controversial and often irrelevant or off-topic messages with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal, harmonious on-topic discussion, especially when a pattern of such posting is apparent.

13. Discussions about politics, weaponry and religion are not permitted in the community and will be closed or removed.

14. We take the "be nice" rule VERY seriously! We do not tolerate discourtesy or disrespect.

15. The Community Owners strongly encourage users to obey all federal and local laws and regulations when flying. It is a helpful service to the community when members guide others in understanding and following the regulations. Meanwhile, fully understanding all international rules and regulations is complex and it is not the responsibility of the community owners, moderators or community members to police and enforce these rules and regulations. Any violation of another community rule, even if in the context of attempting to help enforce flying laws and regulations, is prohibited.

16. For everyone's safety, we do not condone the manipulation of the manufacturer's software or firmware (software/firmware hacks), and may, (at our discretion), delete without warning any content that violates or promotes this type of activity.


Posting Standards

Community members should use the standard fonts available on the community software. The use of bold, large or colored fonts should be used sparingly. Posts containing inappropriate formatting will be removed or modified at our discretion (e.g. all caps or excessive color).

Posts should be well formatted. Use paragraphs, punctuation, and capital letters appropriately. Excessive use of Netspeak/LOLspeak (internet slang) and texting shortcuts (b4, str8, etc) is not permitted. Posts with violations may be edited or deleted without notification.

The language of this community is English. If you are not a native English speaker, do your best. We are glad to have you as a member and will be supportive and polite.

Do not post links that are not meant for the general public. Do not post protected or copyrighted material. Information copyrighted or owned by any individual or entity other than the member should not be posted on the discussion forums without the consent of the owner. If such an event occurs, the individual posting the information shall be held solely responsible. You cannot legally post entire articles or news without permission from the copyright holder. Even if you attribute the article correctly it’s still copyright infringement. Under Fair Use provisions you can legally post a small abstract of an article or perhaps the opening paragraph. In either case please post a link to source. The exception to this rule is press releases; they are meant for distribution and can be copied and posted in their entirety. If you are not sure if you can copy something, always err on the side of caution and simply post a link to the material.


About Intellectual Propertys

PhantomPilots is committed to helping people and organizations protect their intellectual property rights. The PhantomPilots.com Terms of Service do not allow posting content that violates someone else’s intellectual property rights, including copyright and trademark.


Signature, Avatar, Profile, Username and Account Standards

Community Standards apply to all sections and features of the website including avatar and profile images, signatures, usernames and other account features.

1. Signatures must be setup in your profile rather than manually added to your messages. They will appear at the bottom of every post you make.

2. Signatures should be kept to a maximum of three lines (including blank lines) and contain no more than one links. No images allowed in signatures.

3. Signature may not include email addresses, links to competing websites, invitations to contact or a sales pitch also, no political links

4. Signatures must follow our community posting standards and only one line may be bold.

5. Avatars (images beside each post) and profile pictures are set up in your profile and are intended as a visual link to your community account. They may not be used for promotional purposes, insult or other editorial comment.

6. We recommend usernames not reflect a business entity, trademark or other "promotional" content, no excessive symbols and must conform to all other community rules.

7. E-mail and web address are not appropriate community user names.

8. PhantomPilots community reserves the right to delete or edit any account feature that we feel is inappropriate.


Manufacturer/Distributor/Vendor and Customer Disputes

This community is not intended to be a mechanism for people to vent frustrations about manufacturers, distributors or sales from private parties. Please settle your differences with the seller, manufacturer and distributors through other means but not through our community.


About the First Amendment and Your "Right to Free Speech"

We believe in the First Amendment of the US Constitution and public freedom of speech. Meanwhile, that right does not infer that others are required to publish your speech. The PhantomPilots Community is not a public resource; it is privately owned and we require members to abide by the rules and decisions of our team. If you post outside these guidelines your post may be edited or deleted - this does not violate your public right to free speech.


Site Management, Member Concerns & Account Closure

If we feel site rules are violated we may remove, edit or delete posts and if necessary ban or restrict account access. If a moderator deletes or edits one of your posts and you disagree with the action, contact the moderator concerned or any other member of our site team. Do not repost deleted material. This community is largely self-policing, which means that moderators will respond and react to problems reported.

Participants may only have one account. Moderators may consolidate or delete multiple accounts.

We may remove accounts that have no posts. If the account has many posts, completely deleting the account can significantly disrupt thread continuity. In that event, we may (at our discretion) disable your account in some or all of the following ways: change the username, remove signature content, subscriptions, avatar and identifying information or replace it with fictitious info. We may change account options to refuse contact and/or ban the account. Where communication features were used to share information with other individuals (e.g., sending a personal message to another community member) we generally cannot remove content. If someone quoted your post, the original username will be shown as having been quoted (which we cannot purge).

Finally, we recognize that there are situations that these rules don’t address and we’ll do our best to arrive at a fair and reasonable approach that benefits the entire community. Ultimately it's up to our team to make these determinations that we believe are in the best interest of the majority of users. If you have any questions about these guidelines, please feel free to contact us.