Community guidelines and content policy

Techarda is only useful if what people read here is honest, specific and respectful. These rules apply to every thread, reply, poll, review, question, answer and profile. To post you must be 18 or over and accept these guidelines.

1. Be useful

• Share real experience: your environment, scale, constraints, what worked and what didn’t. Say when something is opinion or second-hand.
• Use the right space and thread type (question, comparison, recommendation, show & tell, resource, poll, discussion).
• For resources, summarise in your own words and link to the original. Don’t paste whole articles.
• Mark the answer that helped when you ask a question; vote on what’s useful.

2. Be honest about who you are

• Vendor staff are always labelled with their company. If you work for, consult for, invest in or are paid by a company you discuss, and our label doesn’t show it, say so in the post.
• Answering questions about your own product is welcome, but be accurate and fair, including about limitations and competitors.
• No promotion outside the Vendor AMAs & launches space: no sales pitches, discount codes, lead capture or unsolicited DMs.
• No fake accounts, sock puppets, vote manipulation or coordinated posting.

3. Reviews

• Review only products and companies you have used yourself, recently enough to be accurate.
• No conflicts of interest: don’t review your employer, a competitor, or anything you were paid, discounted or gifted to review.
• Companies can respond publicly but cannot edit, hide, reorder or pay to change reviews. Ratings are calculated only from published reviews.

4. Not allowed

• Harassment, threats, hate or discrimination; personal attacks.
• Anyone’s personal information (including your own sensitive information): home addresses, phone numbers, private emails, health or financial details, or anything that identifies a private individual without consent.
• Confidential or proprietary information you don’t have the right to share (for example unreleased pricing under NDA, customer data, security vulnerabilities before coordinated disclosure).
• Content that infringes copyright or trade marks (see copyright and takedown).
• Malware, phishing, exploit code intended to cause harm, or instructions for illegal activity.
• Misleading claims presented as fact, fabricated benchmarks or impersonation.
• Sexual or violent content; spam; off-topic content.

5. How moderation works

• New members’ first posts are reviewed by a moderator before publishing. Members with a track record (three published posts, or 20+ reputation, and no recent rejections) publish instantly and are moderated after the fact.
• Anyone can report a post; reporters’ identities are never shown to the person reported.
• Automated rules limit posting rates and help detect spam. Every removal decision is made by a human moderator.
• When we reject or remove your content we tell you why on your account page.

6. Enforcement

1. Content declined or removed, with a reason.
2. Posting returns to pre-moderation for 30 days.
3. Temporary suspension.
4. Permanent removal of the account for serious or repeated breaches (and immediately for illegal content, doxxing or threats).

7. Appeals and complaints

If you think we got a decision wrong, reply to the notice or email engage@techarda.com within 30 days with a link and your reasons. A different moderator reviews it and we reply within 14 days. For privacy concerns use privacy requests; for copyright use copyright and takedown.

8. How community data is used

Posts are public. Our software tags them with topics, companies mentioned, buying stage and sentiment, and we publish only aggregated trends (never individual identities) to help the market understand what practitioners need. Details are in section 4 of our privacy policy.