Forum rules

What is not allowed

• Anything illegal, and anything encouraging it.
• Abuse, harassment, or going after somebody rather than what they said.
• Advertising, affiliate links, and posts whose purpose is to sell something.
• Somebody else's personal details, including their address or their photograph.
• Medical or electrical advice presented as professional advice when it is not.
• The same question posted repeatedly, and anything automated.

Being wrong is allowed. Somebody working through a problem out loud, with a figure that turns out to be off, is what a forum is for. Saying so politely is the answer to it.

Your first post is read before it appears

Every new account's first post waits until David has read it. It is normally the same day. After that you post straight through and nothing you write is held again.

Links are the one thing that waits a little longer: an account can post them once it is a day old and has 3 posts behind it. Link spam is most of what a small forum gets, and this removes the point of it without making anybody wait for approval.

What happens to a post that breaks a rule

It is removed, and the thread says a post was removed rather than pretending it was never there. Nothing is deleted: a removed post is kept with the reason it was taken down, because the law expects a record of what a site removed and why. An account that keeps doing it is suspended.

Reporting a post, and complaining about a decision

Every post carries a report box if you are signed in. It writes to David straight away rather than to a list somebody has to remember to open.

If you are not signed in, or you want to complain about something that was removed, or about your own account, write to david@kabooly.com. Every decision is recorded, so there is something to look back at.

What the forum knows about you

• Your email address. It is how you sign in, because there is no password. It is never shown on the site and never used for anything else.
• The name you choose. It appears above everything you write, which is the point of it.
• One cookie. A random session id, set when you sign in and gone when you sign out. It carries nothing about you and no script can read it.
• What you post. Public, by design, and indexed by search engines like the rest of the site.
• A removed post. Kept rather than deleted, with the reason it was taken down, because the law expects a record of what a site removed and why.
• A challenge from Cloudflare. The sign-in and posting forms ask Cloudflare Turnstile whether they are talking to a person. Cloudflare sees your IP address when they do. It is not analytics and it sets no tracking cookie.

The privacy page says the same thing in more detail, along with what the rest of the site does not collect.