1. Goal - The Asiawind forums are founded to allow free exchange of ideas and opinions on cultural, social and economic issues to promote global understanding, harmony, diversity, and world peace.

2. Scope - Constructive, rational and thoughtful posts on the different themes are welcome. Please feel free to browse any forum but some forums may require registration for posting. Please post to the appropriate forums for a better audience, and do not cross post.

3. Responsibility - All messages are the expression of the contributors, who are solely responsible for the content. InTechTra or Asiawind does not endorse any views and stance. The moderator may stimulate the discussion with his own remarks.

4. Seriousness - The forums are not chatrooms. The posts are read by people from all over the world. Personal messages should be communicated through private emails. For that reason, you MUST provide a deliverable email address. Failure to do so may prevent you from further posting.

5. Indemnification - Asiawind is indemnified of any legal liability, including any damage from use of information posted by visitors.

6. Copyright issues - Asiawind/InTechTra is not liable for copyright violations by visiting posters. Contributors are cautioned to quote articles under the limited usage clause. If in doubt, cite the source link. Do not copy and paste other articles verbatim in its entirety. Please read about copyrights and plagiarism.

7. Terms of use - Posting to the forum is a privilege (not a right). Posters earn the privilege through continued intellectual contribution with compliance to the goal, policy and etiquette of the forums. While censoring is kept to a minimum, we retain the right to remove irrelevant and substandard posts to maintain high quality of the forums. Harassment, abuse, threats, obscenity, spams, personal attacks, commercial advertisements, advocating terrorism and violence and other objectionable contents are rejected. We do not accept subjective posts for "absolute" superiority of a religion, race, trade, or family, etc. which have no way to be verified. Asiawind/InTechTra retains all rights to accept or not accept any posters. To avoid conflict of interest, please do not reference other forums.

8. Violations - The administrator cannot check on each post. The forums depend on the self-discipline and collective effort of posters to maintain its integrity. We cannot screen every post for content nor search the entire site for a post objectionable to any one. Overlooked violations do not imply any bias, tolerance or endorsement of such violations. To report via email on violation, please copy the url link of the post in question and quote the specific statement. We do not read every post and do not have time to search the violating post.

9. Exclusions - The forum tries to be fair and just to all posts within the scope and guidelines. Constructive critique to improve on the quality is always welcome. However, a poster who does not think this forum is constructive or fair for him/her will not be retained.

10. Login handle and Signature - Please don't use abusive words or ambiguous user names (e.g. who?, Me, login). Other than your name, do not put anything else in the "signature". This is regarded as spam message or advertisement. Referencing other forums, other than those approved by the administration of this forum, may cause conflict of interest and thus disallowed.

Forum Etiquette:

1. Use your real name as much as possible. If you can't for various reasons, we certainly understand. At least choose a name that can be addressed to, that is representative of your character. Provide a deliverable email address for private communication outside the forums. Those without deliverable email may be terminated from posting.

2. Choose a subject title carefully. This forum already has a wide scope that can almost accomodate anything under the sun. When you start a thread, try to make the subject title self-explanatory but not too long. Use a thread "leader", e.g. Health:, Computer:, Iraq:, etc. for easier search. Don't use a paragraph as a title. It takes up a lot of space and is hard to read.

3. Stay with the thread. Start a new thread if you are diverging to something else. When the thread gets to more than 50 posts, it might be better to start a new one. You can compress the thread to view back topics better.

4. Respond to issues, not to the authors personally. This way, it will be less emotional. Use civil language and never attack anyone personally by his/her ethnic background, country of origin, etc.
5. Do elaborate your ideas if it is a new thread. Humor, sarcasm are by all means encouraged. Everyone has a different style. But make sure you have plenty of supporting evidence and information to back up your argument. A one-liner without substance is the best way to expose ignorance and shallowness.

6. Be tolerant and patient when debating with someone with a different view. Your goal is to have the other side sharing the same view as yours, whether the right view is yours or his/hers. There might not be one solution or one correct view any way. Confrontation would widen the gap further. Try to think from the other party's angle. You might learn something. It would be a lot tougher to modify your position if you insist you are right all the time. If you feel the other side is more convincing, admit it. It will be more embarassing and even hurtful to hold an erroneous view. Sharing different views is better than arguing.

7. Know when to quit. When two parties are repeating the same arguments over and over without new insights, there is no point in continuing.