Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") are an agreement between Ask Builders ("Service", "we", "community") and you ("Contributor", "you", "user").

By using the Service's website or app, you agree to these Terms and the Privacy Policy. The Terms apply to all users, both visitors and registered users, who may post questions, answers, comments and other materials ("content", "material") on the Service.

The Ask Builders public network allows individual users to take part in the community to share their knowledge and experience, and to gain knowledge and expertise. It is moderated by the community, and the content of the public network is publicly displayed and therefore accessible to everyone.

Registration and user profile

The Service welcomes all well-meaning participants.

To access some features of the Service, the user must register an account.

By registering on the Service, you agree to be respectful to all users of the Service.

It is prohibited for one person to create more than one account on this Service.

You may not impersonate anyone else or falsely imply any affiliation or sponsorship with Ask Builders or any third party.

Accounts registered automatically or systematically will be deleted, and access will be permanently suspended.

You can post links to personal pages and your services related to construction, design and renovation of homes in your user profile. Advertisements and links to services not related in any way to the construction and advertising of other types of services is prohibited.

New user accounts with low reputation (less than 200 points) and blocked accounts are not indexed by search engines, and links in the description are marked with a “nofollow” tag.

For users with low reputation, moderators may edit the description in the profile with links to services poorly suited to the subjects of the community,

The user may stop using or delete his account at any time. However, it is important to understand that the user transfers the rights to the material to the Service, and in some cases we cannot delete the material along with the account. More about this is explained further in the section Copyright.

The Service reserves the right to deny registration, block the user's account or limit its functionality in case of gross or repeated violations of community rules.

Reserved names

The service may maintain a list of reserved words in usernames that will not be made public. These reserved names may be used for trademark protection, to prevent user confusion, security measures, or for any other reason.

The Service may change any username already claimed at its sole discretion. In such cases, the Service will use reasonable efforts to find a suitable alternative and assist with transition problems.

Material posting

The purpose of the Service is to contribute to the free keeping and wide spreading of the builders' and customers' experience for the benefit of the global building community.

All Contributor materials must be related to home construction and renovation. This includes the content of user profiles.

The Service is committed to protecting and preserving Contributor materials of value under the vision, objectives and Rules of the community.

By posting any content and links, including text, audio and video recordings, images, and links to other resources, you acknowledge that: you are responsible for the information you post.

Users should be careful when using copyrighted material without the permission of those who created it.

We review notices of suspected copyright infringement, subject to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA").

Contributors' materials must be neatly arranged. Material using multiple repeated exclamation or question marks, BIG LETTERS in normal words is not allowed.

Many grammatical and spelling mistakes in materials are not allowed and may be a reason to limit the Contributor's possibilities.

Requirements for questions

The question should be constructive, phrased in a neutral tone. A good question usually contains the words "how" and "why. Answers are long, with evidence.

Questions should not express a disparaging attitude toward any building materials, people, or companies.

The author of the question should take part in the discussion, respond to clarifying comments, accept useful edits by other community members, evaluate the usefulness of the answers by voting, mark the best answer that helped him, after a while, if any.

Requirements for answers and comments

Answers and comments should be distinguished.

Answers should answer the question posed, should clarify the position, list the reasons, or otherwise explain why the author of the answer thinks the answer is valid.

Comments are brief messages to clarify information. Comments can be deleted, for example, after the main post has been corrected, when they are no longer relevant.

There is no need to express gratitude in individual comments, so as not to turn comments into a chat room. If the comment was helpful, the user adds his or her voice to highlight it for other users and thank the commenter.

Short rejoinders (like "Don't know," "Why?" or "Yes") and responses that do not answer the question asked are considered irrelevant.

You should not use your answer or comment to direct the author of the question to search engines or other Internet projects. If the question is published on this Service, then the answer is also expected here.

The author of the answer should accept possible useful edits to the text suggested by other members of the community.

Publishing links

The publication of references to other resources is permitted, on the condition that the references are indispensable, accurately illustrate or, if necessary, supplement the statements in the text.

The question or answer must be fully planned and justified in the text, regardless of the presence of additional links.

Links and references to other forums, QA services and building communities may be considered spam at the discretion of the moderators.

Moderators may remove links or entire posts with links if they deem them to be promotional messages or spam. Repeatedly deleting posts suspected of spam will cause account blocking.

Brand mentions

The Service allows reference to specific names and brands of materials, technologies and tools, but only in strict connection with the question posed and without defamation.

The contributor is required to disclose his or her association with the brand or interest, if any, in the post's body.

Moderators can remove brand mentions or entire posts mentioning brands if they deem them spam.

Supporting your product

The Service allows official support for certain construction-related products.

Examples of acceptable products eligible for support are building materials, proprietary building technology, construction and repair devices and tools, home heating and air conditioning equipment, etc.

Products must be officially and widely represented in the U.S. or Canada.

Only questions about the application (use) of the products, not related to purchases, marketing promotions, etc., are accepted.

The Service may verify or require conclusive evidence of an account's relationship to the company, product or service being claimed.

Questions about local building services or stores are not allowed. However, companies and individual professionals providing home related construction, manufacturing and repair services can build their presence in the community based on a highly reputable profile with an automatic promotion system.

The moderators of the Service determine the admissibility of support for a particular product.

Editing materials

Any user with sufficient reputation may propose his/her own version of improvements to other Contributors' materials, as long edits are justified and aimed at achieving the goals of the Service for the benefit of the community.

Acceptance or rejection of edits can be decided either by the Contributor of material, by consensus of users, or by the moderators.

Moderators may block the ability to edit selected materials in the community's interest.

Moderators may convert an answer into a comment on a question if the answer does not meet the requirements for the quality of the answers.

Removing materials

The Contributor can delete his materials if such actions will not cause a significant infringement of the interests of other Contributors.

The Contributor may renounce his/her authorship of materials, remove all mentions of his/her account's connection from the posted information when deleting the account.

Service reserves the right to delete questions/answers/comments in case of violation of the Terms of Service, without prior warning.

Service reserves the right to refuse to remove the Contributor's materials if the removal will lead to a violation of the integrity of the perception of other Contributors' materials, which violates their rights on the Service. We also reserve the right to restore the Contributor's materials if editing actions have resulted in a violation of the integrity of perception of other Contributors' materials.

The Contributor may remove fragments of his or her personal information from any materials, including blocked materials, without affecting other information meaningful to the community.

Copyright assignment

For the free distribution of valuable information, the Service establishes a CC-BY-SA 4.0 license for the content of Contributors.

You grant the Service non-exclusive rights to your content posted here. These Terms do not prevent you from transferring the same non-exclusive rights to your materials to others.

You grant the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, non-revocable, transferable right to use your submitted content (at any level). And you also give the Service the right to use, copy, modify, transmit, distribute, display (via digital, print, audio and video media) and work on the content in perpetuity, irrevocably, at any level now known or invented in the future. You agree the Service may publish your username and account link along with your content.

You acknowledge that the publication of your materials on the Service for any length of time is subject to transfer rights that you assign to the Service.

Copyright material, other than user profiles, published on the Service in the public domain may be reproduced on other servers on the Internet under the terms of an exact and complete Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. In particular, the reproduced material must:

• Place a direct, indexable, easily distinguishable link to the direct address of the source material on Ask Builders (usually the question page).
• Post the names of the authors of each post.
• Use the material under the exact same ShareAlike 4.0 license.

Defamation

Open or covert defamation is prohibited on the Service. This includes statements or insinuations that denigrate the honor, dignity, quality or reputation of people, companies or products.

Only constructive, neutral discussion of the qualities of products and services, when applied to specific circumstances, conditions, limitations, resources and costs are permitted.

In this community, we do not discuss organizations, but technical challenges and problems of construction.

Prohibited Materials

It is forbidden to share other people's personal and financial information. Such information includes, for example, personal telephone numbers, home addresses, personal email addresses, document numbers, bank card details, and so on.

The following content is also prohibited on the Service:

• Advertising messages, referral links and promotional codes (except for pages of user profiles, where advertising of services and goods related to construction is allowed).
• Spam. Content with information about reward programs for clicking on advertisements or commercial offers, performing searches, browsing sites or reading emails.
• Content that is intentionally misleading.
• Content in languages other than English and in pseudo-languages.
• Content that offends other community members.
• Sexually explicit content.
• Content that is violent, offensive or scary.
• Content that is inherently intolerant or advocates on any basis against an individual, group of individuals, organization, or country.
• Material that in any form promotes the use of drugs.
• Material related to the sale or promotion of weapons and ammunition, as well as methods of their manufacture.
• Calls to commit suicide, as well as any form of propaganda of suicide and description of methods of suicide.
• Any other material that is illegal, promotes illegal activities, or violates the rights of others.

We reserve the right to immediately suspend without notice any content, account or IP address that we believe is sending spam or other potentially damaging or disruptive content.

Prohibited behavior

Ask Builders is a community based on the principles of common sense, professionalism and mutual respect. We expect users to behave in a decent and conscientious manner.

Here's what's prohibited:

• Use the Service to harass, bully, stalk, or post threats of violence against others.
• Use the Service for illegal purposes.
• Use harsh language;
• Insult other users. Posts should not incite to insults and violence;
• Public discussion of the moderation policy, as well as individual actions of moderators within the framework of this policy.
• Open calls to change the principles of operation of the Service or these Terms. This is only allowed and welcome in a personal appeal to the administration through the feedback form, or when exposing flags to the publications.
• Manipulations aimed at artificially increasing or decreasing their own or others' reputation, as well as encouraging other users to take similar actions.
• Sending personal messages with advertising content and referral links, as well as sending mass personal messages of any content.
• Any activity that directly or indirectly interferes with the normal functioning or development of the Service.

Disclaimer

We do not guarantee and are not responsible for the truthfulness, completeness, accuracy or legality of the information contained in the materials posted by the Contributors.

We are not responsible for any damages or lost profits resulting from the use of information obtained on the Service.

We are not responsible for any damage to your device as a result of downloading any material obtained through the Service. The Service endeavors to inspect these materials.

We cannot guarantee that the Service will be uninterrupted, fast, reliable or error-free. We are not responsible for any direct or indirect damage resulting from the use or inability to use the Service.

We do not guarantee that unauthorized access will not occur to any information you submit, and we are not responsible for the loss of user personal information or materials.

We are not responsible for the availability of resources to which there are links on the Service and for the information contained in these resources.

We are not responsible for the accuracy of third-party advertising materials posted on the Service and the quality of goods, works and services advertised in them.

We are not responsible for any loss of data due to your failure to protect your credentials. You are responsible for the security and integrity of your credentials on your side and for the activities performed with your login and password.

You understand that, as required by law, neither the Service nor its affiliates, nor its employees, developers, administrators or agents, shall be liable for any direct or indirect, incidental or consequential damages, loss of funds, loss of ownership, or violation of privacy that you have been advised of.

Changes to the Terms

As the Service evolves, we may supplement and modify these Terms by posting an updated version. We will notify users in the case of a substantial change in policy.