Welcome all to Ellen-in-NYC's discussion forum. Here are a few ground rules to make sure everyone has a good time here. My name is Jim, and I'm the moderator of these boards (those of you who know me know why!)

1. You must log in to post.

2. No offensive language. For now, I won't censor "bad" words, but I will censor offensive language. What's the difference? Context, of course. F*** it is not offensive (usually), but f*** you is. Of course, this policy may change and I may start filtering certain words if the situation becomes necessary.

3. No attacks. Come on, play nice. If you disagree, that's fine, state that as a fact. No name calling, mean spirited or passive aggressive comments, or anything else that can make someone feel bad. The key to the hair industry is to make people feel good about themselves, so I'm going to make sure that pertains to these boards as well.

4. No blatent marketing or advertising. If you want to link to your website, fine. If you are excited about a product and want to link to where you bought it, maybe fine. Basically, I'll be reading all the posts online here, and if I think there is some value to the other posters, I'll allow it. But if you are trying to drive people away from this site to buy real estate in Orlando, forget it. Your post is toast.

5. Ok, enough negativity. Here's a positive. Use the Announcements forum to post links to your website. We have several web crawlers visiting us regularly, and I don't mind if you use this forum to generate some external links for your site. But please do so in this forum. Of course, the links must meet criteria in next rule.

6. Do not post anything pornographic or disgusting on these boards. No links to porn sites, no porn pictures, no descriptions of what you and your partner did in bed last night (but you can email me with the latter.) Look, most people have all seen all the internet porn they need, and have the sites they like bookmarked. Besides, the quality of the porn you are probably promoting (if you are a pornographer) is not high enough for our standards. Oh, and disgusting stuff like accident victims or mutilated things are not welcome either. 

7. Have fun, but remember the lifeguard is not always available. If you see anything that violates the rules, please notify me immediately and I'll try to delete it ASAP. 

Jim