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DRIVE2 Guidelines

Last revised: December 23, 2015.

These Guidelines are applicable to all registered users. Upon registering and during your tenure as a user, you confirm that you agree with everything stated in this document and pledge to follow the Guidelines in full.

Fast Facts

  • This site is about cars and nothing else.
  • You should only post your original content (this refers to all photos and text).
  • Please refrain from using offensive language.
  • We exercise a ‘zero tolerance’ policy. In the event of a violation of the Guidelines, your account will be deleted without further notice.

Table of Contents

Overview

You accept the pledge to uphold Fair Use principles with respect to this site and all its provided functionality. Dishonest use includes any manipulations of the rating system and any use of the provided services with the aim to inflict damage to the site, its users, partners, or sponsors.

Users caught in violation of the Fair Use principle will have their accounts deleted without notice.

Signing Up

You may not:

  • Register more than one account per person.
  • Use a nickname that incorporates offensive language.
  • Upload an avatar that uses: offensive language, other people’s photos without their consent, explicit images, and images mimicking the site’s interface that may confuse other users.
  • Use images of your contact details (such as phone numbers, links, e-mails, ICQ, and other details) as your avatar.
  • Provide explicit or misleading information in the first or last name and city fields.
  • Sign up using a disposable email service like mailforspam.com, 10minutemail.com

You may:

  • Choose not to upload an avatar or personal photos.
  • Choose to leave the “About Me” section blank.

We recommend:

  • Using your real first and last names – it’ll make it easier for your friends to find you.
  • Using ‘strong’ passwords. Do not use passwords that are the same as your nickname, that are simple combinations like ‘123456,’ ‘qwerty,’ ‘asdfgh,’ or that are otherwise easy to guess like ‘password.’.

Adding a car

You may not:

  • Add bikes, quads, toys, or anything else that is not a car. It goes against the site’s purpose, and it’s not funny.
  • Add a car that isn’t yours. For instance: your dream car, your company car, or a car you’ve test-driven or rented.
  • Add a car with photos of another car and/or without that car’s story or description.
  • Use offensive language (in any form) in the ‘Tagline’ field.

You may:

  • Add cars that you have owned at any time, even if you no longer own that car.
  • Add your relatives’ cars if it’s a family car, and you have enough experience with it to give detailed information about it.
  • Edit and change your story multiple times after you have written it.
  • Sell your car by selecting ‘on sale’ and by specifying the car’s price, adding a description, and providing your contact information.

We recommend:

  • Writing an expanded story for the car.
  • Adding a Tagline, which will show up right after the make and model of the car.
  • Filling the ‘Engine power’ and ‘Engine Displacement’ fields.

Providing a car’s story

You may not:

  • Violate the Posting rules.
  • Use content that is not your own.
  • Only provide a list of equipment or specs instead of a detailed story.
  • Present another car’s story, a story that’s unrelated to cars in general, or any other text that’s unrelated to your car (you can put it in your personal Blog instead).

You may:

  • Use text that you’ve used earlier on another site.

We recommend:

  • Writing your own story.
  • Using paragraphs – it’ll make it easier to read.
  • Break up your story into sections with subtitles.

Providing a car’s photos

You may not:

  • Upload unauthorized photographs from the manufacturer, from this site, or from other photographers without their permission, even if ‘my car looks just like this one.’ There are no exceptions to this rule.
  • Upload low quality graphs, schematics, or photos that are illegible.
  • Upload heavily edited or ‘photoshopped’ photos where elements have been added or removed, the car’s color or proportions have been changed drastically, or any other major modifications so that the photo is no longer indicative of the car’s actual appearance.
  • Upload only showroom, auction, or dealership photos (even if it is your car).
  • Upload the same photo more than once.
  • Use promotion, offensive, or inflammatory text of any kind in your photos.
  • Use this site’s or your operating system’s interface elements in your photos.

You may:

  • Upload edited photos if the editing does not make major alterations to the appearance of the car.
  • Upload photos taken by professionals provided that it’s your car in them.
  • ‘Blur over’ your license plate number if you’re not comfortable showing it on the Internet.

We recommend:

  • Uploading several different photos of your car from different angles and of different close-ups (interior and exterior details, full frame view, etc.)
  • Use graphic editors in moderation – too much editing sometimes makes a photo look worse rather than better.
  • Choose the best photo (in your opinion) as the cover photo.
  • Using a full frame shot as the cover photo.

Leaving comments to cars, Blogs and Logbooks

You may not:

  • Leave uninformative, one-word comments like ‘nice car,’ ‘like,’ ‘lol,’ etc.
  • Use offensive language even if it’s censored with special characters, ellipses, conversions, space characters, etc.
  • Attach explicit (e.g. nudity, violence), offensive or unauthorized images
  • Use an excessive amount of all-caps.
  • Leave ‘off-topic’ comments.
  • Discuss moderators’ and/or administrators’ actions.
  • Flood (leave an excessive amount of uninformative comments).

You may:

  • Use links in your comments (they’ll be automatically highlighted).
  • Use text formatting tags: <b>bold</b> (bold text), <i>italic</i> (italic text) and <s>strikethrough text</s> (strikethrough text).

We recommend:

  • Elaborating on your ideas, responses, and questions about the car – it’s why comments are useful in the first place!
  • Using the ‘reply’ button to answer comments that are specifically addressed to you. The user you’re replying to will be notified about your response.
  • Being considerate, polite, and writing in a way that makes you easy to understand for other people.
  • Praising and constructively critiquing a car in a reasonable and civil manner. Constructive criticism is always more appreciated than bland compliments.
  • Using a special tag <user name="nickname"> when you mention a fellow registered user to draw them into the conversation.

Posting in your personal Blog

You may not:

You may:

  • Write about issues unrelated to cars.
  • Leave the ‘Title’ field blank. If you do leave it blank, the first few words of your post will become the title.

We recommend:

  • Writing your own stories, regardless of the subject – just make it interesting!
  • Adding tags to your posts – it’ll make it easier for others to find your posts.
  • Adding related photos to your posts. It attracts readers and adds interest to the text. A post without photos is more difficult for people to understand exactly what you’re writing about.

Creating a Logbook Record

You may not:

  • Violate the Posting rules.
  • Post anything unrelated to your car – you can use your personal blog for that!

You may:

  • Leave the ‘Title’ field blank. If you do leave it blank, the first few words of your post will become the title.

We recommend:

  • Adding tags to your posts – it’ll make it easier for others to find your posts.

Posting rules

You may not:

  • Use offensive language in any form or in any language even if it’s censored with special characters, ellipses, conversions, space characters, etc.
  • Solicit other users to comment on your posts, vote for you, etc. in your posts.
  • Post anything that contradicts common sense and a basic sense of public morality.
  • Plagiarize materials from other sites. If you do use data from third-party sources in your post, that data should not exceed half of your post and have a hyperlink to the original source.
  • Overuse caps-lock, post incoherent gibberish, or use special characters to make your post meet the minimum character requirements.
  • Post ads in any form.
  • Discuss moderators’ and/or administrators’ actions. These actions and the guidelines are not open to discussion.
  • Solicit for money or organize fundraising of any sort. The only exception is fundraising organized and/or approved by the administration.
  • Plagiarize images or use images in a way that a publication/photographer/copyright holder has expressly forbidden.
  • Post materials (in photos, text, videos, etc.) inciting ethnic, gender, and/or religious hatred. Your account will be banned immediately.
  • Post explicit materials.
  • Post private correspondence (e-mail, ICQ, DRIVE-pager, etc.) without getting prior consent from your conversation partner(s).
  • Post ‘cool pics,’ memes of any kind. Your account will be banned immediately.
  • Create posts that only consist of a link.

You may:

  • Use photos of a car made the manufacturer, from film stills, in books or CD covers, map fragments, screenshots, images of famous works of art, celebrity photos, or any other materials provided that such use isn’t prohibited by the author or copyright holder of those materials.
  • Embed videos from popular video hosting sites that permit those videos to be embedded on third-party sites.

We recommend:

  • Using paragraphs in your text to break up your posts.
  • Using the special <user name="nickname"> tag to mention a fellow registered user.
  • Inserting photos directly into the text of your post if your post is both text and photo heavy. To insert images into text, consult the Formatting Help section in the toolbar about the text form.
  • Embedding videos from popular video hosting sites into your entry.
  • Refrain from posting large numbers of photos without providing adequate descriptions.

Embedding videos in Blog Posts and Logbook Records

You may not:

  • Embed videos (or link to videos) that incorporate offensive language, depict scenes of violence or humiliation, incite ethnic or religious hatred, depict explicit material, or the personal information of others’ without their explicit prior consent.

You may:

  • Embed other people’s videos from popular video hosting sites so long as those videos do not violate the Guidelines.

We recommend:

  • Using video embedding function with the sole purpose of sharing your personal experiences.
  • Putting a brief description of a video in your text so that your readers could decide whether they want to watch the video.

Explicit material

You may not:

  • Post photos or videos of an erotic or pornographic nature. These include photos of nude people posted for the express purpose of attracting attention. This prohibition applies to the entire site including on Cars' profiles, blogs, logbooks, avatars, or anywhere else.

You may:

  • Discuss the basics of non-Euclidean geometry and quantum mechanics, the future of nanotechnology development, global warming, and other topics for intellectual conversation.

We recommend:

  • Not merely seeking superficial popularity and to remember that this site is created around cars and the discussion of cars.

How not to get banned

Violating any of the aforementioned rules can result in an account ban. If your account is banned, it was your first offense, and it was not very grave, you can petition a moderator via a special form to get your account reinstated. You will have to submit an admission of your guilt and a promise to stick to the guidelines in the future.

A moderator will review your petition. A petition does not guarantee that your ban will be lifted. The moderator will decide whether or not to lift the ban within one business day. Moderators do not enter into correspondence with users, so if the moderator does not decide to undo your ban, there will be no further discussion, answers, or comments.

Users engaging in the following activities will have their accounts deleted without further notice:

  • Spam
  • Repeatedly using offensive language
  • Persistent inability to comply with the guidelines

Complying with the guidelines is the best way to enjoy DRIVE2!