So far, our only community policy have been that we ask that people be civil to each other. So far, that hasn't been an issue. We are really loving the community vibe, and everyone has been so warm and friendly.

As we prepare to open up the site, we thought it might be helpful to articulate a few basic policies:

1) SELF PROMOTION

Once we open up the site, people are going to start promoting their own business with self-links (sadly, this is inevitable). So as a general rule and to help limit this sort of self-promotion, soon we will have to stop allowing self-linking to your own businesses and sites.

On a monthly basis though, we'll create a thread where everyone can link to their own personal blogs, twitter, etc. That way, people can get to know each other... while we can keep self-promoting vendors out of the mix. Here's the first such thread! Feel free to post your personal blogs/twitter/etc., if you'd like:

http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/social-media-twitter-or-blog

Once the site opens up, we will no longer allow self-linking to your own site outside of these monthly threads. We've learned the hard way over the years that clear rules like this are easier to explain to vendors!

2) PLEASE BE CIVIL

If you disagree with someone, feel free to express your disagreement. We just that you keep things civil, and not attack or target snarky comments at anyone. Babies and parenting can be a touchy subject at times, so we ask that you take extra care to remain civil.

If you see a personal attack, please flag it and we'll take a look right away!

3) PLEASE BE CAREFUL

Finally, we ask that you be careful in sharing personal details about your family.

This is especially important if you're using an account that can be sometime traced to your identity in real life (i.e. your username has your real name in it, or you posted full names or pictures of your family members).

To help address the username-related privacy issues, we've built a really powerful "change username" feature. We are currently offering everyone the ability to change their Hellobee username once. This is a great way to help maintain your privacy if you have a username that's tied to your real identity. Just post your username change request here http://help.hellobee.com

If you want to post something that you're not comfortable sharing under your own username, please do feel free to create a secondary account.

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In general, we are going to start off with minimal rules and just ask that everyone be civil and reasonable. So far, that's worked out great!

I'm sure that over time, issues will come up and we can deal with them together. We're looking forward to many years together on Hellobee!