Blogs and Discussion: Rules for CIO’s Online Community

CIO's Blogs and Discussion is the place where IT professionals can ask questions, get answers, share their experience, and even just post a gripe every now and then. You can submit anonymously, but if you register, you'll earn points for every post and comment. Earn enough points, and you'll rise through out Top User ranks and become eligible for Expert status; Experts get their own blog, a photo appearing on all posts and other privileges. Registered users can also create a profile to advertise their talents and knowledge to other IT professionals around the world. Sign up now, and we'll add a quick 100 points to your total to get you started.

FAQ

• What is CIO’s Blogs and Discussion section?
• How do I submit something?
• What can I submit?
• Can I submit or comment anonymously?
• What are points? How do I get them?
• What information is kept in my profile?
• How do ratings work?
• How do I submit feedback?
• Privacy Policy

What is CIO’s Blogs and Discussion section?

CIO’s Blogs and Discussion section is the place where IT professionals can share their skills, ask and answer technical or business questions, propose best practices and even just blow off steam. It’s a community of visitors, site members, CIO staffers, and noted experts, all of whom participate for the same purpose: to become ever-more-valuable information technology practitioners.

You can leave comments on other peoples’ posts to answer their questions, challenge their assertions, or expand upon their ideas. Our rating system lets you flag the best—and the worst—content on the site, which helps other users to find the best stuff and avoid the rest.

How do I submit something?

Just click on this link, and follow the instructions.

What can I submit?

We’re very open about the topics that are considered appropriate. Just about anything IT-related is fair game: best practices, news stories, technical or management questions, complaints. We reserve the right to remove posts that are off-topic.

We have very few rules. Treat each other with respect. It’s okay to disagree with someone else’s opinion but ad-hominem attacks will be yanked. Take a breath, think like an adult, and then press the Submit button.

There are a few things you should avoid:

• Potentially libelous posts
• Obscene or off-color comments
• Personal attacks, insults, or threatening language
• Plagiarized material
• Commercial promotions
• Hyperlinks to material that is not directly related to the discussion.

Editors may sometimes edit posts for length, clarity, bad links, or other issues at the editor’s discretion

Also, be sure to read CIO’s terms of service and privacy policy[link] before you submit.

Can I comment anonymously?

Yes, but why would you want to? Becoming a member starts gaining you points toward expert status and lets you promote your skills to the world.

Registered users who might want to post something anonymously at some point (say, to complain about an event at work that you’d rather not be recognized for posting), you can log out of your account, post anonymously, and then log back in later.

What are points? How do I get them?

You have to be a registered user and logged in to get points. You get 100 points just for registering (sign up here). You get 50 points for posting a message, and 25 points are awarded for leaving a valid comment (that is, you don’t get points if your message is removed by an editor). Members with the most points are listed on our Top Users board and can be considered for Expert status.

What Information Is Kept In My Profile?

When you register, you’ll be given the chance to create a profile. This is where you can describe you skills and interests, point to your personal web site or blog, upload your picture and generally introduce yourself to the world. Profiles also include a “contact this person” link that lets other visitors send you email through a web form. Visitors do not get to see your actual email address unless you decide to publish it directly in your description. CIO editors do have access to your email address so that we can contact you directly if necessary.

What is Expert status?

CIO editors keep a constant lookout for point-leading contributors to find people who have a lot to offer the community at large. Maybe you’re an IT management expert with loads of great advice. Maybe you’re a tech guru who always has the answer. We invite select members to join the ranks of the Experts, along with our existing roster of expert contributors, CIO Executive Council members, and editorial staff. If you accept the invitation, you’ll get your own blog, enabling other users to easily find your contributions. Your photo will also appear with all of your posts and comments (no more icon for you!) Experts may also be asked to speak at conferences, join in special projects, test new enhancements to our site and more.

How do ratings work?

Any visitor can rate posts and comments on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. 1 means “this is terrible,” 5 means “this is fantastic!” All the ratings for a given post are combined into a Current Rating. You can rate comments in a similar fashion.

How do I submit feedback?

Questions, complaints or suggestions about Blogs and Discussion? Send them to: advice@cio.com

CIO Privacy policy

1. CXO Media Inc. ONLINE PRIVACY POLICY
The CIO Web site and associated sites are maintained by

CXO Media Inc.
492 Old Connecticut Path, Framingham, MA 01701

CIO collects personally identifying information and data about individuals, their company, and the companies demographics (“personally identifying information and data”) including (i) when you provide information to CIO, such as when you register or sign up for any of our products such as Web services, publications, subscriptions, e-mails, contests, newsletters, memberships, RSS Feeds, webcasts, White Papers, online seminars, conferences and other communications with CIO, (ii) when you register or sign up on the CIO site or when you register for any other IDG Publishing Network products individually or through “auto register”, your information will be known to CIO and (iii) from time to time we may add other information that we collect from third party sources to enhance the information that you provided to CIO.
Below is the current policy regarding the usage of personally identifying information and data collected by CIO. We reevaluate this policy on an ongoing basis based on feedback from readers. CIO reserves the right to change its privacy policy. However, if there are any changes to the use of personally identifying information and data that is different from that stated at the time of collection, we will notify you by posting a notice on our website.

CIO or one of our IDG affiliated companies or third-party partners may place a "cookie" in the browser files of a user's computer. The cookie itself does not contain any personally identifying information except when such information has been supplied by a subscriber or registered user.

If you have registered with CIO, the information in your "cookie" is used to provide a more personalized experience on our Web site.

If you haven't registered with our site, we may place a cookie on your system to help provide a more personalized experience on CIO.com. This cookie identifies you as a unique user by means of a tracking ID. However, if you have not registered on our site, we cannot link that user ID with personal identifying information and data about you such as your name or e-mail address.

Other cookies without personally identifying information and data are used to enable CIO to manage the banner advertisements presented or personalized information to the user.

Browsers or third-party software can allow you to block the use of cookies while you surf our site. You can also use third-party "anonymizer" services to mask information in your cookies, or even general data such as your IP address. In such cases you would not be able to take advantage of most of the personalization services offered by CIO.com.

The aggregated information we collect is used for a number of purposes including the following :

• To improve the content and design of the CIO Web site

• To enable our audit bureau to verify our claims of traffic to the site

• To help advertisers, potential advertisers or marketers assess the suitability of the site for their ad campaigns

• As clear GIFs, also known as pixel tags, provided by our ad-serving company to help manage online advertising. These clear GIFS let our ad-serving company recognize a browser's cookie when a user visits our site. The information we collect and share through this technology is not personally identifiable (It does not include your name, address, telephone number or e-mail address). For more information about our ad-serving company or for your choices about not having this anonymous information used, please visit www.doubleclick.net

CIO has contracted with DoubleClick. to serve all advertising on CIO.com, both on the Web site itself and through its e-mail newsletters. When DoubleClick is serving ads, it recognizes certain types of non-personally identifiable information, such as a user's IP address, browser version or type, operating system, service provider and time zone. DoubleClick also uses cookies to note the general content of the sites that users visit over time in order to serve ads on this site and other sites. Any pages a user calls up on CIO.com aren't connected with personally identifiable information collected either at CIO.com or elsewhere.

For more details about the non-personally identifiable information DoubleClick collects and the opportunity to opt out of such data collection, please visit www.doubleclick.net—privacy_policy . We use web metric vendors to gather information to help us understand how users utilize our websites and other electronic products.

We may create and use aggregate customer data to understand more about the interests of our customers and may use the data to offer goods and services we believe may be of interest to our customers, on behalf of CIO, its sister IDG companies, or select organizations.

Postal addresses, and other personally identifying information and data will be used to promote CIO and other IDG companies ‘ products and services, and may be rented and/or licensed to selected outside firms for promotional purposes. Offers for which the personally identifying information and data are rented and/or licensed for use and the users are required to target their offers carefully.

Telephone numbers of CIO print subscribers are used by CIO to collect re-qualification data and may be used by CIO, IDG and other IDG companies, affiliates and it's advertisers for promotional purposes. CIO may rent and/or license for use phone numbers to selected outside firms for promotional purposes. Offers for which the numbers are rented and/or licensed for use are required to target their offers carefully.

Fax numbers of CIO print subscribers are used by CIO to collect re-qualification data and may be used for surveys for CIO and third parties. Except as set forth in this policy no fax numbers are rented and/or licensed to outside firms.

E-mail addresses of CIO print subscribers are used for re-qualification purposes. These e-mail addresses may also be used to collect feedback by members of our editorial or research team, to promote CIO and IDG products and services, and they may be rented to other firms and/or licensed for promotional purposes. When you provide your email address to us, you agree to receive email from CIO and its sister IDG companies, and the IDG Network. We allow users to "opt-out" of receiving e-mail from outside firms, however, when e-mail information is collected and with each e-mail use of the user's address you can individually “opt-out” of receiving further e-mail from outside firms, CIO, its sister IDG companies and the IDG Network If a user does not choose to “opt-out” at the time the e-mail address is collected, or does not respond to the questions concerning how we may use their email address, the address may be rented and/or licensed for use to outside firms. Offers for which the e-mail address is rented and/or licensed for use require the users to target their offers carefully.

Users who later decide they want to change their preferences may do so at www.CIO.com—newsletter.html.

Personal identifying information submitted on portions of our site developed with outside third parties may be shared with those third parties, and the information will be governed by those parties' privacy policies as well as CIO's. CIO, nor any of its parent companies or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates do not bear any responsibility for any actions or policies of such third parties.

CIO users should be aware that when they disclose personal identifying information (e.g., user name, address, company name, telephone number, demographic information, buying information, other data and E-mail address) in discussion forums, chat rooms or other areas that are publicly accessible by others, that information can be collected and used by others and may result in unsolicited messages from other posters or parties. CIO nor its parent company or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates are not responsible for any information that you provide in the above areas.

In the event that the ownership of CIO or any of its products are sold or transferred, all lists and data which contains personally identifying information and data including for example user name, address, company name, telephone number, demographic information, buying information, other data and e-mail address, will be transferred to the new owner.