The short version
Be someone people are glad shared a table with them at the campfire. Everything below is really just that, spelled out.
1. Respect for others
Disagree with ideas as much as you want. Don’t disrespect the person holding them. Assume good faith, especially in a text-only forum where tone is easy to misread.
2. No harassment
Don’t target another member with repeated unwanted contact, following them from thread to thread to argue, or trying to make them feel unwelcome. One heated exchange isn’t harassment; a pattern is.
3. No cyberbullying
This one’s mostly aimed at protecting anyone in a more vulnerable spot — newer members, people posting about something personal or difficult, younger members if they join. Piling on, mocking someone’s post to an audience, or coordinating with others to target someone isn’t welcome here, ever.
4. No hate speech
No content that attacks or demeans people based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or similar. This applies to travel stories too — plenty of hard history comes up in travel writing (we’ve covered some ourselves), and that’s fine to discuss thoughtfully. Using that history to demean a group today is not.
5. No discrimination
Don’t tell someone their travel experience or perspective is worth less because of who they are. This is a community for every kind of traveler, on every kind of budget.
6. No personal attacks
Attack the argument, not the person. “That itinerary sounds exhausting” is fine. “You’re an idiot for planning it that way” is not.
7. No spam
No repetitive posting, no copy-pasted content across threads, no bot-like behavior. If you’re not sure whether something counts as spam, it probably does.
8. No commercial promotion without permission
This isn’t a place to advertise your travel business, blog, tour company, or affiliate links. If you think you have something genuinely useful to share commercially, ask a moderator first. Unapproved promotional posts will be removed.
9. No illegal content
Nothing that violates the law — this includes content promoting illegal activity, stolen material, or anything else that would create legal exposure for you or for us.
10. Respect copyright
Share your own photos and writing, or content you have the right to share. Crediting a source doesn’t automatically make reposting it okay — when in doubt, link instead of copying.
11. Stay on topic
Threads exist to talk about the thing in the first post. If a conversation drifts somewhere interesting but unrelated, that’s what starting a new thread is for.
12. Moderator authority
Moderators can edit, move, lock, or remove content, and can restrict or remove a member’s ability to post, when these rules are broken. Moderators aim to be light-touch and to assume good faith first — but their decisions on rule enforcement are final within the community. Disagreements about a moderation decision can be raised privately with a moderator or administrator.
13. Reporting inappropriate content
If you see something that breaks these rules, report it rather than engaging publicly. During the comments-first phase, that means flagging it to a moderator directly (a dedicated report button is a forum-era feature, added only once comment volume makes manual flagging insufficient); once the forum exists, its report feature is also available. Reports are reviewed by a person before any action is taken. You won’t be identified to the person you reported.
See a problem post
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Report it (report feature or flag a moderator)
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A moderator reviews it privately
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No action · Friendly nudge · Content removed · Posting restricted
Breaking these rules can result in a warning, content removal, a temporary posting restriction, or — for serious or repeated violations — removal from the community. Most first-time issues start with a friendly nudge, not a punishment.
The exception: cyberbullying, harassment, threats and hate. These are never handled with a nudge. They can lead to immediate content removal and permanent removal from the community, without warning, as section 12 of our Terms and Conditions says. Threats of violence and anything involving a child’s safety are reported to law enforcement.