Forum admin - promises to members / guests from the team

This post arose from a correspondence that had nothing to do with this forum - but what it says it has everything to do with this forum.

When you join, you sign up to an agreement covering what you can (and can't) do here. That's your promise to the moderator / admin team and the site owner - but what promise do you get back? I read - with some horror - correspondence from one of our members about another forum where he's a member, where agreements made by members on sign up do not seem to be reciprocated by their admin, who feels he has the right to read their personal messages. So, for the record, here are some of our admin promises and policies.

a) The general ethos is that if you treat the moderator and admin team as you would wish to be treated, they'll treat you as a member or as a guest in the same way

b) For the most part, moderator and administration actions are positive - answering questions, welcoming member, helping keep topics in the right place, and so forth. Where something may necessite something more, it's discussed around the moderator team and if need be enquiries are made, without going public, unless immediate action is needed.

c) The forums is strong and it shares views, including those which are not held by the moderators, openly. And we don't mind people talking about other forums, services, etc. We do draw the line at advertising of unrelated products (especially by people who sign up just to advertise), and posts which facilitate law-breaking - such as those which provide information on fare evasion (mind you, such information can easily and accidentally be posted, and the issue is usually solved with a coulpe of messages rather than by anyone waving a stick)

d) Personal messages are NOT read. There might (at some future date) be a time that we're legally required to divulge something, and there mignt be times where I in my technical role of database admin have to check data if we have a problem, and said messages might flash up on my screen as I sort things out / debug. It's never happened yet, though.

e) We try to be as open as possible with policies and decisions, making sure that there's published details of what actions are and may be taken, and why. Occasionally, such as when we're looking to reduce the number of "spam" signups (they can drown out genuine ones!) we'll not publish the algorithms.

f) We try to keep as much of the information on the forum as we can public - after all, we're a forum for passenger and we want casual / occasional visitors to be able to gain from the site with the minimal of requirements on them.

g) We are free from advertising and signup fees. In the future, funding the service could become an issue, so I'm not saying "never", but any steps taken would be reluctant and measured.

There's more - a lot more - background on my blog at http://www.wellho.net/mouth/4403_The-unbalanced-relationship-between-customer-and-provider.html for you to read if you're interested. And (after a period for discussion here) I'll be adding the contents of this post to the sticky thread Newcomers start here - and a reference for older hands - I didn't start with it there as I wanted to give an opportunity for comment / tuning if there are suggestions that are worth including.