Mint Answers
Community Guidelines

Mint Answers is an online community in which members can ask and answer questions on a wide range of topics about personal finance. People can create profiles and share facts, opinions and personal experiences to help others. Mint is not a publisher of content supplied by third parties and users of the Site. Accordingly, Mint has no more editorial control over such content than does a public library, bookstore, or news stand. Any opinions, advice, statements, services, offers, or other information or content expressed or made available by third parties, including information providers and users, are those of the respective author(s) or distributor(s) and not Mint. In many instances, the content available through this site represents the opinions and judgments of the respective information providers or users. Mint does not endorse, and is not responsible for the accuracy or reliability of any opinion, advice or statement made on the site by any third party. These guidelines are to help in making the community a safe and useful place for personal finance information. Your use of Mint Answers is subject to these Community Guidelines.

What to do

FILL OUT A COMPLETE Mint answers PROFILE Let the community know who you are and what you are interested in. Upload a photo and link to your blog or other sites that you find interesting. A full and rich profile will lend more credibility to your questions and answers.

• SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE. Sharing your knowledge, opinions and experience is a way to make positive contribution to the community and establish relationships with other community members.
• BE CONSIDERATE. The community is made up of many types of people, with different backgrounds, knowledge and beliefs; please be considerate of others. It is not appropriate to post hostile, insulting, demeaning or belittling posts towards, or about, any individual members of the Mint Answers community or groups of members, nor is it acceptable to indirectly insult other community members using generalizations. Debates are acceptable, however ad hominem arguments are not. Remember to be respectful at all times.
• USE THE CORRECT FORMAT. In the Question and Answer section, any question should be posted in the form of a question; do not post answers unless you are attempting to answer a question or provide further clarification on your question. As this section is devoted to asking and answering questions, postings must be phrased in question and answer format or they may be removed. Mint reserves the right to remove posts that don't follow this format.
• SHARE YOUR SOURCES. The Web is a great resource for information, so when you use online sources, share where you found your information. If you quote an existing article, be sure to give credit to the author and provide a link back to the full article.
• LEAD BY EXAMPLE. Please help us keep the content in the community on-topic and relevant. For content that is off-topic, not relevant or just plain spam, please click on the ‘report’ link and tell us about it. If you direct comments towards the author of the post in question, make sure that you provide constructive and helpful feedback: mere labeling of the comment as spam is not acceptable. Also please note that any and all such comments may be removed once the post in question is removed.
• ENCOURAGE QUALITY CONTENT FROM OTHER COMMUNITY MEMBERS. While asking, answering or browsing, when you see informative or high-quality content from other community members, give it a thumbs up vote, and be sure to recognize the most useful and enlightening answer to your question with the designation of Best Answer.
• ENGLISH PLEASE. You may not use other languages or symbols. Content that is unreadable due to excessive typos may also be removed.
• CATEGORIZE CONTENT CORRECTLY. Content must be categorized in the appropriate category and location. Mint reserves the right to re-categorize or remove questions it determines to be categorized incorrectly.
• BE CAUTIOUS. Do not share your personal, private information such as social security number with any member. If you wish to engage in real life business relationship with any Mint member, we highly recommend that you do some research and meet this member in person before you take any action.
• CONTRIBUTE SAFELY. Your answers are intended to provide advice and guidance to people who ask questions and not to force your opinion. Be considerate of other opinions and never present your answers or comments as a guaranteed successful course of action.

What NOT to do

• YOU MAY NOT POST CONTENT OR LINKS TO CONTENT:
• To exploit, solicit or harm minors.
• That are violent, racist, incendiary, or otherwise objectionable.
• That are abusive, threatening, harassing, defamatory, libelous, fraudulent, invasive of another's privacy, or belligerent against any individual or groups of individuals for any reason.
• That violate federal, state or local law, including but not limited to Federal (applicable to everyone and all jurisdictions), State or local Fair Housing Laws. Federal, State and local Fair Housing Laws prohibit any discrimination in the provision of housing based upon race, color, national origin, creed, religion, physical or mental handicap, ancestry, age, marital status and familial status.
• That contain profane, obscene, vulgar or sexually explicit language. This includes the posting profane terms using numbers or characters to circumvent the profanity filter.
• That glorify self-harm, suicide, anorexia, bulimia, or any other practice that is clearly unhealthy or harmful.
• For commercial or advertising purposes, including classified ads.
• To vent your frustrations, rant, make statements, or otherwise violate the question and answer format.
• To others' personal information unless you have their consent to do so. This includes address and contact information.
• That are copyrighted. Examples include a company logo.
• In fields that aren't intended for that content. Example: Putting an address in a name field.
• That are disparaging of any firm, person, company or brokerage business plan, brokerage concepts or pricing of services.
• That discuss the pricing of brokerage services of any real estate brokerage firm or average or standard commissions.
• That impersonate any business, person or entity.
• That contain viruses or any other computer code, files or programs designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functionality of any computer software or hardware or telecommunications equipment or venue.
• That include or link to photos or videos that contain nudity, violence or any other images that are not suitable for the community.
• MULTIPLE PROFILES ARE PROHIBITED Each individual can only have one profile and account. Members who use different profiles to ask and answer their own questions or disturb the community risk having their accounts deactivated.
• DON'T SPAM. SPAM INCLUDES ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
• Trolling: Do not post inflammatory or contentious posts for the purpose of provoking others and starting a dispute.
• Advertising: Do not post questions or answers for the purpose of promoting your services, business, or website.
• Soliciting: Answers must make a clear attempt to address the questions asked. Don’t post an answer to a question with an offer to answer or provide additional information offline unless the content is of private matter and cannot be addressed online.
• Posting answers without useful content: Don’t post answers that add little value such as “Me too” or “I agree”. Explain why you agree with a previous answer. When answering questions always aim to add something new and valuable to the discussion.
• DO NOT VIOLATE THE LAW Mint is not responsible for any law violations, however in case such incident comes to our attention we maintain the right to remove such content at any time.
• DON'T CHEAT THE SYSTEM TO GAIN BETTER STATS Votes and best answer are meant to reward members for sharing questions and answers and help distinguish easily high quality content. You may not post filler answers to a question in an effort to be first to answer, or re-post previously posted content. Mint reserves the right to remove such content and deactivate accounts that are engaged in such activities at any time.
• NO HACKING You may not promote or redirect traffic to third-party sites, or post links to sites that force the download of a virus, programs, or other content, in any way interfere or disrupt the Mint Answers service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations connected to Mint.
• NO TRADING OF PRIVATE INFORMATION You may not upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any content or initiate communications which include information that you do not have the right to disclose or make available under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as insider information, passwords or proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements).
• DON’T COMMIT FRAUD You may not falsely state, impersonate, or otherwise misrepresent your identity, including but not limited to the use of a pseudonym, or misrepresenting your current or previous positions and qualifications, or your affiliations with a person or entity, past or present.
• DON'T DISRESPECT COPYRIGHT You may not post content that is copyrighted, protected by trade secret or otherwise subject to third party proprietary rights, including privacy and publicity rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from their rightful owner to post the material. If you do quote or republish any content from an existing article, don’t publish more than a paragraph and be sure to give credit to the author and provide a link back to the full article. Mint does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any Mint Answers content.
• DON'T DISRESPECT THE Mint Answers COMMUNITY Every member is entitled to share his or her opinion on Mint Answers. Do not insult other members because you strongly disagree with their views or for any other reason. Do not engage in hateful discussions, venting or ranting or use inappropriate language. We respect everyone's right to free speech but do not tolerate stalking, threats, harassment or inappropriate self promotion.

Response to Violations of Mint Answers Guidelines

Mint does not edit the content of profiles, questions, answers, or comments in Mint Answers. However, we reserve the right to remove content that we determine, at our sole discretion, to be inappropriate and/or in violation of the Mint Answers Guidelines. Depending on the level of offense, you may risk deactivation of your Mint Answers account and consequently everything associated with it. If you are unsure whether your content is appropriate or consistent with these policies, please do not post it in Mint Answers.
We reserve the right to modify these guidelines at any time without notification.