[Sticky] RPLS.com Community Guidelines

By using this website, you agree to abide by these Community Guidelines.

You can view the full Community Guidelines page at https://rpls.com/community-guidelines/

Why we’re here

RPLS.com is a community of land surveyors and surveying students who show up to help each other, advance the profession, and sharpen our practice. These guidelines aren’t fine print — they’re the handshake agreement that keeps this place useful and welcoming. By using the site, you’re agreeing to follow them.

Most of it comes down to one idea: it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. Debate hard, disagree freely, call out a bad idea — but argue the point, not the person. If you keep that in mind, you’ll rarely need the rest of this page.

The spirit of the place

Surveying is a profession built on judgment, and this community is where that judgment gets shared, questioned, and passed down. People come here to ask honest questions, work through hard problems, and sometimes be wrong out loud on the way to getting it right. That’s the whole point — so we protect good-faith discussion fiercely.

What we don’t make room for is cruelty, bad faith, and the handful of things that would poison the well for everyone else. Those are below.

Be nice

Long before this page existed, RPLS.com had exactly one rule: Be nice. It’s been here since day one, and everything below is really just that rule with the details filled in.

This is the one that matters most. Be respectful, even when you disagree — especially when you disagree. We’re a mix of seasoned licensees, crew members, students, and retirees, and everyone here deserves to take part without being attacked, belittled, or run off.

That means no personal attacks, no harassment or bullying, and no sneering at someone for their experience level, their job role, where they went to school, or how they got into the trade. Picking apart an argument is fair game. Picking apart a person is not. Coordinated pile-ons, intimidation, stalking, and sexual harassment — on or off the site — will get you removed.

The hard lines

A small number of things will get content removed and accounts suspended or banned, sometimes without warning for serious cases:

• Hate speech. Content that attacks, threatens, dehumanizes, or incites violence against people based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, serious illness, or immigration status. Zero tolerance.
• Threats and violence. Threats against any person, group, animal, or place, and content that glorifies or celebrates extreme violence. Credible threats to public safety may be reported to the authorities.
• Illegal activity. Don’t use RPLS.com to buy, sell, or facilitate anything illegal — controlled substances, weapons and explosives or instructions for making them, stolen or counterfeit goods, trafficking of any kind, or other unlawful transactions.
• Sexual content. No nudity, pornography, or sexually explicit material.
• Endangering minors. You must be 18 or older to use RPLS.com. We have zero tolerance for any content that abuses, exploits, or endangers minors.

Keep it honest

Trust is the foundation of a forum like this, so don’t deliberately mislead people. That means no scams, no spam, no fake accounts, and no impersonating another person, company, or RPLS.com itself.

Being mistaken is not the same as lying. You won’t get in trouble for a good-faith answer that turns out to be wrong — that’s how a discussion forum works. What’s not allowed is knowingly spreading false or misleading information, especially the kind that could cost someone money, work, or safety.

If you share AI-generated content, say so, and don’t pass off an AI answer as verified fact. Check it the same way you’d check anything before you’d stake your name to it.

A word about professional advice

Everything here is peer-to-peer knowledge sharing among colleagues — it is not professional, legal, or regulatory advice, and it’s no substitute for your own judgment. Statutes, standards, and local practice vary, and the person answering you may be a thousand miles from your jurisdiction. You are responsible for your own work, your own stamp, and confirming anything you read here against the rules that actually apply to you.

Respect privacy and confidentiality

Surveyors work with sensitive material, so use good sense about what you post.

• Don’t share private individuals’ personal information, or anyone’s contact details, without their okay.
• Don’t post confidential or client-protected material — unrecorded documents, private agreements, or anything you’re not free to share. Public-record data like recorded plats and legal descriptions is fine; a client’s private file is not.
• Don’t post content that violates someone else’s copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property.

When in doubt, leave it out or ask first.

Self-promotion and advertising

We love that vendors and service providers are part of this community — but RPLS.com is funded by members and advertising partners, and free-riding on it for promotion isn’t fair to them or to you. Don’t advertise, sell, or promote products or services without an advertising arrangement in place. Specifically, please don’t:

• Use a company logo as your personal avatar, or an ad as your cover photo
• Drop links to your business in your posts, replies, comments, or signature
• Send members private messages pitching your products or services

If you’d like to reach this audience the right way, we’d genuinely like to hear from you — it’s how we keep the lights on.

Keep the platform safe

Don’t do anything that undermines the security or reliability of the site:

• No malware, viruses, or anything else designed to harm RPLS.com or its members
• No reverse-engineering, decompiling, or building derivative products from the platform
• No automated scraping or scripts to harvest data from the site

How moderation works

We enforce these guidelines with a mix of tools and real human moderators, and we’d rather have a quiet word than swing a hammer. Depending on what happened, we may edit or remove content, reach out privately, or — for serious or repeated violations — suspend or ban an account. We use common sense and consider context, including things like educational, documentary, or newsworthy value.

We update these guidelines from time to time as the community grows and new situations come up.

A word about censorship and free speech

The First Amendment protects citizens from government limits on speech in a public forum. RPLS.com isn’t a public forum — it’s a private one that’s open to the public. That said, we believe in open discussion and we don’t condone censoring ideas. You can talk about just about anything here.

The one thing we hold the line on is respect. There’s no place for personal attacks, trolling, or discrimination. Debate the idea, find the fault, argue the point — just don’t abuse the people on the other side of the screen. When in doubt, remember the golden rule of forum etiquette: it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

Thank you

Thanks for being part of RPLS.com and for helping keep it a place surveyors actually want to spend time. If you come across something that crosses one of these lines, report it and we’ll take a look. We’re all in this together.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss these guidelines, please feel free to reply below.