The following text serves as the official discussion policy for users of the Car Talk Community (CTC). All participants in the Car Talk Community are required to follow these rules, in addition to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for the CTC. We'd like to thank our friends at NPR.org for their advice and guidance — and especially for allowing us to adapt their guidelines for the Car Talk Community.

Every website has its own rules, and these are our rules for participating in Car Talk Community discussions. If you break them, don't be surprised if we remove your comments, your history or your access to the system.

First things first: If you can't be polite, don't say it. Of course, we don't want to stifle discussion of controversial issues. Some topics require blunt talk, and we're not always going to agree with each other. Nevertheless, please try to disagree without being disagreeable. Focus your remarks on positions, not personalities. No personal attacks, name calling, libel, defamation, comments about someone's mother, hate speech, comparisons to notorious dictators — you get the idea. And under no circumstances should you post anything that could be taken as threatening, harassing, bullying, obscene, pornographic, sexist or racist.

Don't use obscenities — even if the word in question is often used in conversation. We're not going to list the words we object to; you know what they are. Remember, this is a public forum and we want everyone to feel comfortable participating.

Anything you post should be your own work. You're welcome to link to relevant content and to quote limited amounts from other people's work with attribution and any associated copyright notice that is consistent with "fair use" principles of copyright law. This doesn't mean you can copy and paste wholesale.

Please stay on topic. Think of it this way — if you hosted a book club meeting at your home, you wouldn't want someone to show up and insist on discussing reality TV shows.

Rambling is the kiss of death. Keep your comments to 400 words or less. Generally, anything beyond a few paragraphs had better be very, very interesting to the larger community. We reserve the right to edit for brevity, clarity and other purposes.

Please respect people's privacy. We know you might be dying for help diagnosing that funny noise in your Volvo as soon as possible, but please don't post your personal phone number or email address in your questions. Likewise, please do not share another person's contact information through the Car Talk Community.

Feel free to share your ideas and experiences about relevant products or services you've discovered. But the Car Talk Community is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, lobbying, soliciting or proselytizing. We understand that there can be a fine line between sharing a tip and promoting a product; use your best judgment — and we will use ours. We also ask that you do not misuse the ratings, ranking or flagging systems.

We appreciate the tips members of the public send along to us. However, the Car Talk Community reserves the right not to publicize rumors, allegations, conspiracy theories and other information which we believe to be false, unsubstantiated or misleading. Be yourself — and not someone else. Don't post anything on the site posing as someone else. Impostors, look elsewhere for kicks. At the same time, we ask that you don't purposefully misrepresent yourself.

If you need to individually contact any of the Car Talk Plaza lackeys, please don't use the site discussion threads. To reach Car Talk Plaza, use the contact form and select the "Excess Bandwidth" option.

You are solely responsible for the content you post. The Car Talk Community is not responsible for the content posted by its users. We do not and cannot review all user content posted on the CTC. However, we have the right (but not the obligation) to review, screen, delete, edit and/or move any content posted on the CTC.