Kayak Building Bulletin Board Guidelines

• Keep on subject: kayak building,
• No anonymous postings: include your name and email address,
• Make your questions specific: provide background that will help others answer your question intelligently,
• Back up your opinion: if you want to praise or criticize a product, idea or technique, give examples as to why it is good or bad,
• No commercial advertising: promote yourself or your company by providing useful info that will help everyone, even your competition,

The goal of the Kayak Building BBS is to promote the activity of building kayaks. It is an open forum for discussing all techniques for building kayaks including but not limited to: strip-built, stitch and glue, skin on frame, and fiberglass. It is a place for people who have built kayaks to post their ideas on how to build them better, for people who are currently building to ask for assistance, and for people who are considering building to ask for advice.

The bulletin board is sponsored by Guillemot Kayaks to assist people who want to build kayaks. It is noncommercial in nature. Although Guillemot Kayaks sponsors the BBS it is not intended as a vehicle to advertise Guillemot Kayak designs or that of any other designer. It exists for the assistance of builders of all kinds of kayaks.

To this end it is requested that discussion be limited to those areas that will help the kayak building community in general. This includes any question about how to do something. There are no stupid questions. Also included are any answers to those questions.

Questions regarding the qualities of various designs for home builders, both commercially available and public domain, are also within the areas open to discussion. Users and builders of these boats are free to post their comments in response to the questions. Try to keep the comments based on personal experience or otherwise supportable evidence.

The designers and commercial suppliers of kayak designs, kits and finished kayaks are welcome to post to this bulletin board. Please limit your postings to areas that are of general interest to the readers of the BBS. This includes recommended techniques for building boats, recommended materials, recommended tools and recommended sources for any of the above. It does not include recommending your own products or criticizing other's products. For example:

• If someone posts, "Please recommend a kayak" respond to them via email don't post your desire for them to build your kayak on the bulletin board. Customers can post their recommendations.
• If someone posts, "Should I build X from company ABC or Y from PDQ" respond with how your boat X from ABC is good (keep it short and sweet w/o hyperbole), not with how yours is better than Y from PDQ. Customers can post any impressions.
• If someone posts, "I am considering building X from ABC, is this the right boat for me.", Respond by why you (from ABC) think your boat X is or is not the right boat.
• Back up your opinion: if you want to praise your product, substantiate your claims with objective characteristics.
• Don't criticize the competition. You're motivation is suspect and that way they won't criticize you. If you think the competition is misstating the facts, respond with care. This is not a forum for airing your dissagreements with what competing designers or builders are doing. You can use your own web site to do that.

If a question is posted asking specifically about one of your products, you are welcome to respond to it directly. Please respond by stating what is good about your design. Refrain from putting down the competition. If your designs or information is truly better than the competition's, please rely on your customers to point that out. If someone states something that you feel is in error or based on a misconception, please feel free to state what you believe to be correct. Respond to questions in a fair manner with a minimum of hyperbole.

Commercial postings are not allowed. Unsolicited postings extolling the virtues of a boat you or products your company designed or sells are not permitted. If you want to say something good about your boat, wait for someone to ask on this bulletin board. Do not criticize products designed or sold by others.

If you are connected to or represent a commercial source of kayaks or kayak designs, you must include some notice of that in your posting. Include a notice with your name or include a URL to your businesses web site. The best way is to append the name of your business after your name (i.e. Nick Schade - Guillemot Kayaks)

Classifieds advertising finished boats made by home builders are allowed, however the BBS is probably the wrong place. People reading the BBS build their own boats, they don't want to buy someone else's perked. Classifieds from noncommercial sources offering excess materials, used tools, etc. are permitted.

I will only do so with the greatest reluctance, but if I feel a post to the bulletin board is out of line with these guidelines, I will delete the posting. Please do not force me to do so as it will lower my tolerance level for future postings from the offending party.

In general I will leave it to you the reader, to police yourself. You can figure out if you are straying from the guidelines. If you are unsure, email your post to me first.

Please Note: Any messages you post will probably stay available to the public for as long as I have the money to maintain this site. You do not want to post anything here that you don't want anyone to read tomorrow, next year or next century. Please post carefully, once you have posted your message it is here to stay. I reserve the right to keep your messages available forever. I may include commercial information with your message, change the format of the material and or move the messages to another location, however I will not edit the content you wrote unless it does not conform to these guidelines. If I edit the post and you do not like my changes, I will delete the message at your request.

If someone has posted copyrighted material or otherwise illegal material, please notify the adminstrator so that it may be removed.

Use of this site is free unless otherwise noted or notified.

By providing links to other sites, KayakForum.com does not guarantee, approve or endorse the information or products available at these sites, nor does a link indicate any association with or endorsement by the linked site to KayakForum.com.

The messages on this board are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Thanks and enjoy,
Nick Schade
Kayak Building Bulletin Board Administrator
Guillemot Kayaks.

For question regarding the function of the BBS please refer to this FAQ.