Community Etiquette Guidelines

[Helen]

These community guidelines apply to all who choose to participate in Square’s online Seller Community located at www.sellercommunity.com. These guidelines are important ground rules meant to ensure the conversations are productive and valuable for all.

Guidelines

1. Be curious 💭  — Ask questions! We’re building this community to support one another, so ask for clarification on things you don’t understand or for advice from other Square sellers.
   
   
2. Be collaborative 🤝  — Share your ideas and best practices, post links and resources, and have good conversations with other community members. You're welcome to share a link to your business where it makes sense in the broader context of conversation, but please don't post direct promotions or otherwise spam the group. 
   
   
3. Be respectful 🙏   — We’re all professionals, so we expect members to assume good intentions, act with empathy, and work together to resolve conflict. Consider whether the comment you post is going to support those who will read it. Do not turn disagreements into personal attacks, and please don't post the same message in multiple places. It's not productive. Additionally, please do not use someone else's content without receiving explicit permission to do so. If you need help contacting an author, reach out to an Admin.
   
   
4. Be mindful 💬  — Though this community requires a Square account to join, most conversations are publicly visible without logging in. Please be mindful of the privacy or confidentiality of the content you post. We do not recommend sharing content, ideas, metrics, or other information that is confidential or sensitive to your business. Though our team frequently reviews posts to ensure private details are not being shared, Square cannot be held responsible if you choose to share any personal details, sensitive information or ideas, or business data in this community.
   
   
5. Be genuine 💖  — Share as much as you feel comfortable with! Photos, memes, emojis, gifs, and other lighthearted material is welcomed. Strengthen your own experience by getting involved in events and content, or connecting with other members directly. Choose a username that accurately represents you or your business. 

Reporting Violations

This community was created with you in mind. Though we try our best to review and attend to each and every post, we also rely on your guidance and feedback to ensure it remains a respectful, and valuable space. If you see anyone violating these guidelines, please report the post to the Admin team by clicking the Report Inappropriate Content button, underneath the ellipses menu (three dots) on the post.

Admin Actions
The Admin team is here to promote a safe, productive environment that ensures valuable conversations are possible. Here are a few of the common moderation actions we take, and reasons why we take them:

• Edit Posts: We believe strongly in letting customer voices shine through, regardless of the sentiment associated with a post. That said, there are a couple of reasons why we may edit a particular post:
  • We edit to remove personal information (e.g.: phone numbers, mailing addresses, etc). The Seller Community is a public site, and indexed by search engines, so we remove personal information to protect your privacy. Our team will replace the personal information with the following message: [Personal Information Redacted]
  • We edit the titles of threads for clarity. In many forums, good discussions are buried beneath bad titles. Our team takes great care in ensuring a title accurately reflects the conversation.
  • We edit posts to add tags so that other community members can discover the post more easily, and we edit posts written by our Admin team in the event information becomes out of date.

• Merge Threads: We merge duplicate conversations together to keep like comments in one place, and to make it easier for others to find the thread in the future. When we merge threads, we always send an email to the original author, and oftentimes we’ll leave the following message: This reply was created from merging an existing thread: “THREAD TITLE”. The original author has been notified via email.
  
  
• Create New Threads: There are times when conversations develop where the discussion departs from the original topic of a post. In cases like these, we may move the thread over to its own standalone post. This action ensures that the dialogue matches the topic's title, allowing other community members to find relevant content. In addition, this practice helps our team advocate for sellers' requests, questions, and concerns. If we create a new thread from a post originally embedded elsewhere, we'll leave the following message within the post: This post's title was updated by a moderator to reflect a name change. Original Title: "THREAD TITLE". The original author has been notified via email.
  
  
• Remove Content: Content may be removed from the community when it contains abusive language, or otherwise breaks any of the above community guidelines. Additionally, in an effort to reduce confusion in the community, our team will also remove content that contains misleading or speculative information about our products, their functionality, or their availability. To keep the community organized, we may also archive older content that is account specific and/or posts without recent conversation. 
  
  
• Revoke Posting Privileges: We reserve the right to remove content, and/ or revoke posting privileges from members who violate these guidelines, or Square's broader Terms of Service, at any time. We believe in transparency, but know that tensions sometimes run high. We err on the side of offering warnings for behavior that falls in the grey area, but we do have a zero-tolerance policy towards harassment, profanity, or abusive behavior of any kind towards any members of the community, including Square employees. Clear violations of guidelines or Terms of Service will not receive a warning.

The Fine Print

This community is monitored by members of Square’s Community Team from 6 a.m. – 6 p.m. PST, Monday –  Friday. We aim to ensure questions related to Square products have been answered within 24 hours of posting, however some may not be resolved by a member of our team within that timeframe. Any urgent, billing, or other account-specific questions should be submitted to our Support Team via phone or email. We cannot address questions specific to deposits, refunds, bank accounts, or other sensitive details in the Seller Community.

By joining our community, you agree and accept these guidelines. Our Admin Team reserves the right to remove any and all content or members who display abusive conduct or breach the above guidelines. Though we aim to give notice of any policy changes, community guidelines may change at any time in our discretion.

These guidelines were first published in 2016 and updated in 2020.