Terms and Rules

Read below for SFF.N's mission statement, rules for participating across our web presence, and terms of use for all users of our forum, Discord, and beyond.

Mission Statement

SFF.Network (SFF.N) is an online community for Small Form Factor (SFF) enthusiasts: system builders who prize space efficiency and thoughtful design in what they create, use, and enjoy. For our users, our aim is to be a resource for sharing builds, experiences, and knowledge; for our creators, our goal is to provide a hospitable platform from which SFF-related projects and products can flourish.


General Rules

In addition to our Terms of Use, here are the rules for members of SFF.N across our entire web presence (including our forum and Discord):

✅ Do:

  • Use common sense and show courtesy to your fellow community members
  • Write in English when you post
  • Put your posts in the correct sub-forum

⛔️ Don't:

  • Share links that are shortened or contain referral codes
  • Attempt to buy, sell or trade anything, except where allowed in the appropriate Exchange subforum
  • Attack or harass. Personal attacks and harassment are never tolerated; SFF.N is intolerant of intolerance, full-stop. This covers everything from casual racism and sexism, through to any prejudicial or derogatory language or content that is levied against other individuals or groups
  • Post explicit and/or sexual content or language

⚠️ Be aware that:

  • As part of our moderation efforts, some content may be evaluated by us before it is made visible to the public, or edited afterwords
  • Clickbait links/memes or other 'poor-quality' content are highly discouraged, and may be edited or removed at the discretion of our staff
Simply put, don’t be a jerk, and report any instances where people are breaking this mantra. If you have any questions about any of the rules, feel free to reach out to our moderation team.


Trade Rules

General Trade Rules

  • SFF.N reserves the right to edit or delete threads and posts; block or ban users and IP addresses; and otherwise retains complete control and discretion with respect to what can be submitted and published, at all times, for all posts and threads.
  • The public is allowed to read all threads and posts; all SFF.N members are allowed to submit posts in response to a thread; as an anti-spam measure, only forum members who are current supporters can post a thread and begin/initiate solicitations for transactions.
  • All threads must be prefixed as [Buying], [Selling], [Trading], or [Multi], the geographic location of items must be listed, and the title and descriptions for all threads must be honest and representative of the item; for [Selling] and [Buying] threads, a price must be specified.
  • All threads and posts must be civil and meet the level of decorum of the site as a whole, and all posts in response to a thread must pertain to the thread itself - no thread hijacking is allowed.
  • All posted items must be 100% legally owned by the user, and the sale or transaction of such items must be in accordance with all EULAs, contracts, or other binding agreements with the manufacturer/developer/creator. Proof of ownership of any item must be provided if requested by the moderation team and serious prospective buyers.
  • Posts can only be for buying, selling, or trading - meaning that contests, raffles, gift payments, auctions, or any other means of transaction are not allowed.
  • The following items are blacklisted: alcohol, tobacco, coupons, weapons, pharmaceuticals, currency, securities, financial instruments, MLM products/membership, pornography, and services of any kind.
  • Pictures and/or video may be posted, but they must be representative of the item.
  • Users may bump a thread only if it has not been bumped or posted to in the past week.
  • If two parties decide they are interested in transacting with one another, they must use SFF.N's private messaging functionality for communication between each other to negotiate and decide upon terms (SFF.N respects user privacy, and cannot see these exchanges unless we are invited to the conversation, or a participant reports the conversation to us - we require communication within the forum so that rule violations can be reported and appropriately dealt with).
  • Linking to listings on external sites (craigslist, eBay, Amazon, etc.) are not allowed.
  • Any purchases, deals, exchanges or transactions are made solely between members, and are not the responsibility of SFF.N. Use of the forum constitutes waiver of liability for the aforementioned parties should a user not receive payment or product/service, or otherwise realize any other negative outcome.

Why only supporters can post threads in Trade

Most other forums use a member's number of posts as a filter with respect to who can post buy/sell/trade solicitations. These same forums, by their own admission, recognize that this is a poor method of filtering out 'bad' folks from 'good' folks. We don't want to use a method that's known to be bad. So instead, we require that thread starters be 'supporters' of the forum. Those who are already supporters, already qualify to post threads (and thus initiate solicitations); for all others, this effectively requires that such users spend $2 on a monthly Bronze Supporter subscription (Bronze is just the minimum required, higher tiers are also supported), at the time that they first post in this section.

Here's why we do this: Post counts, or account age, do not prevent spammers from polluting buy/sell/trade sections. Making posts or waiting a while costs next-to-nothing and scales nearly infinitely. Furthermore, such a policy also blocks out a substantial portion of genuine users, because of its imprecision. Requiring that thread starters be forum supporters, comparatively, places a very low cost on genuine users, but makes the cost of spamming SFF.N prohibitively high for bad actors.

To be clear, this policy is not going to be a substantial revenue-driver for SFF.N. Furthermore, this only prevents non-supporters from creating threads that initiate buy/sell/trade transactions - all members are able to post on threads (if they want to purchase an item someone is selling, for example).

Transaction Guidelines

For sellers

  • If you post an item and it is eventually no longer available for sale, close the thread you've made by updating the prefix to "Closed". A moderator will, in time, lock the thread and move it to the completed trade subsection.
  • Editing a thread to add in new items after you have marked the thread as closed is discouraged - please create a new thread for the new item or batch of items.
  • If anything about your item changes after you have created a thread for it - including price - update your thread ASAP to reflect as such.
  • Always wait to send an item until you have received payment from the buyer.
  • Never accept a wire or a check as payment. Accept cash in-person, or digital payments via services that offer buyer and seller protection when shipping your item, and nothing else.
  • Examples of payment methods that SFF.N prohibits include money orders, postal orders, wire transfers, bank transfers, and P2P payment services and apps.

For buyers

  • If you buy an item you were looking for, close the thread you've made (if you made one) by updating the prefix to "Closed".
  • Only pay with digital payments via services that offer buyer and seller protection when shipping your item, and nothing else. Examples of payment methods that SFF.N prohibits include money orders, postal orders, wire transfers, bank transfers, and P2P payment services and apps.Always demand that an item being shipped is tracked, and always ask for the tracking number. Request insurance or certified mail if you desire it.

For traders

  • If you post an item for trade or an item you want to trade for, and you've conducted the trade, close the thread you've made by updating the prefix to "Closed".
  • If anything about your item changes after you have created a thread for it, update your thread ASAP to reflect as such.
  • Always demand that an item being shipped is tracked, and always ask for the tracking number. Request insurance or certified mail if you desire it.


Marketplace Rules

Unlike many other forums, vendors are encouraged to interact with the community and are free to discuss their SFF-related products on SFF.N. This includes posting links to their own products, where appropriate.

Please keep in mind that this is for the purpose of allowing the community to provide feedback and ask questions. Vendors who don't engage with the community, or post where it's not relevant, will see their posts deleted or accounts banned at the discretion of SFF.N staff. Basically, don't abuse the community!

Vendors must clearly specify the nature of the product(s) for sale - whether they are in stock, pre-order, group buy, delayed, etc. Regular communication is a requirement - keep your buyers, current and prospective, up to date with any issues, updates and the like. Posting these updates in the forum thread is needed as soon as possible after stock supply changes.

It is important that vendors contact SFF.N such that they can be given a banner confirming their status as a representative of a particular brand. Please contact an admin to request a user banner displaying your company affiliation, which we use to ensure transparency and verify identities for users.

Buyers and sellers are themselves wholly responsible for complying with all applicable laws, regulations, tax codes, tariffs, or other requirements enforced by governments, throughout the execution of any transaction.


Affiliate Links & Advertising

SFF.N automatically overwrites certain e-commerce links (such as Amazon and Newegg) across the forum to remove the referral code. We do this to help enforce our ban on referral links. SFF.N also displays network ads to all unregistered guests, though anyone who is logged into a (free) SFF.N account is not served these ads. Finally, we occasionally work with vendors on sponsored or similar content that is served to ll users; this is typically in support of news coverage (such as Computex) or is otherwise part of a direct sponsorship, and in either case is always prominently labeled as such.


Community Deals Section Rules

All forum members are allowed to post direct links to online deals on products and services, in order to share such buying opportunities with other members of the community. However, we have a few rules in place that are meant to keep such a resource healthy and valuable for all of us. They are as follows:

  • All posted deals should truly be 'deals' insofar that the pricing should be a tangible and uncommon improvement over the commonly-available pricing; if a quick visit to CamelCamelCamel reveals that the price isn't rare, that 'deal' is anything but.
  • Don't post a deal that's since expired.
  • Don't post a deal that is not intended to be available to the public - this includes deals that take advantage of flaws or bugs in a website.
  • Don't re-post a deal that's already been shared.
  • As a reminder of the forum rules, affiliate links are not allowed.


Subscriptions

Building and running a website and community is time consuming and costly! If you enjoy SFF.N and want to support our work and reporting – in exchange for some perks and benefits – consider some of the supporter subscriptions made available to the community.


User Banner Guide

User banners are intended to identify certain kinds of users, and to certify that particularly important community members are who they say they are. To this end, SFF.N staff members have either an Editorial Staff or Moderator banner under their avatar, to indicate their role; these are red and blue. Users who are new to SFF.N have green New User banners; be sure to welcome them to the community! Finally, users who have projects, businesses or similar roles may have verification banners; these are grey banners with checkmarks issued by SFF.N that are meant to reflect that a user has been confirmed to be who they claim by SFF.N staff. If you are interested in receiving a banner, please reach out to an admin to request one.


The Legal Stuff

The providers ("we", "us", "our") of the service provided by this web site ("Service") are not responsible for any user-generated content and accounts ("Content"). Content submitted express the views of their author only.

You agree to not use the Service to submit or link to any Content which is defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, contains adult or objectionable content, contains personal information of others, risks copyright infringement, encourages unlawful activity, or otherwise violates any laws.

All Content you submit or upload may be reviewed by staff members. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). Do not submit any Content that you consider to be private or confidential.

We reserve the rights to remove or modify any Content submitted for any reason without explanation. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be undertaken only at our discretion. We reserve the right to take action against any account with the Service at any time.

You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service. You retain copyright over the Content.

These terms may be changed at any time without notice.

If you do not agree with these terms, please do not register or use this Service. If you wish to close your account, please contact us.

Account deletion may be requested by contacting a staff member. All deletions will be done as per GPDR Regulations, and your account will be anonymised, rather than deleted. Posts will remain. XenForo, the software platform we use, does not allow for users deleting their own accounts.