Can I post research queries here? Or, why did my research query get removed?

[proteus]

We understand and appreciate your interest: Brass Goggles is one of the oldest active Steampunk fora around. However, this also means we get a great many people who wish to use our membership for research purposes. As you might imagine, while flattering, it also gets old (and even disruptive) rather quickly.

If you wish to conduct research using Brass Goggles, therefore, we have adopted the following guidelines:

• If your research can be conducted without asking questions of our membership, please feel free to proceed.
• If you need to seek member feedback (surveys/questionnaires, interviews, etc.), please spend some time acquainting yourself with the community and contributing something of value to the conversation before doing so. If we don't see evidence of this, your post will be locked and/or removed. We all pour our hearts into this free community, show us you appreciate it! The rule of thumb is that until you achieve the rank of 'Gunner' (by spending enough time on the forum), don't bother.
• Before asking survey questions/etc., take time to search and browse the forum -- it has been our experience that the majority of survey questions could be answered by your spending a bit of effort reading what's already here.
• We aren't a homework-help site. If your request smells like us doing your homework for you, we'll delete it.
• If you think your research project is particularly interesting to the community, but you need to be exempt from these rules for some reason, send email to administrator-at-brassgoggles.co.uk and pitch your idea. If it will add value, we're happy to make an exception
• Unless you receive prior written permission from the administrator or a Governor, we ask that you share a no-charge copy of your final research paper (or documentation of your project) with our community. Reasonably permanent hosting is appreciated; if you can't find or can't afford that, contact administrator-at-brassgoggles.co.uk for assistance.
• You must make clear that your research is not being conducted under any official sanction of Brass Goggles, nor do you have any relationship with us. You must be clear that our privacy policy does not apply to any information our users share with you.
• You must reveal your scholarly credentials, if any. This includes indicating whether your research is being done for college/university credit, what institution you are attending and/or working with, and whom your employer is (if any).
• Unless it would invalidate your research, you must be honest about what the research will be used for.
• Your user account must be registered with a professional or student e-mail address, and you must respond in a timely way to inquiries from the site administrators, moderators, and Governors.
• Please include [RESEARCH] in the title of your topic
• Even if you follow all of these guidelines, Brass Goggles moderators reserve the right to remove your posts and the responses to them -- or even ban you -- if your behavior or the nature of your research is inappropriate. That's subjective. If you're not sure, ask first.
• If your behavior or research is deemed unethical or significantly inappropriate, we reserve the right to perform research of our own, which may result in us reporting you to your academic or other institution. Hopefully it never comes to that.

If you believe that any of these rules are unfair or unreasonable, please feel free to send email to administrator-at-brassgoggles.co.uk.