Air Hosts Forum Community Guidelines
Welcome!
We are an active, lively forum of STR hosts. The forum is full of unique individuals from all over the world. We have no official affiliation with Airbnb. The mission of the forum is to directly connect hosts with other hosts around the world and to share information which we can all use to make our hosting experience more enjoyable and productive. Many of us have made lifelong friends through this forum!
Please review the guidelines below before posting on the forum.
Respect our forum.
No spamming. This forum is provided at no cost to members. It’s meant to be a collaborative, participatory place where users directly help other users. (The owner, @tom2 is using ads and links to affiliates in a pinned post to offset the cost of hosting the forum. It’s inappropriate and a violation of the TOS for others to try to piggyback onto his site.)
So please, absolutely no promotional links of any kind! This includes spam, multiple cross posts, links to blogs, websites, products or other sites. Please don’t pretend to be posting in a conversation and slip in links or references to your product or service. We’re onto this game.
While some links are allowed in context, we frown upon someone new joining just to promote something and posting links that take users off the site to some blog or website. Your post will be removed without warning. So just don’t do it.
The creation of hyperlinks will not be tolerated in any case as it creates unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites.
However, if you do have a promotion that you feel would benefit hosts (example would be last year’s free mattress sponsorship by two mattress start ups) you must PM a mod to obtain permission before posting. The same is true of the many surveys we get. Some of them are genuine but many are thinly veiled promotions. (Some of us have a soft spot for legitimate academic surveys, but mods must verify their legitimacy first before allowing the post.)
Links we allow. There are some forum members here for whom exceptions are made. These are longtime members who regularly contribute to this community, not people who just show up one day to do some self promotion and then disappear. These exceptions are made on a case-by-case basis by your team of moderators who consult one another.
If a poster specifically asks for a recommendation, replying with a helpful, non-self-promotional link is okay. Helpful links are always fine. If you are unsure if a link violates guidelines, PM one of us for clarification.
Please note that the forum members offer a variety of “free” advice. None is to be taken as strict legal and financial advice. Please do your own research on these issues or hire experts.
If you PM members to promote your website/blog/product, that is considered spam and is not okay.
Improve the Discussion!
Off-Topic Posts. One thing that makes our forum so unique and friendly is that we sometimes we stray off topic. Some of our best and most productive discussions have happened while the post veered wildly off topic. If this bothers you, we may not be the forum for you. 
Mods will not shut down any off-topic posts unless they violate our TOS.
If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think about what you want to say and try again later. Use your judgment about replying to a post that’s old or dead. It may be confusing to resurrect an old post, to say nothing of inaccurate.
Please do not ask basic questions such as “what happens when a guest cancels?” These answers are readily available on the Airbnb website.
Sometimes we will lock a discussion that devolves, or has become redundant or otherwise unproductive. We reserve the right at our discretion to immediately remove a post or member who violates guidelines, but in most cases we will give warnings.
Moderators reserve the right to eliminate or edit posts for relevance and for general forum readability.
Post that are deliberately deceptive with the purpose of winding up or entrapping forum members will be removed and the person will be banned at our discretion.
Be civil.
Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, racist or hate speech. Be agreeable, even when you disagree. Disagree or criticize the idea, not the poster. No personal insults or name calling, ever.
You may have had a terrible guest, and we all sympathize, but please don’t post their real name on our forum.
Keep it clean.
Don’t post anything obscene, sexually explicit, or that uses offensive language.
Respect each other.
Don’t harass anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information. NO GOING REAL LIFE, EVER! Posters who do this will be permanently banned and blocked. And yes, we have had people do this in the past. It’s never okay.
Don’t send unsolicited harassment to other members via PM.
You may not create multiple false accounts. Our forum software automatically flags such users. If you do it, all your accounts will be deleted and your IP will be banned permanently.
To protect your privacy, we highly suggest you use a screen name when posting here.
Keep it Tidy!
Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
Don’t post no-content replies. (A few videos or songs are okay, but don’t go overboard!)
Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it
Don’t post redundantly or “summarize” other posts.
Follow up. If you post a topic asking for help or presenting a situation, you will likely get a number of responses from our friendly and helpful group. Please don’t just post a topic and disappear. It’s common courtesy to come back and follow up so as not to leave everyone hanging. Remember they took the time and energy to write a response.
Help us help you
If you see a post in possible violation please FLAG it and write a note in the private memo box to the mods. Do not blast the other members in public. At the same time, please don’t spam the mods with flags just because you don’t like someone or disagree with their opinion. We’re not going to remove their account because you disagree with them.
Actions
If a member continues to violate our community guidelines, we can issues warnings, suspensions, and ultimately block a member from the forum. We will sometimes do this for flagrant violators without warnings as well. Any questions, comments, concerns, please reach out to the mods privately.
Blasting, insulting, accusing or arguing with moderators will never be tolerated. Your moderation team is all volunteer and receive no perks or compensation for keeping the forum on track, so please respect their time and efforts. We are only human and try our best to be fair and use a light hand moderating.
Remember, we are all hosts on this forum and we should treat each other with mutual respect and dignity. We all want to learn something, have fun, meet new friends and join the discussion!