Principal content
House rules
FT Alphaville's Long Room is intended to be somewhere finance professionals can share their insight and research and comment on the work of other members of the community.
Membership of the Long Room is not transferable and is subject to these House Rules and our Terms of Use.
What to do:
- Be professional, polite and respectful in your interactions with others
While membership of the Long Room is limited to those who fulfill our criteria for eligibility, we are a community comprised of many different types of people. Respect the views of other members, even if you disagree with them.
- Share your own research
We encourage you to upload relevant content that you have created, be it PDF files, blog posts, research, charts, graphics or excel spreadsheets. Please respect the copyright of others – do not post research or content for which you do not have the appropriate rights.
- If you see content that you have created being shared on another member's table, don't panic. This is probably just a misunderstanding and not malicious. A good first step would be to contact them and politely ask them to remove it. If that doesn't work, please alert the FT Alphaville team via longroom@ft.com and we will deal with it.
- Moderate your content
Members are responsible for ensuring that the content shared in the Long Room is appropriate. Members who host or administer tables – be these public or private – are also responsible for ensuring the appropriateness of content uploaded by their table guests. For more information about hosting tables, please see our FAQs.
- Be thoughtful, witty and well-researched when writing your posts or comments
- Keep on topic and stay relevant when posting or commenting
- Respect the privacy of the Long Room
- What happens in the Long Room, stays in the Long Room. Do not post research, content or table discussions from the Long Room elsewhere, and please respect the privacy of members who choose to operate under a pseudonym – even if you know who they are in real life.
What not to do:
While the FT Alphaville team are a reasonably tolerant bunch, the FT lawyers are markedly less indulgent. That said, in most circumstances, we will issue a formal warning if you breach any of our Terms and Conditions or fail to uphold the spirit of our House Rules. Subsequent violations may lead to termination of your membership, without warning.
Therefore:
- Don't upload content or share information that would incur the wrath of market regulators (or FT lawyers, of whom you should be quite, quite afraid).
- Don't attempt to manipulate markets – or other members
- Don't use the Long Room for commercial purposes
- If we find you selling products, services or yourself by means of the Long Room we will revoke your membership. This does not apply to Sponsored Tables (except for that bit about yourself), but if there is any doubt or you have any questions, please contact us directly at longroom@ft.com.
- Debate and discussion are encouraged – ranting from a bully pulpit is not. The Long Room is not a venue for you to harass, abuse, defame, impersonate, intimidate others or incite hatred.
- If we receive a valid complaint about your conduct, we will send you a warning or terminate your account.
- Don't feed the trolls – and don't assume that because you can post anonymously you can act like a troll. We will send you a warning or terminate your account.
- If you think that a member of the Long Room has crossed over to the Dark Side in terms of behaviour, please contact us via the 'report' link on any comment, or directly at longroom@ft.com.
In Conclusion
These guidelines are intended to ensure that all members of the Long Room enjoy their experiences here. If you don't feel that you can abide by our Community Guidelines as outlined above, maybe the Long Room isn't for you.
If you have any questions or comments, please send an e-mail to longroom@ft.com with a descriptive subject line. We get a lot of e-mail, so please bear with us if we take a little while to get back to you.
FT Alphaville
