Community guidelines

Share useful maritime information

Choose relevant news, questions, original articles, projects, and genuine maritime jobs. Link to the original source, use a clear and accurate title, and add enough context for people to understand why it matters. Check dates and distinguish a report, an opinion, and an unverified claim.

Avoid duplicate submissions, sensational headlines, unrelated promotion, and repeated low-value posts. Correct material errors openly when you discover them.

Discuss ideas respectfully

Challenge an argument with evidence and experience. Do not attack a person, harass, threaten, discriminate, impersonate others, or encourage harm. Disagreement is welcome when it stays relevant and constructive.

Do not publish someone’s personal details without permission or encourage others to target them. Report a problem instead of escalating it in the discussion.

Protect confidential and personal information

Do not share private correspondence, credentials, personal documents, restricted vessel information, or confidential employer, customer, crew, or cargo details. Having access to information through your work does not give you permission to publish it.

Use public sources or appropriately anonymized examples when discussing an operational experience. Do not ask others to reveal confidential information.

Respect authors and ownership

Publish original writing or material you have permission to share. Credit sources and use links and limited, relevant quotations rather than copying whole articles. Article submissions may be reviewed before publication.

Image uploads and uploaded-image delivery are disabled. Do not use the community to distribute unlawful material or infringe someone else’s rights.

Be transparent about promotion and jobs

Disclose your connection to a project, employer, product, publication, or job you share. Contribute useful context rather than a sales pitch. Do not hide paid promotion or post misleading endorsements.

Job posts must describe a real opportunity with an identifiable employer and accurate role and application information. Do not post deceptive recruitment, requests for account credentials, or schemes that demand payment to obtain a job.

Keep participation fair

Use votes to recognize useful contributions. Do not coordinate votes, trade votes or invitations, create accounts to manipulate scores, or flood the site with repeated content. Do not bypass account restrictions, abuse automated requests, or interfere with the service.

Invite only people who requested or expressly agreed to receive an invitation. Respect an opt-out; an invitation is not permission for unrelated marketing.

Reports, moderation, and review

Use the report action on a post or comment to flag a problem and provide concise context. Moderators may request edits, remove content, lock discussions, or suspend accounts, with an internal record of the decision.

If you think a moderation decision was mistaken, contact Harbourd support with the relevant page and a clear explanation. Do not repost removed material or evade a restriction while asking for review. Do not send passwords, recovery codes, or private documents.

Related policies

Use of Harbourd is also governed by the Terms of Use. The privacy policy explains how personal information and privacy requests are handled. Updates to these guidelines will appear here with a revised date.