Last revised: December 13, 2011
Be Communities exists to facilitate the world’s infrastructure professionals in coming together to communicate, collaborate, and learn from one another.
In line with the commitment of the Moderators, Advisory Council, Administrators, and Bentley to make Be Communities the premier virtual meeting place for the global infrastructure communities, by becoming a member you agree to abide by these standards of conduct.
Observance of these standards by each Be Communities member will help foster a positive and productive experience for all. Specific areas and services of Be Communities may have additional standards governing their use; be sure to review and understand these as well.
By participating on Be Communities, you agree that you are responsible for your own communications and for any consequences thereof. You agree to use this site only to post material that is legal and proper. By way of example, and not as a limitation, you agree that when using this site, you will not:
Be Communities is intended to be a place where people of widely varying cultures and backgrounds may freely participate, so please refrain from using language that may be egregious, objectionable, or coarse to some. Moderators and Administrators may, at their sole discretion, edit, remove, or disable access to posts that are not in keeping with this guideline.
As noted above, Be Communities is not to be used for anything related to illegal activities. Do not use this site to post defamatory, infringing, obscene, or other unlawful material or discussion. Likewise, do not post links to other Web sites or hosted materials that violate this standard.
Do not post messages or files containing images, text, software, or other content protected by intellectual property law, privacy, or publicity rights, or other applicable law unless you are the owner of these rights or have received the necessary consent from the owner.
Do not post or link to materials that would allow other participants to illegally or inappropriately access software or Web sites.
In addition to the foregoing, you are responsible for observing all local and national laws in force at your location.
Please help keep Be Communities free of SPAM. SPAM includes sending identical, irrelevant, and/or unsolicited material to multiple people, as well as misrepresenting the source of any material that you post. Likewise, as noted above, please do not impersonate another individual or in any other way misrepresent your identity when contributing to the site.
Take care not to post personal information such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, driver's license numbers, passwords, or other data that could be used for illegal or harmful purposes. Please refer to the Bentley Web property Privacy Policy for more regarding this.
Be Communities is intended as a place for the exchange of professional information, opinions, and viewpoints in furtherance of the goals and objectives of the world’s infrastructure professionals. However, please do not seek to use Be Communities as a primary vehicle for the operation or promotion of your business.
Be Communities members use digital tools and technologies from effectively all commercial providers serving the world’s infrastructure professionals. Accordingly, the content of this site will in no way be restricted to, or biased toward or against, any commercial provider, product, or brand.
Contributors to this site are welcome and expected to engage in frank discussion of their experiences with specific products and providers in the course of their work — capabilities, strengths, and successes as well as limitations encountered — and to solicit and contribute advice and learnings regarding solutions, fixes, and workarounds. That said, this site is not intended to serve as a vehicle for any member to use in promoting or operating his/her own business. This provision naturally extends to any such use by parties affiliated with any commercial solution provider. Content that, in the judgment of Moderators or site Administrators, constitutes either blatant commercial promotion of any provider, product or brand, or the disparagement of any provider, product or brand by a competitor, will trigger strong corrective action.
Use of Be Communities is solely at each participant’s own risk. No other party shall have any liability for such use.
Be Communities is organized around topics. First browse to the topic of your interest and there you will find all relevant content grouped (where applicable) into blog, forum, wiki, and file gallery applications.
Be Communities blogs are places to share your personal professional experiences related to a specific topic:
Be Communities forums are a resource for exchanging ideas, learnings, and best practices with the world’s most knowledgeable infrastructure professionals.
A forum is where groupings of related threads of discussion that you can contribute to are found; if you have a question or are looking for information, post your inquiry in the single most applicable and appropriate forum.
Wikis are intended to serve as a premier global knowledge base and reference source for infrastructure information of all kinds.
Every Be Communities member is invited to contribute to the wikis. The wikis have no editor-in-chief, juried publication process, or other hierarchical content review. Instead, each member is free to originate articles, edit other members’ work, and correct errors and omissions — in other words, you are the editor.
In addition to fostering accuracy and completeness of content, members develop and enforce wiki policies and guidelines. This happens both through editing content and through discussing matters with one another. Some zero-deviance policies, such as prohibition against illegal use of others’ protected content, are enforced by the Administrators. In the main, however, the formulation, observance, and enforcement of community guidelines and acceptable behavior are in the hands of you and other Be Communities members who participate in wikis.
File galleries within a group are places to post images and files that other Be Communities members may benefit and learn from. Please take care to observe all applicable laws and guidelines respecting intellectual property when you post material here.
Every one of the world’s infrastructure professionals is welcome to become a member and contribute to Be Communities. Members may participate in one, several, or all areas of the site.
Ways to contribute — any logged in member that has joined a specific community may:
In addition there are some communities on the site that you can contribute to without joining them first (you do have to be signed in to contribute, though).
Note that a valid e-mail address must be provided to complete the sign-in process, but that e-mail address is not accessible to anyone unless you specifically intend it to be.
Be Communities Moderators are the primary monitors of members’ observance of site standards of conduct. The role of Moderator is specific to the forums of the site.
Each forum is expected to have at least two moderators. These moderators will initially be Bentley colleagues invited by the Administrators to serve in this role. As the number of threads in any given forum grows, the Administrators may elect to invite additional moderators into that forum.
The Advisory Council may — at its option, with input from site members, and in consultation with the Administrators — develop and adopt procedures to invite site members to become Moderators.
Strictly construed, “moderation” of online communities can denote procedures designed to detect and prevent undesired behavior before it makes its way into public view — forums where posts are reviewed by a moderator before being made public are an example. By contrast, what Be Communities Moderators do may be better characterized as “monitoring,” or dealing with inappropriate or questionable behavior once it occurs.
Moderators will always endeavor to act so as to enable and foster the richest possible exchange of experiences, ideas, opinions, and points of view. To this end, This site will be closely monitored, but not “moderated” in the sense described above. This policy is designed to reflect and reinforce the nature of Be Communities as a place that expects, relies on, and rewards the good will and constructive intent of all members.
To these ends, Moderators will have the power to:
A member who is an owner of a community automatically has the role of moderator of that community. The responsibilities and powers of moderators are commensurate with those of forum moderators as described above.
A member who takes advantage of the blog created for them will have the role of primary moderator of that blog — it should be noted that the site Administrators have moderator abilities throughout the entire site. The responsibilities and powers of blog moderators are commensurate with those of forum moderators as described above.
The inaugural Be Communities Advisory Council consists of various Bentley user group officers invited to serve in this capacity by Bentley.
Subsequent slates of Advisory Council members will be chosen by a process to be developed and ratified by the inaugural Advisory Council with input from Be Communities' members using the discussion facilities and consensus-building practices of Be Communities, and with final approval of the Administrators.
The Advisory Council will in like manner develop and implement additional Advisory Council policies and procedures as it deems necessary.
The term “Administrators” as used herein denotes the Office of the Administrator, which is a committee of Bentley colleagues. Administrators oversee development, maintenance, and modification of the site’s infrastructure, including modifications and extensions of site functionality as suggested by site members and agreed by Moderators and the Advisory Council.
As the general overseer of Be Communities, the Administrators are the final arbiter in interpreting and implementing site policies and guidelines.
To this end, Administrators have the right to:
A guiding principle of this site is that the Administrators will take corrective actions only in response to egregious and/or repeated violations of site standards of conduct. In this respect, the Administrators are the agent of last resort for maintaining an environment conducive to achieving the site’s objectives.
Bentley Systems, Incorporated initiated creation of Be Communities and funds its ongoing technical development, maintenance and system administration. When Bentley colleagues participate in this site, whether as Administrators, moderators, members or otherwise, their actions are governed by the published policies and guidelines that apply to all participants.
Standards of conduct and other Be Communities policies and guidelines may be amended by action of the Advisory Council and the Administrators. Be Communities members are welcome to initiate and participate in discussions of how they wish the site's governance polices to evolve. Actions by the Advisory Council and Administrators will be based on the processes of consensus, discussion and negotiation engaged in by members on the site.