ATTN TTB Please Reconsider your stance on posting of certain links

[ruthc]

Thank You!

I thank you very much for your response to our concerns on this issue. I am sure everyone will be thoughtful in posting links that will not be in competition with TTB. Thanks again! It is greatly appreciated.

[Stringbean]

We ourselves are responsible

I remember a couple of failed tax boards, one of them being the original ATX board mentioned by John H. ATX would not monitor its original board and there were vulgar comments, sexual innuendos, nasty messages and all manner of reasons for ATX to discontinue. Some the disbanded members united to create another board no longer sponsored by ATX.

This board, like TMI itself, has a marvelous 10-year history. I would like to see this board refuse to take a back seat to any competition, and I see no reason why that can't be the case. The board is well run, monitored with rules that are fair and considerate, and can have as many authoritative contributors as any forum. This being the case, links to other sites can complement, rather than compete. Understand that some of these boards specialize in legal questions, GAAP questions, and have nothing in their mission to be a tax forum.

In addition to the board being well-run, we as the members can be the resource people are looking for when there are tax questions. We can do this by being and doing the right things - becoming well-researched when supplying answers, being courteous and reflective of impeccable personal qualities. Yeah, I know, this may be a tough act for many of us, but we ourselves can be responsible for the success of this forum. We need fear no competition - we ourselves can be an authoritative and friendly source for any queror.

None of us can be perfect, as this is a very public membership. The rules of the forum, however, keep us from being ugly, vulgar, commercial, etc. Additionally, however, we should make an effort to refrain from bad advice, misinformation, and anything which would veer the queror up a dead end street, with potential consequences of bad information.

I will make an effort to take up this challenge upon myself, and invite others to do the same.

[S T]

As a long time member of TMI and poster, thank you for reinstating the "links" in our posts. We have all used them for many years, and I am hopeful that other posters will abide by the guidelines. Links to certain references are important in our research, some of us are better than others on researching.

I hope all posters on TMI will abide by the rules - no competitor links - PM if necessary off of the Board. Be thoughtful and considerate and only post useful information, as that is what we are all here for and participating on this forum.

Thanks Brad and Staff!

Sandy

[taxea]

taxea - have you ever heard of "professional ethics"?

I think you misread my post.

To Brad and Staff....thank you for reconsidering. We all appreciate all that this forum does for us and I, for one, don't appreciate the "spam posts".

[dtlee]

Not to belabor this, but....

Hello Everyone-

We appreciate your desire to post links and understand that they can be very helpful when trying to demonstrate a point. For that reason we are no longer enforcing rules that would prohibit you from posting links to other sources to help demonstrate points that you are trying to articulate.

We request that you do not post links to spam sites and will continue to monitor for those types of links in the future to ensure you are having the best experience possible while using our message board.

Your efforts on this board to help others are great and we don't want to limit your ability to complete them by restricting the use of source links as we have always allowed prior to the recent note.

Best regards,
TMI Message Board Admin

I am an independent preparer who has for decades shared some of my worksheets and "cheat" sheets with friends and associates. Back in the 1980s, I joined an internet sharing site (now defunct) to post these where people could see them, which evolved into a Yahoo! group and later to a website, due to data size restrictions on the latter, to share these resources. The site has links to other tax sites (one of these is this forum), charts and flowcharts that I use in my practice, and copies of handouts and backup material for any presentations I have given.

I could see where my "free" resources could be considered "competition" even though I do not see any real overlap (It would be rather foolish to create a chart already in my copy of TheTaxBook). None of these products are for sale, but I could see that TMI might consider it something that would dilute their business. While I do not see any difference between uploading a document here and pointing to the document there other than size restrictions, I would like some guidance as to what you might consider to be a competing product. Since I see no real difference, if my website would be considered competition, I would think uploading the same document (which indicates its source) to be a similar violation of trust. I value my forum membership and my long affiliation as a customer and do not want to tarnish either. I include a copyright notice on my sheets because I hate seeing them in books without proper credit and having people ask me if I "stole" an idea from the NATP when it is quite the other way around.

While I could understand that linking to a CCH notice or something from Parker might be problem, I am hardly in their league. Without knowing what might be considered to be distasteful, any of us could do something that borders on being an affront to our hosts.

Any additional guidance you might give would be helpful.

[rkhan71]

My take...

Seems that it will be okay to post to links now, but to be sure, if a problem, just ask individuals to private message the poster if they are interested in learning more about something which would appear to be against TTB standards. However, since the idea has been retracted, seems not an issue. But we have to be considerate of our vendor here - TTB. We have to respect their wishes.

But in the end, if it appears to contradict TTB standards (and use your judgment), have the forum posters contact the individual who is offering further info. If the seeker is truly interested in something he/she can pursue it more through this channel.

RFK

[dtlee]

Seems that it will be okay to post to links now, but to be sure, if a problem, just ask individuals to private message the poster if they are interested in learning more about something which would appear to be against TTB standards. However, since the idea has been retracted, seems not an issue. But we have to be considerate of our vendor here - TTB. We have to respect their wishes.

But in the end, if it appears to contradict TTB standards (and use your judgment), have the forum posters contact the individual who is offering further info. If the seeker is truly interested in something he/she can pursue it more through this channel.

RFK

My attitude is that anything that might undermine our hosts (in their eyes) should be avoided. I disagree that using Private Messaging to post about a competing product would be any less disrespectful (though fewer would witness the crime). The reason I posted my question was that apparently one or more of us did something wrong at some point or they would not have taken this stand and I seriously doubt that the average member would have done it with malicious intent, so it was probably something that they thought would be okay. Leaving it to the individual to guess what might be considered offensive is not the most efficient way to communicate this.

I am not trying to disrespect TTB. You said, "We have to respect their wishes." I am only asking what they are wishing for.

Just to clarify a bit, I am a bit concerned, since this happened recently, that this post could have been the errant post that caused the whole issue:

http://forum.thetaxbook.com/showthread.php?25943-Taxability-of-Refundable-State-Tax-Credits&p=175987#post175987

My links were to irs.gov and ustaxcourt.gov and I did not think twice about sharing those links because I did not see any conflict.

After the changes, I started wondering if a government site like ustaxcourt.gov might be considered to be somehow competing with TTB WebLibrary Plus since the latter offers access to court cases. WebLibrary and WebLibrary Plus both offer access to IRS publications. So does the IRS Website. I have begun to think that not sharing any links would be the only way to avoid a conflict of interest.