Advice for banned members

Although the Research Cooperative welcomes members from all walks of life, the welcome is only extended to people, groups, companies, and other organisations with genuine interests in the aims of the Cooperative.

Over time, a few people or businesses have joined without any genuine interest, but simply to use the site for irrelevant business promotion or self-promotion. This is usually indicated by (1) use of quickly-typed, random letters and words in the profile page, (for example, the location name might be something like:  "kdsjndkf"), (2) answers given only for the mandatory ("required") profile questions, (3) a lack of any voluntary, meaningful self-description in the profile, (4) the use of a profile image that is obviously or probably designed as an advertisement for purposes unrelated to research (you name it, and someone has probably tried selling it), and (5) addition of links to websites that advertise people, products, and services that are not related to research, or research-based writing and publishing.

In order to spare our members wasted effort, Research Cooperative administrators have been asked to immediately ban members who are likely to have no actual interest in the Cooperative, without attempting to consult each member to be banned.

The executive decision to ban might be sometimes exclude a member who does have a genuine interest in the Research Cooperative.

If you are such a member, we apologise in advance, and we apologise again if you have been upset by our action. If you would like to join the network again, please try using a different email address, and provide more details in your profile page.

If you are not such a member, we would like to politely suggest that you look for areas of the internet where your business is more likely to be of interest to visitors. There are surely many good opportunities and alternatives available for your business.

Thank you,

(On behalf of the Research Cooperative)