We want to thank the many affiliates that have contributed so many helpful questions, tips, and productive discussions on our boards over the past few months.

We also felt that this is the right time to address a topic that a number of our affiliates requested, which is the high volume of off-topic and non-constructive posts on the eBay Partner Network board. We've received this feedback both from many of the affiliates who still use or read the boards, as well as many of our most successful affiliates who have stopped using the boards altogether as they find it hard to engage in meaningful dialogue here.

This is a board for you, our affiliates. We want to provide a place for you to be able to help each other and highlight important issues for us at eBay Partner Network to address. In order to do that, we need the affiliates who post to the boards to use them constructively. We know that we have introduced a lot of change into both the eBay platform and eBay affiliate programs this year and people sometimes need to vent their frustrations and issues with the program. While we want to hear your feedback and criticisms, we ask that they be discussed in a productive and civil way so that we can have meaningful dialogues between all of us. A number of you have suggested that we should consider taking the boards private or simply taking them down altogether. While our objective is to keep the boards open so that we can have more seamless communication, we may consider some of these alternatives depending on how useful they remain for our broader affiliate community.

To get the boards moving in the right direction, we wanted to highlight the some of the important Discussion Boards Usage Policies which some posters have not been adhering to on our board. People posting to boards should never

- Include profanity, vulgarity, hate speech, disruptive, or hostile comments, interpersonal disputes, or threats of violence in a post.

- Use JavaScript or active code; making repetitive or disruptive posts; or otherwise taking actions that interfere with site operations

- Post material that in any way violates the eBay User Agreement or Community Values.

In addition to these highlights, everyone should familiarize themselves with the full policies (Link) as violations of the posting policies may result in a range of actions including content removal, a warning or sanction (being banned from the boards), and limits on account privileges.

Given the feedback we've received from our affiliates, we're going to start take an active approach to managing the boards and maintaining the high standards established in the policies.

Going forward, these boards should be used to discuss only questions or advice directly related to our Partners’ affiliate programs and the eBay Partner Network. In general, if you’re wondering whether a post is appropriate, ask yourself if this is something you would say to other people in a face-to-face meeting. Keep threads on-topic, or start a new thread if you need to, and scan to see if the question you are asking has already been addressed in an earlier post.

We are relying on you our affiliates to tell us what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong so we can fix it, and to actively discuss and share information amongst yourselves. We just ask that you make it as constructive as possible so we and other affiliates can be as helpful as possible in return.

Thanks for your continued support,

The eBay Partner Network Team