IdeaScale Reducing Barriers Online Platform Terms of Participation

The official Website of the U.S. Small Business Administration is www.sba.gov. SBA is using the third-party site IdeaScale as a means to connect and engage with members of the public and share information about SBA in a different format that may be useful or interesting.

If you have any questions, concerns or need additional information, please contact SBA by phone or e-mail:
SBA Answer Desk: 1-800-U-ASK-SBA (1-800-827-5722)
Send e-mails to: answerdesk@sba.gov
Answer Desk TTY: (704) 344-6640
Representatives are available 24/7 to answer your questions in English and Spanish.

Because members of the public may comment or post information on this site, SBA cannot attest to the accuracy of information provided by this site or any other linked site. Using this third party site does not constitute an endorsement by SBA or any of its employees of the sponsors of the site or the information or products presented on the site. Please be aware that the privacy protection provided on social media and third party sites that are not a part of the SBA.gov domain may not be the same as the SBA Privacy Policy. For practical tips about protecting your personal information online, visit www.OnGuardOnline.gov.

SBA does not use this site to actively seek personally identifiable information (PII). While users may have been required to submit some PII when registering to use this tool, SBA will not solicit or collect this PII. SBA does not have access to, and will not seek, your registration information unless the information used during registration pre-populates a public profile when interacting with SBA, or if the privacy settings you select allow this display. SBA will only collect information posted to this page that is necessary for the proper performance of official agency functions (ex: responding to a request for information).

Please note, information posted on this site is available to the general public. To protect your privacy and the privacy of others, do not include your full name, phone numbers, email addresses, social security number, case numbers or any other sensitive PII in your comments or responses.

Terms of Participation
Anyone can view the ideas on the site, and you can submit and comment on ideas by registering with IdeaScale. Your participation in this dialog is voluntary. Any content you submit is in the public domain and may be reused.

Standards of Conduct
Our Terms of Participation is intended to support open discussion while ensuring a respectful exchange of ideas. We reserve the option to review your ideas against these Terms. We will not edit your ideas or comments, but they will be removed from the site if they include any of the following:

• Threatening, slanderous or obscene language;
• Personal attacks;
• Discriminatory language (including hate speech) based on race, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion or disability;
• Sexually oriented information or links or other material that would violate the law if published here;
• Ideas or comments that promote services or products, including links to commercial sites (Comments may include links only if those links are to non-commercial sites and help explain or expand upon the comment.);
• Repetitive posts (for example, if you post the same idea multiple times);
• Embedded media, such as videos or photos (but links to such media are OK if relevant to the comment);
• Spam or undecipherable language (gratuitous links will be viewed as spam);
• Copyright infringement; or
• Private, personal information (e.g., social security numbers, postal and email addresses, phone numbers).

Off-Topic and Duplicate Posts
To ensure a focused and constructive discussion, our moderators reserve the right to move ideas, which are “off topic” or do not address some aspect of the dialog, to the Off-Topic community.

If two or more identical ideas are posted, the moderator may merge the separate submissions into a single statement of the idea as a means keep all comments on the idea together.

Voting
By participating in this online community, you agree that any idea or comment you submit may be rated by someone else through the use of agree voting. We expect everyone to follow honest voting practices. You should respect the principle of one person, one vote (you can vote for any idea, including your own, but you cannot vote for any idea more than once.) You should not enter a vote that is coerced or paid for. People will be able to see how many votes (the net number of votes) each idea receives.

Questions about these Terms
These Terms of Participation may be amended or modified in the future. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us at reducingbarriersmoderator@sba.gov.