COWORKERS.COM - RULES AND PROCEDURES

This document describes the rules and procedures for usage of Coworkers.com.  Please read carefully to make sure you understand how to use the site properly, as well as how your data will be managed.

Definitions

Usage Scenarios

There are three basic ways that you can use Coworkers.com:

1. As an Reviewer Â? creating reviews of your coworkers.
2. As an Reviewee Â? reviewing reviews that coworkers have created of you.
3. As an Observer Â? looking up and viewing reviews by and about others.

Reviewer Rules

To review someone, you must have work experience with him or her.  You must also know a current email address or the Coworkers.com username of the reviewee, so that he or she can be notified of the review.

You can submit reviews without registering, but reviews entered in this way will be marked as "unverified".  You are strongly encouraged to register before submitting reviews.  Registration is free of charge.  It is not necessary for the reviewee to be registered at Coworkers.com.  PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT NOTE BELOW REGARDING REGISTRATION.

You must enter, at a minimum, a value for Overall Opinion.  All other fields are optional but encouraged.  If you wish, you can enter contextual information (for example, how long you worked with the reviewee).  Keep in mind that the reviewee, as well as observers, can see this information, and that it could indirectly disclose your identity.

You are allowed to enter a comment about the reviewee.  This must be related to your work experience with the reviewee, and it must follow the site's Terms and Conditions.  You may also enter tags that make the review easy to find with Coworkers.com's search engine.

You can remain anonymous if you wish, or choose to show your username as part of the review.  If you choose the latter option, the reviewee and all observers will see your username and be able to jump to your profile.

If you remain anonymous, you can allow observers (but not the reviewee) to contact you via Coworkers.com about your review.  Your identity will not be visible to the observer, but you will see his or her username.  You can respond to the observer via Coworkers.com.  All communication between observers and reviewees must follow the site's Terms and Conditions.

You can edit or remove a review before it has been viewed by the reviewee or an observer.  However, once it has been viewed, you cannot change or remove a review.

You can post more than one review for a particular reviewee.  However, you must wait 90 days between submissions.

If one or more of your reviews are disputed (see Reviewee Rules) or flagged (see Observer Rules), your postings are subject to review, which may result in the loss of account privileges.

Reviewee Rules

When someone has posted a review about you, you receive a notification email, unless you have disabled this option.

To see reviews that have been posted about you, you must first register with Coworkers.com and verify your email address.  Registration is free of charge.  PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT NOTE BELOW REGARDING REGISTRATION.

If you feel that a review of you is unfair or inaccurate, you can mark it as "disputed" and enter an explanatory comment.  All observers will be aware that the review has been disputed.

If you feel that the reviewer's comment violates the site's Terms and Conditions, you can flag it for inspection by the administrative staff.

If you have multiple email addresses associated with your account, an observer who is viewing your profile will see reviews that have been submitted for all of those addresses.

Observer Rules

You do not need to be registered with Coworkers.com to be an observer.  Anyone can go to the Search and Lookup pages and enter an email address or other search criteria to see if someone has been reviewed.  If a match is found, you can see the person's overall rating, which is a calculation of the numeric scores tallied across all of the reviews submitted for that person.  You may also see the reviewee's profile and details of reviews that have been submitted about him or her, but you must register to view this information.  Registration is free of charge.  PLEASE SEE THE IMPORTANT NOTE BELOW REGARDING REGISTRATION.

If you have signed up for Premium Access, you can contact reviewers to request more information about reviews they have submitted.  When you do this, your username is visible to the reviewer, but the reviewer's username is hidden from you unless he or she has chosen to make it visible.  All communication between observers and reviewees must follow the site's Terms and Conditions.

If you want to be notified when someone is reviewed, you can add that person's email address or username to your Watch List.  You will receive an email notification when a review is submitted for that person.

If you see a review that violates the site's Terms and Conditions, you can flag it for inspection by the administrative staff.

Registration and Opting In/Out

By registering with Coworkers.com, you automatically "opt in" to allow other users to see all reviews, positive and negative, that are submitted about you, as well as any optional information (such as name and gender) that you have entered in your account profile.  If you wish to disable this, you must opt out (see below).

If you are concerned about privacy and do not want to take the risk that someone will see negative information about you, you may choose at any time to "opt out", on the Account page.  When you opt out, all reviews submitted about you are locked, and nobody, including yourself, can see them.  In addition, no other users can see information from your account profile.  Opting out does not cost you anything, and you can opt back in any time.