Guidelines for Personal Gear Loaners

Occasionally, we get a request from a good-willed member who wishes to share their gear with this community. These personal loaners are defined by a piece of gear that is owned by a member who willingly wants to put his/her gear up for a loaner tour. This has happened in the past with varying success, and I felt it was time to put some "official" guidelines* for loaners of this nature down in the forums.

1. The current gearmaster can help with the organization of the loaner in terms of tour order, etc, but it's up to you to determine length, member restrictions, number of members, etc. Essentially, since it's your loaner, you have to take responsibility
2. SBAF cannot back or endorse these loaners. This means that this is done at your own risk and expense.
3. The above means that if there is an issue or problem that ever occurs, do what you would do if the entire admin and mod staff of SBAF were dead. However, this does NOT mean we will turn a blind eye; bad loaner behavior will still result in consequences, including but not exclusive to being banned from future loaners.

In other words, we do not encourage nor discourage this. It's entirely your prerogative whether you do this or not, and it's understood that you will take responsibility for whatever happens. It's not my intention to stop loaners of this nature; I only want people to understand what they're getting into.

*modifications to this post may be made as further suggestions are put in. This really is just a rough sketch at the moment.

 

For the record, I semi-discourage this. The site operators, who know many of you personally or virtually, still feel very bad and put the weight of responsibility upon themselves when things go wrong (which they inevitably do).