Moderation Policies

2nd Oct 2009

Com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion / user gen­er­ated con­tent / mod­er­a­tion poli­cies.
 
Mod­er­a­tion aims
Redbrickonline.co.uk site pro­vides a grow­ing num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties for read­ers who wish to dis­cuss con­tent we pub­lish, or debate issues more gen­er­ally. Our aim is to ensure this plat­form is inclu­sive and safe, and that Redbrickonline.co.uk is the place on the net where you will always find lively, enter­tain­ing and, above all, intel­li­gent discussions.

Com­mu­nity standards

There are 10 sim­ple guide­lines, which we expect all par­tic­i­pants in the com­mu­nity areas of Redbrickonline.co.uk to abide by, all of which directly inform our approach to com­mu­nity mod­er­a­tion (detailed below). These apply across the site, while mod­er­a­tion deci­sions are also informed by the con­text in which com­ments are made.

1. We wel­come debate and dis­sent, but per­sonal attacks (on authors, other users or any indi­vid­ual), per­sis­tent trolling and mind­less abuse will not be tol­er­ated. The key to main­tain­ing Redbrickonline.co.uk as an invit­ing space is to focus on intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion of topics.

2. We acknowl­edge crit­i­cism of the arti­cles we pub­lish, but will not allow per­sis­tent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Red­brick and our jour­nal­ists to be pub­lished on our web­site. For the sake of robust debate, we will dis­tin­guish between con­struc­tive, focused argu­ment and smear tactics.

3. We under­stand that peo­ple often feel strongly about issues debated on the site, but we will con­sider remov­ing any con­tent that oth­ers might find extremely offen­sive or threat­en­ing. Please respect other people’s views and beliefs and con­sider your impact on oth­ers when mak­ing your contribution.

4. We reserve the right to redi­rect or cur­tail con­ver­sa­tions that descend into flame-wars based on ingrained par­ti­san­ship or gen­er­al­i­sa­tions. We don’t want to stop peo­ple dis­cussing top­ics they are enthu­si­as­tic about, but we do ask users to find ways of shar­ing their views that do not feel divi­sive, threat­en­ing or toxic to oth­ers.
5. We will not tol­er­ate racism, sex­ism, homo­pho­bia or other forms of hate-speech, or con­tri­bu­tions that could be inter­preted as such. We recog­nise the dif­fer­ence between crit­i­cis­ing a par­tic­u­lar gov­ern­ment, organ­i­sa­tion, com­mu­nity or belief and attack­ing peo­ple on the basis of their race, reli­gion, gen­der or sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion.
6. We will remove any con­tent that may put us in legal jeop­ardy, such as poten­tially libelous or defam­a­tory post­ings, or mate­r­ial posted in poten­tial breach of copyright.

7. We will remove any posts that are obvi­ously com­mer­cial or oth­er­wise spam-like. Our aim is that this site should pro­vide a space for peo­ple to inter­act with our con­tent and each other, and we actively dis­cour­age com­mer­cial enti­ties pass­ing them­selves off as indi­vid­u­als, in order to post adver­tis­ing mate­r­ial or links. This may also apply to peo­ple or organ­i­sa­tions who fre­quently post pro­pa­ganda or exter­nal links with­out adding sub­stan­tively to the qual­ity of the dis­cus­sion on Redbrickonline.co.uk.

8. Keep it rel­e­vant. We know that some con­ver­sa­tions can be wide-ranging, but if you post some­thing that is unre­lated to the orig­i­nal topic (“off-topic”) then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. This also applies to queries or com­ments about mod­er­a­tion, which should not be posted as comments.

9. Be aware that you may be mis­un­der­stood, so try to be clear about what you are say­ing, and expect that peo­ple may under­stand your con­tri­bu­tion dif­fer­ently than you intended. Remem­ber that text isn’t always a great medium for con­ver­sa­tion: tone of voice (sar­casm, humor and so on) doesn’t always come across when using words on a screen. You can help to keep the Redbrickonline.co.uk com­mu­nity areas open to all view­points by main­tain­ing a rea­son­able tone, even in unrea­son­able circumstances.

10. The plat­form is ours, but the con­ver­sa­tion belongs to every­body. We want this to be a wel­com­ing space for intel­li­gent dis­cus­sion, and we expect par­tic­i­pants to help us achieve this by noti­fy­ing us of poten­tial prob­lems and help­ing each other to keep con­ver­sa­tions invit­ing and appro­pri­ate. If you spot some­thing prob­lem­atic in com­mu­nity inter­ac­tion areas, please report it. When we all take respon­si­bil­ity for main­tain­ing an appro­pri­ate and con­struc­tive envi­ron­ment, the debate itself is improved and every­one benefits.

In short:

- If you act with matu­rity and con­sid­er­a­tion for other users, you should have no prob­lems. — Do not be unpleas­ant. Demon­strate and share the intel­li­gence, wis­dom and humor we know you pos­sess. — Take some respon­si­bil­ity for the qual­ity of the con­ver­sa­tions in which you’re par­tic­i­pat­ing. Help make this an intel­li­gent place for dis­cus­sion and it will be.
 
 
 
 


Com­mu­nity FAQ
There is a com­pre­hen­sive list of fre­quently asked ques­tions about par­tic­i­pa­tion and com­mu­nity mod­er­a­tion at www. Redbrickonline.co.uk/faq

Mod­er­a­tion approach

Par­tic­i­pants who seri­ously, per­sis­tently or will­fully ignore the com­mu­nity stan­dards, par­tic­i­pa­tion guide­lines or terms and con­di­tions will have their post­ing priv­i­leges for all Redbrickonline.co.uk com­mu­nity areas with­drawn. This is not an action that we take lightly or arbi­trar­ily. How­ever, we are aim­ing to cre­ate and main­tain an online expe­ri­ence con­sis­tent with Red­brick val­ues, and we reserve the right to make deci­sions that we feel sup­port that. Please be aware that mod­er­a­tors may con­tact you by email in rela­tion to your par­tic­i­pa­tion, espe­cially where an issue comes up in rela­tion to these com­mu­nity stan­dards. Any advice they give/request they make should be adhered to, as our mod­er­a­tors are employed to enforce these com­mu­nity stan­dards and cre­ate a con­struc­tive envi­ron­ment for every­one who con­tributes to our site.

We will, when nec­es­sary, remove user post­ings or com­ments from our talk boards, arti­cles, and blog posts. * If a con­tri­bu­tion to Redbrickonline.co.uk is per­ceived as breach­ing the com­mu­nity guide­lines set out above, then it will be removed by the com­mu­nity team, in the inter­ests of keep­ing com­mu­nity areas of the site appro­pri­ate for the vast major­ity of the peo­ple who visit.

(*NB: We will not edit user posts to change the mean­ing, spelling, or any­thing else intended by the user. Even if only part of a com­ment or post­ing is per­ceived as breach­ing the com­mu­nity guide­lines, the whole thing may be removed. Also, when a com­ment or post is removed for any of the rea­sons above, it is some­times nec­es­sary to delete sub­se­quent mes­sages which refer to explic­itly or quote from the orig­i­nal (removed) com­ment, in order to pre­serve some notion of con­ver­sa­tional thread. This may also hap­pen because a later com­ment quotes directly the prob­lem­atic bits of the orig­i­nal com­ment, which just per­pet­u­ates the prob­lem. In such cases not every dele­tion will be marked individually.)

We reserve the right to take steps or imple­ment mea­sures which we hope will ben­e­fit the whole com­mu­nity of Redbrickonline.co.uk com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pants. Because we are ulti­mately respon­si­ble for every­thing which appears on this site, all actions and deci­sions taken by our mod­er­a­tors are final. Unfor­tu­nately, the huge (and grow­ing) quan­tity of user con­tent on Redbrickonline.co.uk means that we can’t enter into cor­re­spon­dence regard­ing spe­cific mod­er­a­tion activ­ity, although all cor­re­spon­dence will be read.
 
We aim to have all com­ments / UGC that con­tra­venes our code of con­duct removed from the site within two work­ing days. How­ever some­times this will not be pos­si­ble due to high vol­ume of con­tri­bu­tions from users. In such cases any inap­pro­pri­ate con­tri­bu­tions will be removed as quickly as pos­si­ble.  If we find our­selves over­whelmed by the vol­ume of con­tri­bu­tions we will switch to a full mod­er­a­tion pol­icy where com­ments will be pre-moderated, rather than post mod­er­ated.
 
We reserve the right to ban peo­ple from con­tribut­ing if they are found to per­sis­tently break the code of con­duct. To assist with this we record the IP address of all who con­tribute to the web­site. We do allow anony­mous con­tri­bu­tions how­ever we require an email address, which will use to con­tact / iden­tify users who are deemed to have con­tra­vened our code of conduct.