Last week we updated our Community Guidelines here on the site.

The snappily named community standards and participation guidelines are a plain English guide to what we feel is acceptable here on Talk About Local. They outline what we expect from you when you engage with us and leave comments and also what you can expect from us in return.

What we didn’t make clear at the time when we published them, is that they are free for any of you to adapt and use on your own sites.

It is good practice to publish your guidelines on your site so people who want to comment know what is expected of them and what they can expect back from you. They will also help close off any ‘issues’ when you close or remove comments.

So please feel free to copy, edit adapt & improve on the guidelines and use them on your own sites.

The full text is:

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 TalkAboutLocal.org as an inviting space is to focus on intelligent discussion of topics.
2. We acknowledge criticism of postings we publish, but will not allow persistent misrepresentation of TalkAboutLocal.org participants 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 which 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, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.
6. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libellous or defamatory postings, or material posted in potential breach of copyright.
7. We will remove any postings that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like in the free-to-the community areas. 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 TalkAboutLocal.org.
8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which 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, humour and so on) doesn’t always come across when using words on a screen. You can help to keep the TalkAboutLocal.org 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.
• Don’t be unpleasant. Demonstrate and share the intelligence, wisdom and humour 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.

Thank you – Talk About Local

All you need to do is copy the text then do a find and replace to change TalkAboutLocal.org to your website name

Please do leave comments below if you add something that you think needs to be covered or indeed if you think there is stuff that isn’t relevant and could be removed.

Mike, the Talk About Local technical ninja, has been publishing on the internet for over 15 years and specialises moderation around contentious issues, technical aspects of WordPress and Geolocation of content. Mike ran the nationally acclaimed Pits n Pots website from 2009 -2012 which scrutinised Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

Michael Rawlins

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