Johnston Press Today Network Forum: House Rules
Hello and welcome to The Forum House Rules. These House Rules have been developed so that everyone can get the best out of contributing to The Forum. They aim to protect anyone who reads or contributes to The Forum and to help everyone to have an enjoyable and safe time.
By participating in The Forum you agree to abide by the terms and conditions presented in these House Rules. Johnston Press plc reserves the right to change these House Rules at any time by posting these changes online. You are responsible for regularly reviewing information posted online to obtain notice of such changes. By continuing to use The Forum once these changes are posted constitutes your acceptance of these House Rules as modified by the posted changes.
*Please be warned that if any content breaks the rules below it may be removed by the moderators of this site.
Rules for contributing to The Forum.
- Personal attacks are prohibited. Commonly known as flaming, personal attacks are posts which are designed to put down or insult Forum members. Text of this nature is not beneficial to the Johnston Press community spirit and will not be tolerated.
- No trolling. Trolling is used to describe a post that is deliberately designed for the purpose of angering and insulting the members of The Forum. Posts of this nature are disruptive and say deliberately provocative things just to stir up trouble. It's not polite so please don't do it.
- Unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually orientated, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable. Hardcore swearing is not allowed on the Johnston Press Forum sites. Please see the Swear Word Policy for further details on what is and what is not acceptable language for use on The Forum. If you do use language in your posting which goes against the Swear Word Policy a moderator will remove your posting. If you continue to break the rules you may find your account closed down.
- Be patient. Please remember when posting that people of all ages and abilities use The Forum. Remember when you were a newbie and try to be kind.
- No spamming or flooding. Spamming is the posting of the same (or very similar) messages to lots of conversation threads. Flooding is when the same (or very similar) message is posted over and over again to the same conversation. Please don't deliberately spam or flood The Forum as we'll simply remove your posting and possibly your account.
- No advertising. Advertising is not allowed within the postings on The Forum. Writing articles that review or criticise commercial products, local restaurants, venues etc. are obviously fine as long as they're balanced, but adverts aren't. If you wish to advertise through a banner or a tile advert on The Forum pages please contact the new media advertising department at the relevant local newspaper.
- Postings or articles containing languages other than English may be removed. We have to ensure we understand a posting or article before we can pass it, therefore languages other than English may have to be removed.
- Don't impersonate others. Impersonating another user of The Forum, moderator, administrator or Johnston Press employee is strictly prohibited. You are expressly forbidden from impersonating anyone else, including those previously named, on The Forum. This may be grounds for permanent loss of your Forum account.
- Be careful with including email addresses and instant messaging addresses in contributions. Do not include anyone else's personal details. You may include your own personal email address or instant messaging address in postings (providing it's acceptable, i.e. not vulgar or offensive), but please be aware that it is at your own risk and you are potentially opening yourself up to a lot of email and possible spam. You should be absolutely sure that you want people to able to contact you like this. It is not acceptable to publicise anyone else's contact details other than your own. However it is acceptable to include general contact details for companies, but you must only include publicly available details, for example, the telephone number of a restaurant or the email address of a local company.
- Only include suitable URLs in your postings. Links to websites we consider unsuitable will be removed, so if you are considering contributing something that contains a URL please make sure that it adds value and interest to the subject of your posting and it isn't purely commercial. Unsuitable sites would include those with racist material, pornographic or sexually explicit material, potentially defamatory material, anything which encourages illegal activities, material which infringes copyright, sites which purely plug or promote commercial products or services without containing material which enhances the subject matter, sites that start with automatic downloads or sites which may offend our users. We may also have to remove links to site which are in languages other than English for the reasons described in item 7. Please note that we do not allow URLs to be included in nicknames.
- Feedback. Johnston Press welcomes feedback, both positive and negative, about our products and services, but please make sure your comments are in line with the above House Rules. You can contact the moderator of The Forum by using the link provided on the page. Please note though that repeatedly posting personal or offensive comments about individual members of the public or people who work for Johnston Press may be considered harassment. We reserve the right to remove such messages and take action against those responsible.
It's important to note that you still own the copyright to everything you contribute to the Johnston Press Today Network Forum. This means that you are free to take what you have written and re-publish it somewhere else.
All you do in contributing to The Forum is to grant Johnston Press the right to publish. In other words, anything you create here is done under the condition that you grant us a non-exclusive license to distribute and edit the material in any way that we want, and in any media. As we may wish to distribute the content in various formats over time, we need to be sure that we have the right to publish everything posted to any Johnston Press Today Network Forum.
The Law
If anything you post is illegal (for example defamatory), condones illegal activities (such as recommends drug taking) or infringes the copyright of a third party (in other words contains content that you haven't written) then it will be removed.
- You may not post any defamatory or illegal material of any nature anywhere on The Forum. This includes text, graphics, video, programs or audio. Posting a message with the intention of committing an illegal act is strictly prohibited.
- You agree to only post material to which you have the copyright or other permission to distribute electronically. You may not violate, plagiarise or infringe on the rights of third parties including copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, personal, publicity or proprietary rights.
Johnston Press plc will not publish or provide your name and email address to anyone, unless it is required in order to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation. Our registration process requires you to supply us with your name and email address, but we will only use this information to validate your access to The Forum.
If you are under the age of 16
Please get your parents' or guardians' permission before taking part in The Forum's discussions.
Never reveal any personal information about yourself (for example your telephone number, location, home address or email address) without getting your parents' or guardians' permission first.
Transgressions
If you fail to abide by these House Rules then, in most cases, the following procedure will be followed. Please note that Johnston Press plc reserves the right to terminate accounts immediately at its discretion (in the event of such things as criminal behaviour or personal abuse or harassment of Johnston Press staff for example) or to vary the following process as it sees fit.
- For the first offence you will receive an official warning from the moderator.
- For the second offence your account will be suspended for seven days.
- For the third offence you will be suspended from The Forum for a period of one month.
- For the fourth offence your account will be closed permanently.
While suspended if you return to The Forum by creating another account this will constitute a further offence and will extend the suspension to the next period or will result in your account being closed permanently. Asking other Forum members to post on your behalf while suspended will constitute a further offence on your behalf and may constitute an offence on behalf of those members.