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Balletcoforum acceptable use policy


annamk

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The existing acceptable use policy for Balletcoforum is the same as the old Balletco which it came into being many years ago. One of the tasks the committee has set itself is to review the appropriateness of the policy in today's world. In thinking about the policy we are looking at what other similar sites do and canvassing views from forum views on the policy. So folks over to you .... any thoughts to feed into the deliberations ? To get you going some issues to consider are: allowing blogs, critics, companies, self-promoting, hostile & highly critical reviews. Over to you.....

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I realised it might make life easier if I include the existing policy ... you can find it where you register but here it is anyway.

Forum Acceptable Use Policy

 

The site administrator reserves the right to change

the terms and conditions of the user agreement without

prior notice to the user. It is the responsibility of

the user to regularly review the terms of this

agreement.

 

The user agrees to the following terms

 

1. All information that you provide to us for your membership is correct.

 

2. You will not use your membership to spam, harrass, or exploit other members in any way.

 

3. Vulgar, Abusive, Racist, and Sexist Language will not be

tolerated. We ask contributors to be respectful to others and in

talking about performances, companies and other institutions.

 

4. No mass posting or flooding of the boards is allowed.

 

5. Ballet.co is a place for ordinary dance lovers to exchange

thoughts and information in good faith - we are not a place for

anybody to promote or describe goods, services, themselves, their

offspring, their performances or organisation etc. Nor a place

to undertake research for commercial or non-commercial

organisations. If there are any errors on the forum then please

contact us via email of course.

 

Forum Webmaster

 

 

New Forum Standard Rules (retained just in case!)

Forum Terms & RulesPlease take a moment to review these rules detailed below. If you agree with them and wish to proceed with the registration, simply click the "Register" button below. To cancel this registration, simply hit the 'back' button on your browser.Please remember that we are not responsible for any messages posted. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message.The messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of this bulletin board. Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately by email. We have the ability to remove objectionable messages and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary.You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this bulletin board to post any material which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person's privacy, or otherwise violative of any law.You agree not to post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or by this bulletin board.

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You mean the first part of the previous post was actually the T&Cs for the old Ballet.co site? I don't remember ever seeing them, but then, perhaps I signed up before they were in place.

 

When you say "allowing blogs", do you mean allowing people to host blogs on the site, or linking to them from elsewhere? I see the site does appear to have blog facilities - as it does gallery facilities: how much space might this take up? (I'm thinking of cost). Critics, I think, should be welcome - after all, reviews are still necessary. As for companies, I don't particularly see why not, if they wanted to - certainly, I think major press releases should be encouraged; ditto with reasonable self-promotion (didn't Ballet Black do that when they first started out?). I don't think I'd mind someone popping in to say "we're going to be performing XYZ on such-and-such a date" and then bumping it close to the time. I do think it's important we stick with the principle that you not hide behind an alias if you're going to be highly critical.

 

Looking at the numbered points above, I think (remembering certain past threads) that possibly "dancers" could be added to the list of groups in the second part of 3! On part 5, if someone has a serious piece of research to do, e.g. for a dissertation, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong in posting a link to their poll or whatever it is. There's perhaps a difference between what this site should *host* and what it should provide links to.

 

Another thought: what about the policy with regard to e.g. YouTube?

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You mean the first part of the previous post was actually the T&Cs for the old Ballet.co site? I don't remember ever seeing them, but then, perhaps I signed up before they were in place.

 

The original T&Cs came with the old forum and were always in place. No 5 changed a little over time - to try and be more explicit as various challenges to what I generally called the "no self promotion" rule arose.

 

 

It is a changed world now and everybody generally looks to be able to whizz up somewhere else and make their point regardless of if they are in the trade or not - which is why on setting up the committee I gave my open advice that this should be strongly reviewed. I think there should be change.

 

However the forum has been praised in the past for being a place quiet reasonableness and with people on promotional message some of that might stand to change. Good forum moderators will be needed to both gently guide when things are wandering off and also to stimulate discussion.

 

 

There were some other things that were not in the Forum Acceptable Use policy but were house rules and posted up in the old About Us section:

 

The main one was that if anybody wanted to post highly critically they had to do it in their own real name and not hide behind an anonymous Username. I think this should be retained.

 

Re YouTube and sites that show pictures the old rule was that they should only be linked to if the site they were on appeared to have cleared copyright properly in order to present them. I'm in a minority I know but I think the routine stealing of copyright pictures and video is piss poor behaviour. However many newspapers now will include videos with no questions asked as to if they are legal or not and many blogs and other sites are not vexed at all by provenience and the use of stolen material. A rubbish carry on but as I say I'm in a minority.

 

 

My 2p - for the committee to come up with rules and the people to moderate.

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Alison: Interestingly, the software package in use now is costed according to the number of online users, taken over a 2-day rolling period. Size of the package in use appears not to be an issue so, in due course, once we all know a lot more about it, it might well be possible to add Blogs and Galleries. As you've noticed, the format does appear to allow this. So, basically, the more popular we become, the more it will cost to keep the show on the road. I believe I'm correct in saying that there has already been one increment from the package first bought by Bruce to get this going - and we might not be too far from having to go one higher still. After that the increments are wider spread by number, but the cost increment goes up accordingly!

Edited by Ian Macmillan
Correction on data amounts now at post No. 7
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Ah, so you mean that those of us who open Ballet.co up in the morning and keep it open all day aren't necessarily doing the site much of a favour? :)

 

Edit: and I've just realised I've had two Ballet.co windows open all day - wonder whether that means I've been counted twice?

Edited by alison
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Alison: I'm rather hoping that that is NOT the case. The definition used suggests active browsing, and for 15 minutes afterwards, is what counts.

 

And I have to correct my last post, because I've realised that the amount of data storage on the site does increase with the amount paid - so perhaps no totally Open House on Blogs etc!

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  • 4 weeks later...

Gosh, I'm on and off the site all the time during the day - hope I'm not driving up a bill somewhere! :-)

 

May I make a suggestion that once the Acceptable Use Policy/Forum Rules are finalised, that they are "pinned" to the top of each of the active forums, so that the guidelines are clear for new users? (and new Mods! ;-))

 

 

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May I make a suggestion that once the Acceptable Use Policy/Forum Rules are finalised, that they are "pinned" to the top of each of the active forums, so that the guidelines are clear for new users? (and new Mods! ;-))

 

If you go this way then ideally what should be pinned is a link to one post where the Rules are shown in About Us (or whatever). You only have to change in one place then.

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Ah, ok Bruce. I didn't know whether you could pin a linked copy of the document at the top of each forum, but if it's a case of having to update the document multiple times then that could be a bit of a logistical nightmare. :-)

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As someone has said Balletco has been known for reasoned, intelligent, literate content, so please no blogs. Highly critical reviews should be allowed but not venemous or personal ie attacks on someones personal appearance etc should not be permitted. Please can we not turn it into another site where we get to know what people are eating while they write, whilst retaining the friendly exchange of views which I have always enjoyed

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As someone has said Balletco has been known for reasoned, intelligent, literate content, so please no blogs. Highly critical reviews should be allowed but not venemous or personal ie attacks on someones personal appearance etc should not be permitted. Please can we not turn it into another site where we get to know what people are eating while they write, whilst retaining the friendly exchange of views which I have always enjoyed

 

To be honest I would go further and discount galleries as well (assuming I am right in thinking along the photographic line) - chid protection is one reason but also I feel it would be a huge invitation for a 'few' to use it as a platform to promote their children etc. Facebook and other sites provide enough exposure and opportunity for that!

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Yes, there are various features here (Galleries, Blogs, Chat) which are part of the default package but which may not be relevant to our current wants and needs and which maybe should be disabled or banished.

 

We will not have the rich collection of photos here that there was on the old Ballet.co site (and is still accessible via DanceTabs where new galleries can also be accessed) but we will have some photos related to current productions.

 

Ad hominem attacks will not be tolerated here in future as they have not been here or on Ballet.co in the past. The new moderation team that takes over in the next few days will keep an eye on that.

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