The BalletcoForum Acceptable Use Policy

[John Mallinson 4,938]

This is the policy with which members have to agree before signing up to BalletcoForum:

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.

These terms and conditions superseded the previous agreement on October 25, 2018.
 

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BalletcoForum is a place for ordinary dance lovers to exchange thoughts and information in good faith.

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. 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 clicking the Report link. 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.

Conditions of membership

1. You affirm that the information that you provide to us for your membership is correct.

 

2. Potential members under the age of 16 years must obtain permission from parent, guardian or other responsible adult before signing up.

 

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

 

4. Contributors must be respectful to others. Vulgar, abusive, racist, and sexist language will not be tolerated. Any posts determined by a moderator to be either offensive or potentially libellous or unlawful or to be against the spirit of this acceptable use policy will be removed. The relevant poster’s account may be suspended or banned. If a member chooses to make highly critical comments this must be done in their own full name and not behind an anonymous user name and email address. Forum rules prohibit members from acting disingenuously, including by personation or wilfully misrepresenting themselves. Members who do this face suspension from the forum.

 

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

Other rules

Email addresses When signing up you have to give an email address which is used to validate your application and to contact you if necessary. Note that applications using temporary or disposable email addresses such as those from Mailinator or similar services will not be accepted. (For privacy's sake email addresses are not revealed to other members or Moderators: they are only visible to the Administrator.)

 

Should you change your email address it is very important that you inform us by emailing BalletcoForum@gmail.com.

Cookies This website does not store any information that would, on its own, allow us to identify individual users of this service without their permission. For best operation the site stores items of information commonly known as cookies. These make use of the site easier by allowing you to log in without having to retype your user name and password each time; they also remember user preferences and which topics and postings you have read. Cookies are not shared with any third parties.

Accepting this policy document confirms that you agree with this use of cookies.

If you do not want cookies to be stored on your computer you can disable them in your web browser's Preferences dialog.

Privacy When it comes to discussion of dancers, company staff, company concerns, employment issues or future programming, only publicly available information may be used. In such cases a reference to the source can establish the information’s bona fides for the purposes of this forum. Posts which breach this rule are likely to be removed.

 
Sometimes members may have genuine inside information which they wish to share. In such cases it is not the truth or otherwise of the information that is the point, it is the fact of disclosure of privileged information not already in the public domain, without the permission of its source: this encompasses ’stage door gossip’ too.  Posting such information is made especially egregious if the member, for whatever reason, is posting anonymously.

 

Please note that these rules apply to ALL dance companies.

Most members post via a pseudonym. It is for them to reveal their full name if they wish. (This topic also arises in the context of highly critical postings above.) Other people must respect this and ‘outing’ of other members is not allowed.

No member should give details of another member’s children such as their name or their dance school, unless the parent has already done so publicly here – this applies particularly in the Doing Dance forum.

(When details may be found on the website of a competition organiser or school or listed in a printed programme it is acceptable to post the names and schools of student competition participants and winners, and of performers in school shows.)

Photos or videos displaying others’ children may not be linked to or displayed unless they are already in the public domain.

Discussion of schools and courses This may lead to the expression of strong opinions, both positive and negative when experiences and views have understandably differed. Against that background, the general Acceptable Use Policy Conditions continue to apply but, as regards schools and courses, additional parameters are added.
    •    Posts about schools or courses must report personal experiences only (posted by the student, the student’s parent/guardian or the student’s teacher with permission).
    •    They must not include second-hand information or innuendo e.g. claiming to speak on someone else’s behalf, for “many people”, for “the majority of students” and so forth.
    •    Nothing should be included that could be construed as defamatory in any way and which could therefore lead to legal ramifications for the Forum and members.

Commerce There is no bar to people representing commercial ventures from signing up to BalletcoForum with a view to spreading information about their wares or offering relevant services.

That said, we are not an advertising hoarding and repeated postings of the same or similar information will not be tolerated, nor frivolous posts which merely seem designed to get the company name ‘up there’. Nor will we allow vendors to use BalletcoForum as their shopfront: if you have a selling business you should use your own website for trade and market testing, not this one.

Members who have commercial interests must indicate that by adding a Signature line to their postings, stating the name and type of their business and giving their website and/or business email address for enquiries. Signatures are best displayed as text but small graphic logos are permissible. (Set up a Signature via Account Settings in the dropdown menu under your name.) If members wish to contact businesses, associate schemes or other commercial enterprises this should be done via the vendor’s website or email, not by starting threads on the forum. Sending promotional ‘mailshot’ messages to other users is not allowed.

Problems arising over transactions entered into between members are not the responsibility of BalletcoForum.

Links to your personal or commercial site We don’t allow members to draw attention to pages on their own websites constructed from freely available material (such as YouTube videos) where there is no significant added value to make the page useful to readers. Where available we ask that people draw attention to such material as posted on the original site – for instance by a direct link to a YouTube page.

In addition, the use of BalletcoForum as a regular conduit to your own website or blog is not acceptable. An occasional link is permissible but habitually including links (more than once or twice in a week) is not. It is however quite in order to include a link to your site or blog in a signature line (as detailed above for commercial users).

Sponsorship issues The forum may not be used to advertise or promote offers of financial or other support to dancers or students.

Contacting members for research We have a large constituency of dancers on the Forum so people may come here to find guinea pigs for their academic research. It is best that people seeking subjects should go through the dance schools so that bona fides can be checked, rather than soliciting help here.

Nonetheless, should you wish to post here, be aware that to take account of concerns about exploitation, particularly of children, we will remove postings unless it is made clear that it is over-18s who are being canvassed. If thinking of replying you should realise that we have no way of checking posters’ credentials and therefore advise caution before responding.

Quoting from newspapers and other websites The copyright situation of material on the internet is complicated, made more so by different national laws. As far as BalletcoForum is concerned we allow brief quotes of a sentence or two from other sites or material, with the source acknowledged, and backed up if relevant by a link. Anything more than this will be removed.

Videos, photos and copyright issues The very widespread availability of videos and photographs on media websites such as YouTube, photo sharing and so-called ‘torrent’ sites which allow media downloads raises problems of acknowledgement and copyright. When links to videos and photos are made on this site it is the member's responsibility to satisfy themselves that rights are respected. We reserve the right to remove links where we believe this not to be the case.

BalletcoForum Committee

 

Edited October 25, 2018 by John Mallinson
Added: Discussion of schools and courses

[alison 9,469]

I am bumping this as a reminder of the terms and conditions of use of the site which all members agreed to abide by on signing up.  If your memory is short, or you need a reminder, they can be found here http://www.balletcoforum.com/guidelines/ or by clicking on "Guidelines" towards the top left of the page.