PARTICIPATION GUIDELINES

1. Debate and dissent are welcome. However any personal attacks, abuse or harassment on authors or any individual will not be tolerated. Focus must be geared towards an intelligent discussion of topics.

2. We allow honest criticism of the blogs, though persistent misrepresentation of the authors will not be tolerated. To ensure fair debate, we will distinguish between constructive, focussed argument and smear tactics.

3. Although some issues raised on The Platform may lead to strong feelings, we reserve the right to remove any content that others may find extremely offensive or threatening. Please ensure you take into account your impact on others before commenting.

4. We encourage enthusiasm and the opportunity to discuss your viewpoints. However, we reserve the right to curtail discussions which descend into tit-for-tat.

5. Content that may put us into legal jeopardy, for example defamatory or libellous postings, or material posted in potential breach of copyright shall be removed.

7. Commercial or spam-like posts shall be removed. This may include individuals or organisations who post external links that do not enhance the quality of discussion.

8. Please keep the discussion relevant. Some conversations can be understandably wide ranging, but comments unrelated to the original topic may be removed to keep the thread on track. Queries or comments about moderation should not be posted as comments.

9. Be clear about the message you are delivering and understand that people may understand your contribution differently than intended. Please help the quality of discussion on The Platform by maintaining a reasonable tone, even under unreasonable circumstances.

COMMENT MODERATION

All comments are moderated to ensure a restriction of abusive and/or slanderous comments.

Those who wilfully, persistently and seriously ignore the participation guidelines will be barred. We are seeking to create a platform for sensible dialogue and debate. This is not an action taken lightly or arbitrarily.

When required, we will remove any comments or contributions perceived as in breach of the participation guidelines as set out above. This is to ensure The Platform is appropriate for the vast majority of those who visit.

Even if only part of a comment is perceived as breaching the participation guidelines, the whole comment may be removed. When a comment is removed for any of the above reasons, it is sometimes necessary to delete succeeding messages which specifically refer to or quote from the original (removed) comment, in order to preserve some notion of conversational thread. This may also happen when a later comment quotes directly from the problematic areas of the original comment, as this can perpetuate the problem. In such cases not every deletion will be marked individually.

The Editorial Team and Moderators cannot enter into correspondence or discussion regarding specific moderation activity, or provide a running commentary on editorial decisions. Any concerns or complaints should be emailed to:

admin@the-platform.org.uk