Most online communities have their own rules and guidelines, which we will always follow. We reserve the right to remove any contributions that break the rules or guidelines of the relevant community, or any of the following:
- Be civil, tasteful and relevant.
- Do not post messages that are unlawful, libellous, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive.
- Do not swear.
- Do not post content copied from elsewhere, for which you do not own the copyright.
- Do not post the same message, or very similar messages, more than once (also called "spamming").
- Do not publicise your, or anyone else's, personal information, such as contact details.
- Do not advertise products or services.
- Do not impersonate someone else.
Libel
Please take care not to make libellous statements. In law this means a statement that lowers the reputation of a person or organisation in the eyes of a reasonable person. By publishing such a statement we can both get into serious trouble. We will therefore take down any statement that could be deemed to be libellous.
Purdah
In the six week run up to an election - local, general or European - councils have to very careful not to do or say anything that could seen in any way to support any political party or candidate. The period is known as purdah. We will continue to publish important service announcements using social media but may have to remove responses if they are overtly party political.
Online communities are websites that enable people who share a common interest to interact with each other. We use some online communities such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube to communicate with local residents and businesses.