These guidelines
These guidelines constitute our acceptable use policy for the Diss Homepage website. Their purpose is to be transparent and fair and make clear to users how we decide what to include, or to remove, and what our complaints procedure is.
Authority
This website is provided by Norfolk County Council and managed by staff from the library service and local volunteers who act as curators. Our aim is to help and support local communities and to give local citizens a voice online.
We want the site to be a positive, friendly, useful place. In general, please join in! Please be polite and friendly, welcome newcomers, show respect for your readers and use common sense.
We do have to specify some of the things which aren’t acceptable. Here comes the serious bit!
Content or comments which break the following rules will be removed and your future comments may be automatically banned. If you take issue with a decision then please email board-diss@norfolkhomepage.org.uk. More detail about appeals procedure is available here.
- No personalized attacks on individuals
- No illegal content, or links to it, for example, pornography, specific threats toward someone, libel, violating someone’s copyright, selling of illegal goods, etc.
- No incitement to hatred
- No pornography or any material we consider unsuitable for viewing/reading by all age groups
- No personal data about anyone other than the person posting the data without their express permission
- No comments which are racist, sexist or offensive.
- No “affiliate marketing,” “link referral code,” “junk mail,” “spam,” “chain letters,” “pyramid schemes,” or irrelevant commercial advertisement.
- No posting of or linking to any file that contains viruses, corrupted files, “Trojan Horses,” or any other contaminating or destructive features that may damage someone else’s computer.
- No deliberate harming of this site, for example by flooding the site with comments in order to disrupt our service.
- No impersonating another person, or falsely stating or otherwise misrepresenting your affiliation with a person or entity.
- No party political sites which can be seen to be supporting (or excluding) particular candidates in the time of elections
- Things that are relevant to the local community – this includes content produced by people in Diss or nearby, or content produced elsewhere which has local relevance. [I’m using ‘local relevance’ rather than ‘which is directly relevant to people and organisations within that community’ as all sorts of wider info might be directly relevant to the local community but a local website probably isn’t the place for it.]
- News, activities, events, content (photos, videos, audio), service information, or discussions which people would find interesting. This will always be a subjective judgement, our ultimate guide is whether people view it and feedback from local people and site users.
- The views of people in or serving the local community on issues, news etc, provided they are not expressed in a way that breaches the rules above.
- Commercial websites are acceptable if they feature information genuinely likely to be of interest to the local community – for example, author appearance at a local bookstore.
The test is, ‘Is this information likely to be of interest to local people and/or contribute to the local community?’ If so, we’ll include it, the fact that the company may be providing the information for commercial reasons is incidental. However, we will not feature content which is solely presented for commercial reasons and has little community value.
For example, a local tour operator who posts on local wildlife and occasionally mentions their special offers is fine, a business who posts nothing but how great they are, their services and price lists will not be included.
As a rule of thumb, a given event should be advertised only once and commercial messages (as opposed to non-commercial messages from the commercial provider) should be no more than once a fortnight.
As the site goes on we’ll quickly see whether ‘advertising’ overwhelms everything else and can adjust these rules of thumb.
Commercial sites should clearly show a valid business address and landline telephone number.
When deciding which sites to include, we’ll also look for the following:-
- Accuracy: Is the information of high quality, trustworthy, and fact-based?
- Useful: Is the information practical, helpful, and relevant?
- Currency: Is the information up-to-date?
- Readable: Does the information meet the literacy levels of the target audience?
- Presentation: Is the content professionally presented and of a reputable source?
Sites we won’t include:-
Anything that contravenes site-wide rules
1. Commercial sites with lots of spam and/or little community interest. Please see ‘commercial website’ section above [link].
Appeals procedure
In the first instance, decisions about whether to include websites, or allow or delete posts, will be made by the curator. Curators will make their decision based on these guidelines, and also their knowledge of traffic on the site, previous complaints and so on.
If the decision (either to exclude, or to include) is challenged the curator will consider the grounds of the challenge and may change their decision. If not, they will explain the reasons for their decision to the complainant.
If the complainant is still not happy, they can appeal further to the Homepage Board.
The decision of the board is final.
We request users to abide by the site-wide rules and treat other users and our readers with politeness and respect. We can ban users who break the rules.
Home Page encourages other web sites that share our intentions and principles to link to us, and we link to and aggregate content from other sites. However, other sites remain separate entities and we are not responsible for them.
Home Page strictly prohibits any suggestion or inference of endorsement or recommendation of any product or service. A third party must ensure that nothing on its own site describes, or could be understood to imply, that any part of the Home Page web site is part of the third party web site.
The Home Page web site provides links to a number of third-party web sites for convenience and information purposes only. These links have been selected by Home Page curators, but they do NOT represent the opinion of Norfolk County Council or any other partners in Home Page, nor do they imply endorsement of the content or association with the author. Home Page has no control over the content of third-party web sites nor is Home Page responsible for the content or availability of third-party web sites.
Home Page makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to documents or other information available from the HOME PAGE web site or from other third-party web sites linked to the HOME PAGE web site, assumes no legal liability or responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any such information, and does not represent that its use would not infringe privately owned rights.
Home Page shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with your use of any such content, products, services, or other materials available on or provided by the HOME PAGE web site, or any third-party web site or resource. If a link to a third-party web site is not functional, that link will be repaired or removed in a timely manner upon notice. For your protection, please refer to the terms of service and privacy policies of the respective third-party resources.
The HomePage Board is responsible for adjudicating on appeals. It currently consists of:-
Sally Blows – Diss Librarian
Tim Anderson – Policy and Performance, Norfolk County Council
Shane McCracken – Director, Gallomanor Communications Ltd.
They can be contacted by emailing board-diss@norfolkhomepage.org.uk
