Policing Insight House Rules

1.Introduction
Social clubs, sports clubs, owners’ clubs – any grouping of individuals with a common purpose, interest or background are held together by the enthusiasm of the many and the dedication of the few. In this sense, online communities are no different to their face-to-face counterparts.

www.policinginsight.com members are drawn together by a common purpose to discuss and share opinions on key issues that surround those working in the police service. Whatever the motivation the underlying driver is the opportunity to benefit from the experience of others. This is the best reason to be part of a community, where the ethos is to share opinion, information and experiences. And there is no better medium than the Internet to facilitate this.

2.Your rights and responsibilities

• As a member of www.policinginsight.com and www.policing.tv you have registered to join our “club” – the Policing Insight/PolicingTV community – as well as gain access to valuable content. As with all clubs, the main principles of association are defined by the organisers – in this case the Policing Insight/PolicingTV team – and the club is run and managed by and for its members – you.
• Policing Insight/PolicingTV and its community is distinguished by three guiding principles, which define your rights and responsibilities:

• • You are who you say you are.
  • You own your own details.
  • You own your own words.

• “You are who you say you are” means that no aliases or pseudonyms are accepted on the site; you have a Username which is used as your public name which can be your real name or a nickname. However the name field on your My Account page should be your real identity. With the declaration of one’s real identity there is commitment, greater likelihood that people will be truthful with each other and a stronger chance that relationships formed online will blend into long-lasting “real life” relationships.
• “You own your own details” means that, through ‘My Account’ , you can add or remove your personal details at any time and therefore control who sees what. Your email address is only ever visible to CoPaCC Ltd staff for the specific purpose of communicating with you. It is not possible for any member to view or access your email address from the site unless you are an author published on the site and have opted for your email address to be public on your author page. Without your consent your personal details will not be used by CoPaCC Ltd other than in the context of communicating with you and as part of aggregated data used for research. For a full explanation of our policy regarding your personal information, please refer to our Privacy Policy.
• “You own your own words” means that you are directly responsible and liable for your comments and everything you choose to publish in the discussions and that you warrant that you own the copyright in what you publish. However, you waive your moral rights and we may publish, check, edit or remove all or part of what you submit to the site at our sole discretion. In publishing on www.policinginsight.com/www.policing.tv you grant CoPaCC Ltd a perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, non- exclusive worldwide licence (including the right to sub-license) to use, copy, edit, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, make available, communicate and distribute what you submit in whole or part and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed. Other members can quote your words with an accompanying attribution. Should you not want a particular statement to be reproduced by other members you must indicate this explicitly with the statement. We will not be responsible or liable for the content or accuracy of any material posted by you or any other member of our site.

3.Why have House Rules?

• There are in-built rules for acceptable behaviour in all of us. Online communities are no exception to these rules – however, because the natural visual and auditory clues are missing, we need to be more aware of how our written words might be understood by others.
• Our House Rules are here to support us and remind us of the most appropriate ways to engage with our fellow members. The aim is to protect anyone who reads or contributes to the community and to help everyone have a rewarding time.
• When you engage with the community you are accepting these House Rules, and any on-going amendments.

4.The Rules

• Please read this to understand what defines acceptable behaviour in our discussions. Monitoring behaviour can be carried out by any member, as well as the Policing Insight/PolicingTV team. Responding appropriately to a member who transgresses is carried out by the Policing Insight team.
• As a member of the Policing Insight community and user of its discussions you agree to:

4.1 Style

• Not to shout at other members by posting in all capital letters
• Take care with humour that might work verbally but seems censorious and mean when translated to words on a screen.
• Present opinions and positions in a tactful and moderate fashion
• Learn to listen to written words and the person behind those words

4.2 Content

• Not to post anything that could be interpreted as self-publicity (including spamming – posting the same or similar message in many discussions), advertising (including pyramid selling and chain letters), selling or soliciting
• Not to insult others and not use swear words or crude or sexual language – be polite
• Not to post anything unlawful – for example, sending or posting material that is indecent, racist or defamatory, harassing, threatening or in breach of confidentiality or someone’s privacy
• Not to post anything which could prejudice pending or on-going court proceedings
• Not to post anything intended to disrupt or vandalise the service
• Not to post any personal details of others, known both in and outside the community; in particular,
• Not to post any material that infringes any legal rights – for example, copyright or other proprietary rights
• Not to post any links to illegal or infringing third party websites
• Keep Q&A free of discursive discussions
• Find out who else is commenting on the topic and cite them – be generous
• Only post in English

4.3 Responsibility

• Accept responsibility for all material that you publish in the community
• Accept responsibility for a discussion you have started – to keep it on topic and to freeze it when it has run its course
• Always acknowledge the name of the source of any third-party material legitimately quoted or referred to
• Not to quote any member who specifically requests not to be quoted
• Not to intentionally misquote another member or Policing Insight representative
• Not to falsely misrepresent yourself
• Not to abuse the facility to send an individual member a personal message
• Use the log-out button, especially on a public machine, to minimise intruder access

4.4 Monitoring

• Report any transgressions or breach of the House Rules to Policing Insight/PolicingTV using the ‘Report This’ functionality or email [email protected]
• Report any misuse of the comments facility to www.policinginsight.com using the ‘Report This’ functionality
• Do not misuse the channels for complaint – persistence may result in action by www.policinginsight.com team against your account
• We reserve the right at our sole discretion to delete any contribution, or take action against any www.policinginsight.com account, at any time, for any reason, including suspending or terminating your account
• We do not ourselves check, monitor or moderate the comments and other material submitted to the site. We do however operate a ‘report and react’ policy. If you publish anything that someone else considers in breach of our House Rules and we are put on notice of this, we may remove your posting immediately whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation. If we do remove something, we will generally remove whole posts, or where necessary, whole threads. Consequently, a comment may sometimes be removed just because it is connected to a comment which is subject to a complaint. If you are aware that content has been removed, you must not deliberately resubmit the same content. We will not be responsible or liable for the content or accuracy of any material posted by you or any other member of our site

5. Further information

To contribute to or comment on these House Rules do email [email protected] .