House Rules

[french frank]

These Rules have been superseded by the new Terms & Conditions and House Rules.



Administration, Moderation and House Rules

The Radio 3 Forum has two administrators, the co-founders of Friends of Radio 3, Mark Sealey (administrator – technology) and Sarah Spilsbury, forum name ‘french frank’ (administrator – moderation).

In addition, most forums have Hosts who can carry out certain adminstrative tasks but whose main duty is to keep their forums welcoming and active.

The current Forum Rules, inherited from the software developers, vBulletin, state:

Although the administrators and moderators of The Radio 3 Forum will attempt to keep all objectionable messages off this site, it is impossible for us to review all messages. All messages express the views of the author, and neither the owners of The Radio 3 Forum, nor vBulletin Solutions, Inc. (developers of vBulletin) will be held responsible for the content of any message.

By agreeing to these rules, you warrant that you will not post any messages that are obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or otherwise violative of any laws.

The owners of The Radio 3 Forum reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any content item for any reason.

Some House Rules will give further guidance.

The forum is hosted by Friends of Radio 3 for the use, principally, of Radio 3 listeners. Any member whose posts are deemed to bring the forum or Friends of Radio 3 into disrepute may have their account deleted.

Hosts and members are encouraged to discuss the programming on Radio 3 but boards such as Platform 3 allow members to initiate any topics which they think may be of interest to others.

Please, address other members respectfully, even if you disagree with what they are saying; and please do not post topics which are designed to be provocative.

Members are asked not to use offensive language. Any post considered offensive should be reported to the moderator to deal with by using the Report button or sending a Private Message.

On all such complaints, the moderator's decision is final.

Please do not post copyright material. Members retain the copyright of their posts but, in posting, are deemed to have granted full publishing rights to the forum.

Remember, this is just an internet forum. Read, mark, learn, inwardly digest – and enjoy.

June 2011

[french frank]

I have attempted to add some Terms & Conditions to the House Rules which are now in an 'invisible' Business forum instead of here in Announcements. It can be accessed via the Terms of Service link at the foot of each page. 'House Rules' in the homepage sidebar have now also been redirected there. This thread is therefore superseded and I've now opened it in any case there are any comments, queries or objections!

[mercia]

Please do not post copyright material.

I think I need guidance on this one. Is it ok to provide links to, say, wikipedia pages? Yesterday I posted a link to an Independent newspaper obituary, what if I had copied and pasted a paragraph from that obituary?

[french frank]

I think I need guidance on this one. Is it ok to provide links to, say, wikipedia pages? Yesterday I posted a link to an Independent newspaper obituary, what if I had copied and pasted a paragraph from that obituary?

Wikipedia is unequivocally okay to link to and, if you wish, quote whole chunks of as it's not copyright material (unless anyone incorporates copyright stuff in their articles, which they shouldn't). Indeed, the whole point is that it belongs to everyone.

There are some publications which are funny about links, but, as a rule, I'm taking the usual copyright law on actual words. Links are fine unless we're told not to by the publisher. And, of course, a small amount of quoting - e.g. three or four sentences at most - are allowable anyway. Times Newspapers contacted us about a whole article which had been reproduced and which, of course, we removed. I don't think we're likely to be in much trouble about this but it's better if members think about it before they post and make alternative arrangements - such as links.

what if I had copied and pasted a paragraph from that obituary?

Use your discretion on that as to how much it's fair to reproduce. A judiciously chosen quote and a link would be best.

[mercia]

Thanks ff

[Old Grumpy]

House rules, Ts an Cs, moderation etc.

Seems reasonable to me.

I am not a copyright expert at all, but it seems strange to me that anyone could object to a link being posted to their site - it's on the internet after all! If (as in the Times Newspapers case) a payment or other log-in is required, then presumbly a request for such a payment or log-in will appear when the link is accessed.

[french frank]

it seems strange to me that anyone could object to a link being posted to their site - it's on the internet after all!

Case law may have now established the position on this but I think a few years ago one of the newspapers (The Indie?) had a copyright clause saying, I think, that you had to get permission to post links to their site. If so, they've probably given that up as a bad job by now. Basically, the Ts & Cs relate to anything that might get us into trouble as publishers.