Using babyworld's Community
Community Terms of Use covering member content, forums and chat
babyworld.co.uk has a well-established and friendly community which is intended to offer parents and parents to be the opportunity to find and offer real support and friendship, and to exchange personal experiences. It is therefore our duty to keep this community a safe and welcoming place for all our members. We have had several years experience of managing this community (our first launch was in 1996) and these rules have evolved with our experience to ensure babyworld remains a friendly, fun and supportive environment for everyone. The rules govern your use of the babyworld forums and chatroom specifically, but are also relevant to member content areas (diaries, stories, gallery) - they're mostly about common sense and courtesy, but your adherence to them will help to ensure that everyone has a positive experience.
- Terms of use
- Safety guidelines
- Images
- Legalities
- Termination of your babyworld membership
- Where to next?
Terms of use
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babyworld's decision is final. babyworld can edit or delete messages as we see fit, it is our sole discretion. This is for your benefit and is to ensure the forums stay friendly, fun and supportive. If you feel unable to accept this rule, then we politely request that you find what you seek on forums elsewhere. Continuous breaking of the rules. If you continue to break our rules you risk losing your babyworld membership. We will not enter into a discussion regarding our decision. (Please read Termination of your babyworld membership.) Being put on moderation. You may be put on moderation if you continue to break babyworld's Terms of Use. This means that your posts will need to be read by a moderator before they are appear on the site, to check that they adhere to our Terms. This is usually a temporary measure but failure to comply can lead to termination of your babyworld membership. Posting to our discussion forums and entering into our chat room will be taken as acceptance of these rules.You should ensure that you are aware of your legal responsibilities when using our forums. Please note that contravention of these rules will lead to the removal of your message. Should you come across any messages breaking these rules, please let us know. |
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Do not flame or personally insult another user. Please do not use babyworld discussion forums or chat rooms to harass, threaten or attack anyone, or behave in any way that would cause annoyance or distress to other users. We encourage a healthy exchange of opinions and disagreements are allowed! By all means challenge an opinion - but please do it respectfully. Name calling, insults, racism, foul and abusive language will not be tolerated. This includes the use of offensive avatars and usernames. Please be tactful when posting on a forum or chat room where extra sensitivity is required. |
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2. | Commercial messages and messages from businesses or organisations are not permitted. These forums and chat rooms are for use by parents and parents-to-be - they are not to be used as a medium for marketing or selling to our users. |
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3. | Journalists, media researchers and general researchers must not post requests for participants on babyworld's forums and chat rooms. Please go to our Press Office. |
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4. | You may not insult or defame babyworld, including any of its employees, moderators or freelancers. You may not post, on babyworld or any other website, the contents (in part or whole) of any email that you may receive from any babyworld employee or moderator without our prior permission. |
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5. | Do not labour a point after a thread concerning the same point has been removed or has run its course. Do not resurrect threads that are over three months old. |
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6. | Do not post messages more than once. This is also known as 'flooding'. Duplicate messages are very frustrating and all messages of this nature will be deleted. |
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7. | Do not behave in any way that disrupts the flow of an ongoing discussion or that spoils the atmosphere within the forum or chat room. Please keep personal disputes between members away from babyworld. |
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8. | Do not impersonate another person. |
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9. | Do not post chain letters, promote pyramid schemes or recruit members for any 'network marketing' businesses. |
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10. | Do not collect or distribute personal data concerning other babyworld members without first obtaining the consent of babyworld and the members concerned. |
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11. | Do not use the forums or chat rooms to make complaints about babyworld. If you are unsatisified about something, please consider other forum/chat users, and email us directly . |
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12. | Do not use the forums, clubs or chat rooms to buy or sell anything including baby goods. |
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13. | Images. Do not upload images to babyworld that do not belong to you unless you have the owner's pernission (you will be asked for evidence of permission or we will contact the owner direct). |
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Do not recruit our members to join another website forum, antenatal club or chat group, whether personal or otherwise eg Facebook groups, MSN groups, Yahoo groups etc. |
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Personal information eg full names, addresses, telephone numbers, places of work, whether yours or someone else's, should not be posted on babyworld forums, clubs or chat rooms. Postings of this nature will be automatically deleted. We remind you that babyworld's forums are viewable by everyone and so please consider whether you want to put information about your personal circumstances online. Please refer to our Safety Guidelines. |
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Libel, aspersion and defamation. We need to remind members not to defame or cast aspersions on the characters of each other, babyworld staff or anyone else including famous authors, stars, models etc. A false accusation of an offence or a malicious misrepresentation of someone's words or actions could lead to you being sued for libel. The definition of aspersion is: An abusive attack on a
person's character or good name. So, as an example you cannot say: "Kaye talks a load of rubbish" OR "In my opinion Kaye talks a load of rubbish." You can say: "I have tried the routines that Kaye suggests and they do not work for me." It is the responsibility of all members to ensure that their posts are non-libelous. |
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Trolling and creating a fake persona. Joining babyworld for the sole purpose of creating havoc by posting inflammatory comments or making up a whole persona about who you are and your situation (aka as a fake) will NOT be tolerated. Your babyworld membership will be terminated without discussion. Meaning of troll: Someone who posts controversial and usually irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community with the intention of baiting other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion (copied from www.wikipedia.org). |
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18. | Outting of trolls and fakes on the forums, clubs or in the chat room is not acceptable. If you have a suspicion about a member being a troll or a fake please EMAIL the Community Manager or any of the moderators who will then investigate. |
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19. | Please keep your posts interesting and relevant to the topic of the forum and avoid personal chit chat, especially on our general and regional forums. Please make use of our chat room. |
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TICKERS, MONTAGES, SIGNATURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS To ensure the smooth
running of our discussion forums there is a limit to the amount of tickers,
photos, signatures and montages that we will allow:
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21. | Links.We encourage the exchange of
information on the forums and adding an appropriate link to your posting
links is invited. However, obvious promotion of, or inappropriate links
to, other known commercial parenting websites, or any forum or chat groups
are not permitted and will be removed (see
examples of permissible/non permissible links). If you are unsure whether
a link or posting is allowed, please
ask us.
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22. | This is a UK site. Please make your postings in English so they are understood by other members and our moderators. We apologise but we can't allow members to post in a language other than English. |
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23. | babyworld aims to bring the best of our community
to a larger audience. We may do this by quoting your discussion board messages
in newsletters, throughout babyworld, in books, newspaper columns, radio
and tv programmes. When using your comments, we will identify you only by
your babyworld member name. We promise to be sensitive in this effort. We
will not republish anything that we think could be deemed personally endangering,
inflammatory or embarrassing to you without your consent. |
Thank you
Safety guidelines
All members are responsible for the safety of their personal information. We recommend that members do not disclose their name, address, email address, telephone number or other personal information online. No babyworld employees or babyworld discussion forum moderators will ever request such details online.
If you plan to meet a babyworld member in person please observe some precautions:
- Get a friend to accompany you.
- Always inform a person you trust of your movements, when, where and whom are you meeting.
- Always meet people you don't know in a public place of your choosing.
Images
All members need to be aware that when they submit an image to babyworld and it is accepted for publishing then it is visible to the entire internet community. Babyworld can be viewed by anyone on the planet with a PC and a modem.
Any image that can be displayed on a computer screen can potentially be saved by the person viewing it.
It is not technically possible for babyworld or any website to prevent this from happening so if you are worried about someone else viewing or saving your images then you should not submit them. If you suspect that an image you have submitted to babyworld has been used fraudulently then you should contact us immediately at community@babyworld.co.uk
Watermarks
All images uploaded to babyworld will by default have a watermark embedded in them containing your username and babyworld.co.uk.
This does not prevent anyone viewing or saving the image but does help you and us keep track of which images are being used and where. This feature can be turned off at the point of uploading the image but for your own peace of mind and security we would advise you to allow watermarking of all images that you upload to babyworld.
Legalities
All members are reminded that they may be held legally accountable for what they say or do online. In particular, members may be held liable for any defamatory comments, threats and untrue statements or other illegal and fraudulent claims made by them.
Unfortunately, babyworld cannot guarantee the prompt editing or removal of any content. Neither babyworld nor its third party contractors are liable for the content of any material accessed via the internet, any adverse treatment of any information placed by a member anywhere on the internet, or any loss or damage that a member may suffer as a result.
We do not endorse opinions expressed by members of babyworld on its discussion forums, in its chat rooms or anywhere on the site where members can add their own content.
babyworld reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to remove material from babyworld discussion forums and member content areas at any time.
babyworld discussion forums, member content areas, and chat rooms consist of information posted by third parties. As a result, babyworld accepts no liability in respect to the accuracy or truthfulness of any advice, information or data posted online or any responsibility for the consequences of a member acting in reliance on such information.
Please also be aware of our privacy policy and disclaimer.
Termination of your babyworld.co.uk membership
If members fail to observe the above Terms of Use at any time, babyworld reserves the right to exclude the member from the babyworld community (including forums, chat rooms and member area) depending on the nature and severity of the breach.
We reserve the right to deny access to all parts of babyworld that require member log-in to members who repeatedly breach these Terms of Use (these areas include competitions, tools, discussion forums, antenatal clubs and chat rooms).
Depending on the nature of the breach of our Terms of Use, a banned member may be granted a cooling off period enabling them to return to babyworld in due course. The member will be informed of this by email, and return is on the proviso that during their cooling off period they have strictly adhered to the terms of their temporary ban/cooling off period.
babyworld reserves the right to change these Terms of Use at any time and will post details of the changes online.
Members accepting the Terms of Use agree that babyworld may release their information (both present and past) where babyworld believes that a member has breached the Terms of Use or used babyworld's discussion forums or chat rooms to commit unlawful acts. Babyworld also reserves the right to disclose a member's personal information where required to do so by law and where babyworld deems it appropriate in response to complaints of a substantial nature.
Use of our community services, including discussion forums, chat rooms and member areas will be taken as acceptance of these Terms of Use. Please note that any contravention of these Terms will lead to the removal of your message/content.
Should you come across any posts breaking these Terms, please let us know.
Where to next?
- Go shopping in the babyworld online shop
- Chat now in one of our great discussion forums
- Join one of our online antetnatal clubs
- Experienced abuse on one of our boards? Report it here
- Read and then try out our fun list of abbreviations and acronyms
- Find out more about our moderators
- Get chat savvy with our netiquette guide
- See also our privacy policy, copyright and disclaimer information.
