Community policy, guidelines and disclaimer

This policy is in beta!

Background - 20 April, 2010
This community policy is a work in progress. Why do we need one? Because we exist to provoke controversy, to get society to ask hard questions. This can spark passionate discussions – which are usually fun and productive, but can sometimes turn unconstructive and less than civil.

Greenpeace International community policy

The purpose of our website is to inspire, engage, and mobilize people around a shared vision of a green and peaceful future. We’ve created these community pages as a place where all of us (even those who don’t share that vision) can have a conversation and exchange ideas with one another. But first and foremost, this site is for our supporters.

Our part of the bargain

(Rules we'll follow.)

  • We will be honest in everything we write. 
  • We will be open to discussion. (We won’t ban anyone or delete comments simply because we disagree.)
  • We will remain civil in our responses, and consistent with our core principles.
  • We will out the sock puppets, we will identify the trolls, and we will close threads and ban commenters when it’s in the interest of the community to do so.
  • We won't ever edit your comments.

What we ask of you

(By participating on this website, you agree to follow these rules.)

  • Treat people well – No racist, homophobic, sexist, agist, abusive or otherwise discriminatory comments. No personal attacks. No incitements to violence. No foul language.
  • Please stay on topic. Don't add comments about something unrelated to what the blog post is about. (Don't hijack the threads.)
  • Don't hog the conversation - Don't be that person who has to have the first word, last word and everything in between. It discourages other people from joining in, and is an all around bad look.  We may remove posts if you make multiple ones in a row (two in a row is fine, more is probably not helpful).
  • Don’t spam: Your account is for personal use only, not for commercial purposes or doing mass promotion or anything like that. We have a zero tolerance policy for spam. Spam is for chumps.
  • No sock-puppets. If you’re an industry or government representative who is paid to express your views (or if you have a conflict of interest in any other way), you need to say that.
  • If you’ve been banned, don’t try to come back with another account. It’s not a good look for anyone.

How this policy will be enforced

Comments may be deleted in whole.

We'll ban people, and delete accounts if we need to, and we will consider and act on community requests to do these things.

We may also turn off commenting for specific posts, or site wide (ex. if there is a concerted attack).

Tips on how to help keep it nice around here

  1. Don’t be that annoying guy. You know, the one who doesn’t think before typing, who types A LOT, and degrades the experience of reading comments. We, and our community of contributors, have in the past been patient with this kind of behaviour but only up to a point.
  2. Please have a look around first before asking a question.
  3. Please use the "report this comment” link to report comments that violate this policy.
  4. When you see something you disagree with, assume best intentions before answering.
  5. Be polite and courteous.
  6. Don't feed the trolls.

Disclaimer

The Greenpeace International weblogs found at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/blogs do not necessarily reflect the views of Greenpeace International or any Greenpeace national office. Blog posts sometimes also appear in lists of content on other parts of our site, but the posts themselves are under the "blog" directory.

Blog posts and comments are written by individual staff, crew, volunteer bloggers, supporters and random individuals. These contain their own quirky, unorthodox, unordained, uncondoned, and highly personal opinions. If you are looking for the official word from Greenpeace International, please see our press releases, feature stories and issue pages, which better reflect our institutional voice, policy, and opinions. 

Categories
Tags