Terms of use or the House Rules

Welcome to the Terms of use page.

Here you will find the house rules for users of the Discovering Shropshire's History website.

General terms of the website

Administrators will not approve any content that contains anything listed in the "Contributing to the site" section will remove the offending webpage without consultation.

Any user who uploads banned content will be removed from the community.

Think carefully before revealing personal information on the site. This includes your email, home address etc.

You may include your own personal email address in content, but please remember that people may use it to send emails you don't want to receive. We would recommend that you set up a new email account there are plenty of free email services over the internet.

If you are under 16, please do not reveal any personal information.

It is not acceptable to publicise anyone else's contact details other than your own, and we will remove any postal addresses or telephone numbers from content.

It is acceptable to include general contact details for organisations, but you must only include publicly available details, such as the address of a library or museum

Please use only appropriate and suitable URLs (website addresses) in your postings. Links to sexually oriented, commercial services or other inappropriate content will be deleted at our discretion. Any URLs you include will be checked by a moderator.

You may not post any defamatory or illegal material of any nature. This includes text, graphics, video, and/or audio. Posting a message with the intention of committing or condoning an illegal act is strictly prohibited.

Giving feedback

Please don't abuse the feedback system. It exists to us to gain feedback from users of the website.

Anyone who abuses the complaints system repeatedly may have their account suspended. We try to ensure our content is up to date and relevant but if you notice something please do tell us.

Contact us through the feedback forms if you think:-
� Something is wrong
� You have further information
� You have found spelling mistakes

About your privacy

Our registration process requires you to supply us with your email details, but we will only use this information to validate your access to the discussions and for other service administration purposes.

However, we may also wish to contact a small number of contributors to ask them to participate in any publicity or other activity associated with the website.

Only administrators can see user profiles but cannot see your password or other personal information and we will never pass on your personal details to any other third party.

We will also ask you for your postcode which will be held as encrypted and will not be visible to anyone.

Shropshire County Council complies with the 1998 Data Protection Act.

If you're under age 16

Please get permission from your parent or guardian before subscribing.

Never openly reveal any personal information about yourself (for example: your telephone number, mobile phone number, school name, home address or email address).

Disciplinary procedure

If you fail to abide by the House Rules, then the following procedure will be followed in most cases.

Please note that DSH reserves the right to remove users immediately at its discretion (in the event of such things as criminal behaviour or personal abuse of staff, for example).

For the first offence you will receive an official warning.

A second offence will mean that your account is suspended for seven days.

A third offence will mean a suspension period of one month.

A fourth offence will result in your account being closed permanently.

In each case the warning or suspension notice will be sent to the email address in your preferences, explaining the nature of the transgression.

If your warning email address bounces, then the account will be removed and you will need to subscribe again.

While suspended, returning to the site by creating another account will constitute a further offence and will extend the suspension to the next period, or will result in your account being closed permanently.

The DSH Administrators reserves the right to delete any posting, at any time, for any reason, and is under no obligation to publish any work submitted.

Using Email forums

When you are using an email forum please ensure that you do not:

Spam
Spamming is the posting of the same (or very similar) messages to lots of forums.

Flooding.
Flooding is when the same (or a very similar) message is posted over and over again to the same conversation.

Post off topic
It's anti-social if you post anything that's off-topic for those forums.

If you do any of the above, the forum manager may remove your postings, and possibly your account.

Impersonating someone else is unacceptable, as is adopting an inappropriate screen name (one that is vulgar, offensive, etc.)

Be patient. Users of all ages and abilities will be taking part in the community.