Posted in About NZMac.com
Agreeing to these rules and guidelines is part of the registration process to gain access to NZMac.com. The guidelines cover appropriate behaviour throughout the site.
An Introduction
NZMac.com is a moderated website, requiring user registration. All areas of the website that allow for user contribution and activity (such as within the forum or community areas) has one or more moderators, who monitor user activity whilst observing the privacy of site users. Whilst postings are not monitored to the extent of requiring approval before appearing (with some exceptions in some site areas), it is the role of moderators to ensure that activity such as postings and comments, viewable to the public and/or registered users, fall within what they consider appropriate use of the website.
It is the responsibility of the users of the site to ensure that their postings are appropriate and that comments and activities meet the standards indicated in this document.
Given that the nature of the site is one in which New Zealand Macintosh computer users can post information related to the use of computers, we would appreciate if the postings were Mac-related or at least relevant to the generic concept of a "New Zealand Macintosh user". This does not apply to clearly designated forum sections that may relate to non-Mac issues, nor to any community section of the website that promotes the ability of users to share other interests, images etc with the other users of the site.
We do not agree with the posting of information and/or discussions concerning users wanting to, or having managed to illegally obtain, duplicate and/or distribute software, CDs or multimedia. This site also does not support free advertising - it is expected that any companies wishing to promote their mac-related products do so through appropriate channels (advertising, press release submissions, reviews of products etc) rather than assuming the right to post information on their products.
The NZMac.com website is intended to be a supportive and encouraging environment for all....an environment in which we welcome help, advice and opinion. In order to develop widespread discussion, the NZMac.com website also offers other sites the ability to have forum, blog, review and news topics appear on their pages via RSS feeds, although only publicly viewable information can be obtained and displayed by these sites.
Users should also be aware that the site has functionality that allows for material not posted on NZMac.com to appear on its pages. An example of this is user's feeds from Twitter. NZMac.com accepts no liability for the content created and displayed by users from sites such as these, nor for the opinions expressed by users within the site.
Communication
By registering on the site, you understand that mechanisms internal to the site may mean that other users or the administrator of the site may contact you, but without your contact details being divulged (unless you yourself made them publicly visible). As examples of what this means, you might:
- Subscribe to receive forum posts so therefore will receive notifications
- Receive a private message from another site user
- Post a comment to an article and receive notification of other comments
- The administrator of the site may contact you on exceptionally rare instances with a communication
Abuse of any of these internal systems can be reported by users and will be dealt with as quickly as possible. The intention of this statement is not to legitimise spam or suggest that communication is not controlled, just to make you aware of site functionality.
We suggest you...
- Take the time to post comments that are clear to the reader to try to avoid confusion or misinterpretation by others.
- Respect other people's opinions. Don't forget that the electronic written word can offend (intentionally and unintentionally) just as much as the spoken word can.
- Be forgiving enough to realise that sometimes the intention was never to offend and that words and phrases can be misinterpreted.
- Be respectful of your own and other people's right to privacy.
- Keep it clean. Profanity and obscenities will not be tolerated.
- To protect your privacy and to ensure your online safety, we ask that you do not post personally identifiable information without due care and consideration. This includes phone numbers or addresses. Further, we ask that you do not share someone else's personally identifiable information.
Signatures/Avatars/Personal slogans/Personal status:
- Must be set up in your profile and not manually added to each of your messages
- May NOT contain any images or animations.
- May not contain any pricing, sales, product (etc.) details or images promoting these or other websites (see exceptions)
- May not breach or conflict with any advertising agreements which are indicated on the advertising page
- Links must be obvious, either through visible URLs (e.g. www.nzmac.com), direct links or if an HTML-coded link, it must be obvious where the link is taking the user
- Advertising and affiliate links are not allowed (NZMac.com itself is exempt from this practice)
- Links to personal or work websites are allowed, but they must be direct links and not in the form of advertising or that use superlatives to describe the business or to promote specific activities on such sites (this includes promotion of articles)
- No more than 3 URLs per signature and no more than 6 lines in height
- Maximum font size cannot be larger than normal
- May not contain links to other threads, posts or articles, including on other sites (in other words, only direct links to sites only as described earlier)
- May not contain offensive or insulting content
- We reserve the right to ask you to change and/or remove/alter your signature etc at any time, for any reason.
- Accounts that have not been used for a period of 6 years will be removed from the site without notification
- We reserve the right to delete accounts that have been activated but the user has never logged in, from the site without notification
Referencing sources:
We ask that all users who quote small segments of articles from other sites include a direct URL to the article on the original site where it was displayed. If the complete copy of a web article is posted, it will generally be removed. In the case of printed material, users must abide by the appropriate copyright regulations that relate to the publication where the article came from, and take responsibility for any infringement of these laws that they carry out.
Acknowledging the source of comments and opinion means there is no confusion as to where the comment originated. Whilst we appreciate that the comments that appear on this website are readily visible to the general public, we ask that anyone who wishes to making use of comments, reference them appropriately, including providing a link back to the website. In some cases it may be appropriate and courteous to contact NZMac.com (or the author of the comment) for approval. The right to approve the publication elsewhere of user submitted NZMac.com content is at the discretion of NZMac.com, but in most instances, discussions will be entered into.
Draft User Content:
- Draft unpublished content created by users that has not been submitted for approval or publication (i.e., is an incomplete work that a user intended to come back to but failed to do so) will be deleted after a period of one month from when it was last edited or altered
You may not...
- Post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-oriented or any other material that may violate any applicable laws. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned (and your service provider being informed).
Quoting guidelines and example of how to use quoting can be seen in the discussion forum
The community section is a moderated enhancement to the NZMac.com site that see users provided with more functionality to help develop a stronger sense of community on the site. Like all aspects of the site, the Community section will be under constant development.
The community section of the website will be moderated by members of a Community Guide group, which users are able to request to join, but whose membership is at the discretion of NZMac.com. The Community Guide group will be a group to discuss issues, future development of the community area, develop support material and more. Those not in this group can still post messages in the NZMac.com Forum if they have any questions, concerns or suggestions.
It is the role of moderators and Community Guides to ensure that the information falls within what they consider appropriate use of the community system.
NZMac.com reserves the right to modify these rules at any time without notice.