Community Rules
Last Updated: August 21, 2024
This Site may include a variety of features, such as discussion forums, blogs, photo and video sharing pages, personalized home pages, email services and social networking features, which allow users to interact with each other and third parties on the Site and to post content and materials for display on the Site.
Responsibility for what is posted on the Site or sent via any e-mail services that are made available via the Site, lies with each user – you alone are responsible for the material you post or send. We do not control the messages, information or files that you or others may transmit, post or otherwise provide on or through the Site.
We invite you to submit your original videos, photos and comments. In order to keep these interactive forums enjoyable and interesting for all of our users, we ask that you follow the rules outlined below.
Comments
As we are alerted to them, we reserve the right at all times, but do not assume the obligation, to remove comments including, but not limited, to the following types of specific information or language:
- Potentially libelous statements. In general terms, that means a comment that states or implies a false fact that harms a person's reputation (as opposed to expressing an opinion);
- Sexually explicit or crude sexual comments;
- Threatening statements or statements that suggests violent acts;
- Crude comments about a child;
- Swearing or obscenity;
- Derogatory phrases to define a group of people;
- Nasty name-calling. If the number of unacceptable comments on a story gets out of control, we may turn off commenting on that item.
As long as they don't include the kind of comments described above:
- We will allow opinions that some may find offensive about tough social issues around race and sexual orientation.
- We will allow criticism of public figures.
- We will allow criticism of people who are subjects of stories.
- We will allow conversation that is simply strident in tone.
This Website
In addition, by accessing and using any feature on this Site, you represent and agree that you:
- Will not restrict or inhibit any other user from using and enjoying the Site;
- Will not use the Site to impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
- Will not interfere with or disrupt any servers or networks used to provide the Site or its features, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of the networks we use to provide the Site;
- Will not use the Site to instigate or encourage others to commit illegal activities or cause injury or property damage to any person;
- Will not gain unauthorized access to the Site, or any account, computer system, or network connected to this Site, by means such as hacking, password mining or other illicit means;
- Will not obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available through this Site;
- Consistent with the Site’s commenting policies you will not use the Site to post or transmit any unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane or indecent information of any kind, including without limitation any transmissions constituting or encouraging conduct that would constitute a criminal offense, give rise to civil liability or otherwise violate any local, state, national or international law;
- Will not use the Site to post, transmit or in any way exploit any information, software or other material for commercial purposes, or that contains advertising;
- Will not use the Site to advertise or solicit to anyone to buy or sell products or services, or to make donations of any kind, without our express written approval;
- Will not gather for marketing purposes any email addresses or other personal information that has been posted by other users of the Site;
- Will not contact anyone who has asked not to be contacted;
- Will not use the Site to post or transmit any information, software or other material that violates or infringes upon the rights of others, including material that is an invasion of privacy or publicity rights or that is protected by copyright, trademark or other proprietary right, or derivative works with respect thereto, without first obtaining permission from the owner or rights holder;
- Will not use the Site to post or transmit any information, software or other material that contains a virus or other harmful component;
- Will not repeatedly post the same or similar content or otherwise impose an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure;
- Take or cause to be taken any action that disrupts the normal flow of postings and dialogue on our Site (such as submitting an excessive number of messages – i.e. a flooding attack), or that otherwise negatively affects other users’ ability to use the Site and/or services;
- Will not use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data-mining tools, or the like to download data from our Site. Exception is made for Internet search engines (e.g., Google) and non-commercial public archives (e.g., archive.org) that comply with our
- Terms of Service
We reserve the right to deny access to the Site or any features of the Site to anyone who violates these Community Rules or who, in our sole judgment, interferes with the ability of others to enjoy our website or infringes upon the rights of others.
All users of this Site are reminded that as set forth in the "Responsibility for User-Provided Content" section of these Terms of Service we may preserve content and materials submitted by you, and may also disclose such content and materials if required to do so by law or if, in our business judgment, such preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with legal process; (b) enforce these Terms of Service; (c) respond to claims that any content or materials submitted by you violate the rights of third parties; or (d) protect the rights, property, or personal safety of our Site, us, our affiliates, our officers, directors, employees, representatives, our licensors, other users, and/or the public.