GUIDELINES

Conduct and Guidelines

Welcome:

Hello and welcome to Seagrass-Watch: The Global Seagrass Observing Network. We thank you for your interest in the program.

You have reached this page because you have joined our mailout list, you are an existing member, or you are considering joining the group.

Agreement:

By Registering with Seagrass-Watch and our Global community, you are considered to be in agreement with the terms and conditions listed below:

Be nice to each other! We are all here to learn and help each other out. To help everyone enjoy our community, we ask that when you post/contact fellow network members or our Team, you keep in mind the following:

  • Respect that other people in the community have had different life experiences and may have a different perspective to yours:

All posts/emails/contact should be professional and courteous. You have every right to disagree with your fellow community members and explain your perspective. However, you are not free to attack, degrade, insult, or otherwise belittle them or the quality of this community. It does not matter who you are, you are expected to obey this rule.

  • We don’t allow defamatory, indecent, offensive, profane, discriminatory, misleading, unlawful, excessively violent language or threatening/pressuring comments.
  • ZERO TOLERANCE FOR:
    • Personal attacks,
    • name-calling,
    • trolling,
    • abuse,
    • harassment,
    • insults,
    • taunts,
    • provoking,
    • demeaning,
    • hate speech,
    • negative comments,
    • slurs against race, religious affiliation, disabilities, or diseases, gender or sexual orientation,
    • threats of harm/Pressuring (to) Team members, public and personal safety .
      • This includes specific threats of physical harm as well as threats of theft, vandalism, and other financial harm. We carefully review reports of threats and consider many things when determining whether a threat is credible.
  • Spamming, posting promotional material or posting links to third party websites is not permitted. Any material which constitutes defamation, harassment, or abuse is strictly prohibited. Material that is sexually or otherwise obscene, racist, or otherwise overly discriminatory is not permitted on on any of Seagrass-Watch platforms. This includes user pictures. Use common sense while posting.
  • Coordinated group attacks will not be tolerated.
Team Members participating in the discussion in our community are reminded of the staff social media guidelines.
 
Our community is a public place. Don’t post personal information that you would not be comfortable sharing with a stranger.
 
We recommend that you don’t post any information that may identify you or anyone else, such as your address, email address or phone number
 

What happens if somebody breaches the Community Guidelines?
It is our policy to remove content that violates our community guidelines. We may remove entire posts if either the imagery or associated captions violate our guidelines. We also may disable entire accounts for violations of our Community Guidelines.

A ban of your registration may either be temporary or permanent. Seagrass-Watch administrators and moderators also have the right to edit, delete, move or close any thread or post as they see necessary, without prior warning. 

Members must accept and respect Seagrass-Watch’s decision to ban a member from the group, or a member’s decision to block a member from contacting them. Creating new accounts to circumvent block or ban decisions is prohibited

Seagrass-Watch will not tolerate and reserves its right to delete – to the full extent that each respective social media platform allows – any post or comment that:

  • are defamatory, indecent, hateful, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, Trans phobic, sexist, disgraceful, vulgar or inappropriate;
  • encourage or suggest illegal activity, announcements from political organisations and unintelligible or irrelevant posts.
  • fraudulent, deceptive or misleading

We may work with law enforcement, including when we believe that there’s risk of physical harm or threat to public safety.

Courtesy and Respect

Please, please: Treat the Community with the same level of courtesy and respect that you would like to receive yourself.

Once your comment is online, everyone with Internet access may be able to read it. Don’t forget that you are legally responsible for what you submit. Please consider how your comment could be received by others. Please make your comment clear to ensure that it is not misunderstood. Many different types of people of different ages may view your comment.

It’s always important to remember that a person’s tone, humour etc. can very easily be misinterpreted in print, so please take care with your choice of language. As Seagrass-Watch is a global community you will most likely encounter people of widely varying backgrounds, languages, cultures, opinions, experiences, budgets, and preferences. Please embrace and show respect for these differences, it’s what makes our Network so interesting and valuable after all. Please don’t take things personally and react accordingly.

Our website and social media profiles are for scientists and researchers. There are lots of other websites you can use to discuss other topics. Please keep within the bounds of a topic as initiated. Do not sway the discussion towards your own pet topic or set off on a tangent. Be succinct. We may hide or delete any posts that are off-topic, or irrelevant to the topic in hand.

Ending your time with us
You may request at any time that your Registration be cancelled or Seagrass-Watch may cancel your Registration at anytime.

By doing so, you understand and agree that we may retain your personal information for up to six months from the date of your request and that all activity associated with your account that was generated prior to the date of your cancellation request will/may remain permanently with Seagrass-Watch (for example, your posts in forums/social media will/may not be deleted).