1. Age Limit
- All users must be aged 13 years or older, the minimum age requirement to use Facebook. If moderators have reason to believe that a child under 13 years of age is leaving a comment on Facebook, the content will be rejected
2. Child Safety / Grooming
- Child safety is paramount. Moderators will err on the side of caution.
- Moderators will take great care to watch for any evidence of grooming.
- Patterns of behaviour, such as attempts to elicit personal information or which seek to take a relationship with a child off-site, will be rejected and escalated.
3. Personal Details
Comments disclosing the following personally identifying information will be removed:
- School name / place of work
- Social media or IM contact details
- Email address or phone number
- Any contact details of a third party, including friends and family members.
4. Impersonation
- Any comments where users appear to impersonate others will be rejected.
5. Off topic
- We do not allow the posting of the same material repeatedly (spamming), or any negative material purely designed to elicit a response (trolling).
- Although ‘thread creep’ is inevitable, we will reject UGC that wilfully drives conversations away from the blog subject. Comments should remain close to the original thread subject.
6. Client and Corporate
- Content that is targeted at LOCOG or any other corporate entity in a malicious way may be rejected. Constructive criticism or comment is acceptable, where this is not done just to be negative, provocative or spiteful.
- We may choose to remove material which is clearly designed for an advertising or promotional purpose, or which overtly promotes other companies or their products. Some background visuals, including advertisements and company logos may be permissible in video/images.
- We do not allow links to other websites. This includes all links to social media sites.
7. Contempt of Court / Defamation
- Comments providing any details whatsoever on court proceedings (whether criminal or civil) will be rejected
- We will reject any comment or UGC of a defamatory nature – that is, any unfounded allegations about others that may damage their reputation.
8. Breach of Court Order
- From time to time moderators receive advice about court orders and reporting restrictions. These rulings include restrictions on the identification of the supposed or actual location of current or past offenders, or the naming of minors or other third parties who are directly involved with a court case.
- The reason for these injunctions being taken out is to lessen the risk of contempt of court and to protect the safety of the people involved.
- Any comments that appear to be in breach of such reporting restrictions will be rejected
9. Discrimination / Hate Speech
- We will not allow any material which is derogatory to members of a particular race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation or religion, or which incites hatred of particular groups. We will reject material that generalizes negatively about locations, their peoples or their culture.
- Where such material depicts any kind of imagery of extreme violence, racism, child abuse, or sexual activity of an illegal nature, the material will be rejected and its existence escalated to the appropriate authorities.
10. URLs
- With the exception of links to official London 2012 sites, these will be rejected.
- Links to illegal websites will be rejected and their existence escalated.
11. Profanities, obscenities and sexual references
- London 2012 expects users to keep contributions suitable for all ages. Profanities on any level (asterisked or otherwise) and explicit sexual references are not acceptable and will be rejected.
12. Violence and Illegal Activities
- We will reject any items which admit to, approve of, encourage or explain how to perform an illegal activity, such as drug-taking, shop-lifting, physical violence, etc.
13. Abuse
- We will reject any material that is posted purely with the intent of name-calling, threatening, abusing or bullying any other individual.
- Users may disagree with the comments posted by another user, and may use mild derogatory terms in that context (“that’s a stupid idea”), but may not insult or abuse the user behind the comment.
- We will reject material that is posted for the primary reason of insulting someone, or embarrassing them.
14. Political content
- Overly political or religious content will be rejected.
15. Copyright
- Quotes, including reviews, are permissible in the text, so long as they are OK under fair usage rules.
16. Language
- We are currently only able to moderate content in English, therefore we will reject all comments and UGC which are wholly or primarily in a language other than English
- Poor standards of English (or the appropriate language) are permissible – it doesn’t have to be grammatically correct. We will reject however, extensive use of text-speak or other forms of language where the meaning cannot be easily understood.
17. Images and videos
Images and videos must conform to the guidelines above. Some specifics for clarity:
- User profile pictures are usually displayed next to comments left on pages. Any comments left by users with offensive profile pictures will be rejected
- We will not permit material in which minors are present alongside alcohol, tobacco or nudity, even incidentally.
- We will not allow images in which children are shown in an exploitative or abusive light, or where they might be implied to be at risk of coming to harm.
- We will not allow any overly distressing content. Images/video of anyone being ill, or being afraid, will be rejected, where such content is distressing, or would be distressing to that individual.
- Images and video that feature offensive language, gestures or other material will be rejected
- We do not allow obviously copyrighted material, such as a stock photograph with a watermark, or a recognizable commercial image.
- We assume consent is given for images / video of crowd scenes, especially when they are posed for the camera
- Partial nudity is permissible in images/video – such as swimmers, beach volleyball players, etc. We do not allow images/video or references to sexual activity, or simulation of sexual acts.
- We do not allow images that are solely for the purpose of sexual titillation (lingerie, “bedroom” shots, etc).
- We do not accept any material in which children are shown in swimwear, or any similar state of undress.
- We will reject material that depicts or condones violence. Be aware that certain martial arts are Olympic events, and allow UGC which depicts them, but only in that context.
- We will reject the depiction of bladed weapons, guns – real or imitation – in the hands of the subjects of the photographs (but a photo of the subjects watching a military display would be OK). However, since shooting is an Olympic event, as is fencing, etc, we will allow images/video in that context (sports) only.
