COMMUNITY CODE OF CONDUCT

The Bully Proof community consists of people from all over the world, who have come together to support and share their experiences with bullying in all its domains. All participants in the community are expected to act lawfully, honestly, ethically and in the best interest of the community. This Code of Conduct offers rules and guidelines designed to aid judgment within our community and keep it a clean and well-lighted place for civilised public discourse about the community challenge of bullying and conflict. By joining and participating in any of the official Bully Proof community channels, you confirm that you agree to be bound by the Code of Conduct.

IMPROVE THE DISCUSSION

Help us make the community a great place for discussion by always working to improve the communication in some way, however small. The topics discussed in the community matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them; it’s ok if you don’t agree with the person/s, integrity and respect is what makes for a meaningful and robust discussion. 

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend some time to search the community platform before replying and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests. Always look to add value. Discussion should be healthy and informative, and members should provide meaningful contribution towards the development of the topic. This means any content shared or uploaded online should be relevant to the community. Please also refrain from posting or spread misinformation or fake news that are inflammatory or divisive.

We also do not allow unauthorised trading or marketing of any products or services. Our community is funded, in part, by the generous contributions of our corporate sponsors and ambassadors and as a consequence, all submissions must be approved by our board before going public.

BE AGREEABLE, EVEN WHEN YOU DISAGREE

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticise ideas, not people.

Please avoid:

• Name-calling
• Ad hominem attacks
• Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
• Knee-jerk reaction
• Caps Lock. We consider this as electronic shouting
• Racial slurs or divisions Eg announcing whether or not a person is of colour or not or by identifying them by race, in relation to an incident or action. Simply declaring that they are a person is sufficient.

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation. Please also remember the rule above to add value and meaningful discussion. The Bully Proof community channels should not be used for personal disputes between community members. If this occurs, an AMAYDA moderator will intervene.

YOUR PARTICIPATION COUNTS

The conversations we have in the community sets the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not. 

We value everyone’s opinions and experiences and respect all members rights to participate in a safe and engaging environment.

IF YOU SEE A PROBLEM, REPORT IT

Moderators have special authority within the community; they are responsible for ensuring members adhere to this set of conduct rules: but so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators. If you see bad behaviour, don’t engage. It encourages the bad behaviour by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just report it! Below are specific instructions on how to report violations:

• Forum: if you see a post that you think violates the Bully Proof Community Code of Conduct, click the options button and flag it as inappropriate or leave a more detailed message for the moderators.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

On the other hand, if you feel your content has been inaccurately removed, the AMAYDA Community team can review the content independantly. Please provide details of your post to report@amayda.com.au . Please be aware that escalating to secondary review should only be for serious concerns and it may take some time for the community team to respond.

ALWAYS BE CIVIL

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

• Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
• Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
• Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
• Respect our community. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalise the forum.
• We take harassment seriously. Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, but also includes deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, sustained disruption of conversation. Harassment of admins or moderators will not be tolerated.
• Do not post another community member’s personal information including but not limited to name, address, phone number, social-media accounts.
• Do not repost removed or deleted information.

These civilities are guidelines, however, by avoiding even the appearance of any of these types of things you ensure that the Bully Proof Community remains that way. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a global news website. This is a public community, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends, and please remember, at all times, that children frequent the community!

KEEP IT TIDY

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. A healthy community requires conversations to be structured and categorized. So:

• Don’t start a conversation in the wrong category or channel.
• Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple channels.

POST ONLY YOUR OWN STUFF

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without their permission. If you need to review the terms and conditions around creative commons you can go here https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law. Credit should always be attributed back to the original content producer.

MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS

Multiple accounts by the same user is forbidden. This helps foster a more human experience in the online world and restricts spamming. Note that duplicate accounts may be investigated and removed.

VIOLATION OF RULES

If any of the rules are broken, moderators will perform the following sanctions:

• First offence: a written warning is issued and the user will be suspended from their account for 24 hours.
• Second offence: a written warning is issued and the user will be suspended for a period of up to 1 month depending on the severity of the violation.
• Third and final offence: if the user continues to repeatedly break community rules, their account will be banned from the community platform. This penalty may be applied across all community channels where necessary.

The Bully Proof Community team reserves the right to deny access to the official Community channels to anyone who has violated the Bully Proof Community Code of Conduct.