Community Guidelines

Life Sciences Scotland Community Site

Community Guidelines

Welcome to the Life Sciences Scotland Community site!

These guidelines are provided to help you use the community areas in this website and should be read in conjunction with the website Terms and Conditions and the Ning Platform Terms of Service

Age Limit

The interactive 'Community' section of this website is intended for the use of persons aged 13 and over only. If you are aged between 13 and 15 the consent of your parent or guardian is required before you can use these pages.

We may at any time ask you for evidence to verify your age. If we believe that you are under the age of 12 or under the age of 16 without a valid consent from a parent or guardian, we may delete your profile and suspend without warning your access to the Site.

Posting content

By posting content you consent to that content and your identity being published on this website. You also confirm that you have the consent of any third party whose content or information is included in the content you post. Please read the website terms and conditions and privacy policy for more detail on how content posted on this website will be used.

Advice

We do not want to micro-manage our users, but here is some advice that we expect you to follow to help manage risk.

Be part of the conversation

The goal isn’t to get everyone contributing online; it’s to become part of the industry conversation. Remember the web is all about links; when you see something interesting and relevant, link to it; you’ll be doing your community a service.

Don’t tell secrets

Anything you post is accessible to anyone with a browser. You are responsible for the content you post. It’s perfectly OK to talk about your work and have a dialog with the community, but it’s not OK to publish anything defamatory or damaging to others. Other people’s information belongs to them (be it Intellectual Property or Personal Information). It’s their choice whether to share their material with the world, not yours. So, before posting someone else’s material, check with the owner for permission to do this. In addition, talking about revenue, financial results or similar matters is apt to get you, your organisation, or both, into serious legal trouble.

Be respectful

Whether in the actual or a virtual world, your interactions and discourse should be respectful.

Be interesting, but be honest

Writing can be hard work. There’s no point doing it if people don’t read it. Fortunately, if you’re writing about a current topic and you know what you are talking about, you’re probably going to be interesting. And because of the magic of linking and the Web, if you’re interesting you’re going to be popular, at least among the people who understand your speciality. Another way to be interesting is to expose your personality. People like to know what kind of person is writing what they are reading. Once again, balance is called for; a community site is a public place and you should avoid embarrassing your organisation and community members.

Don’t contribute anonymously

If you comment publicly about any issue in which you are engaged, even loosely, you must make your status clear. You should also be clear about whether, in such commentary, you are speaking for yourself or on behalf of your organisation.

Moderating

The goal of moderating is to guide and nurture not command and control. The LSS Community site will be moderated by administrators and of course the LSS community, to add value by maintaining the content and responding to ongoing decisions and questions.

Quality matters

You don’t have to be a great or even a good writer, but you do have to make an effort to be clear, complete, and concise. Use a spell-checker.