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Blog Guidelines - Hope this helps :-)

12:30 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

Hi Blog Land,
As discussed, here are some guidelines for the blogs. We need guidelines in place for the enjoyment and safety of our members.

WHY DO I SEE ASTERISKS?

The blog that you create will have asterisks within it until it has been approved by our moderators. At peak times, it can take a while for the post to be reviewed. Asterisks are put into place so the blog can be displayed prior to it being reviewed.

WHY MIGHT MY BLOG BE EDITED OR DELETED?

BLOCKED WORDS
Some words are not permitted, even with the nature of the site. These will be edited by our team. We do have external laws/regulations we need to abide by and sometimes we need to edit content to ensure the post stays within the legal boundaries and guidelines we have to adhere to.

We do not allow illegal sexual content, including image, video or textual content that depicts or encourages rape, incest, bestiality, or necrophilia. There are other key words which are also not allowed, but these are changing all the time, so if you do find a word has been edited from your post we can discuss this with you and advise as to the reason its been edited.

HATE SPEECH
Our products are platforms for free expression. But we don't support content that promotes or condones violence or prejudice against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, nationality, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity, or whose primary purpose is inciting hatred on the basis of these core characteristics. This can be a delicate balancing act, but if the primary purpose is to attack groups or individuals, the content crosses the line. This includes the staff working on the site. We’re humans too.

Please don't threaten other people on your blog. For example, don't post threats against another person or group of people and don't post content encouraging your readers to take negative action against another person or group of people.

HARASSMENT
Do not harass or bully others. Anyone using the blogs to harass or bully may have the offending content removed or be permanently banned from the site. Online harassment is also illegal in many places and can have serious offline consequences.

CHILD SAFETY
We have a zero-tolerance policy towards content that people could use to potentially exploit children. This is why we do not allow blogs, pictures, comments that mention children, no matter how innocent.

We also do not tolerate any content of a sexual nature involving underage participant fantasies.

PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION
It is not ok to post personal information relating to others. Please, if you are referring to other persons please keep on an anonymous basis.

COPYRIGHT
Please post original content only. Please do not copy and paste sections of content from the internet.

IMPERSONATING OTHERS
Please don't mislead or confuse readers by pretending to be someone else or pretending to represent an organisation when you don't. We're not saying you can't publish parody or satire - just avoid content that is likely to mislead readers about your true identity.

ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES
Do not use the blogs to engage in or to promote dangerous and illegal activities. For example, don't author a blog encouraging people to drink and drive. Please also do not use the blogs to sell or promote illegal drugs. Otherwise, we may delete your content.

REGULATED GOODS AND SERVICES
Do not use the blogs to sell or facilitate the sale of regulated goods and services, such as alcohol, gambling, pharmaceuticals and unapproved supplements, tobacco, fireworks, weapons, or health/medical devices.

SPAM
Spam takes several forms, all of which can result in deletion of your account or blog. Some examples include creating blogs designed to drive traffic to another site and repeatedly posting comments on other people's blogs just asking for meets etc.


Moderators reserve the right to erase, without notification, any comment they would judge inappropriate.

We know that you spend an awful lot of time on your blog posts. We get so much content here, as you can imagine, that we cannot save it all. We advise (and I know a lot of our regular bloggers do this already) that you back up your blog post and save to your device. That way, if it is failed for any reason, you still have a copy to either edit and repost or save for something else.

Hope this sheds some light. If anyone has any queries, please message me privately and I will try to help.

M x



Comments
12:38 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

Thanks for the guidelines. However, before I make any questions, I wonder if we could see the list of words you mentioned please.

12:46 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

Hi Free, I would love to give you a list but unfortunately they are constantly changing and are not allowed to appear anywhere on the site, not even in posts by staff.

12:52 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

If any of these words do appear in a post, we do our best to edit them out so that the blog can still go up. Sometimes however this is impossible so we have to reject them.

2:19 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

HI Maria, thanks for your reply. However, I have to say I am a little disappointed at the guidelines. I don't think they add anything particularly specific to clarify many things that have been going on recently. Like, 30 posts being deleted or whole paragraphs being erased (especially when criticizing some of the features from the site).

Some posts are erased without any explanation and it does affect people who do take the time replying comments. I do copy my comments but I don't back them up. It will take all the fun when replying blogs. I am actually sad also because today a great friend of mine, amazing blogger and member is gone because of the way everything was handle.

Please don't take it the wrong way. I like this site very much and I am just one single person who wud not be missed at all if gone, but one by one make many.

4:27 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

Hi Indepth. If you private message me the comments, I will investigate and try to shed some light for you.

6:12 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

Can't help but say the 'new' guidelines are as clear as mud, sorry don't mean to be rude but just my opinion and feelings. May just retreat to the dark recess of my mind as it seems that's the only place to find some clarity at the moment.

6:44 pm Wednesday, 30th September, 2015

All the comments that got deleted from my blog do not go against any of the guidelines listed yet still admin deleted them!

6:41 am Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Absolutely LillieG. It is a start. I have asked people to private message me so that i can try to give more detailed help to individuals. And yes there does need to be consistency. Lets keep trying. Rome wasn't built in a day, hey.

8:21 am Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Thanks Maria. Indeed Rome was *not* built in a day, but at least this provides a very basic framework, which - I suspect - will need to be fleshed out further in order to be of significant value.

I think the section on asterisks needs to be made clearer, i.e. it should state specifically that all posts are scanned by software that temporarily masks words that could potentially contravene the regulations (or at least I *assume* this is the explanation ! :-). The present wording doesn't shed any light on what asterisks actually represent and how they are applied. People who are new to the blogs, in particular, find this aspect confusing and frustrating - they are always questioning it.

Can I ask exactly *where* on the site these blogging rules will be on permanent display ? They need to be visible and accessible. As Lil has mentioned, I only came across your post by accident :-)

I must say I think it's frankly risible to be informed that certain words can never be sanctioned, but we are not allowed to know what they are :-) If these words can *never ever* appear on the site, even in the form of an official list provided by the management for the guidance of members, then it is a classic Catch-22 :-)

It would help a lot if we could be told specifically where we can find details of these "external lawsregulations we need to abide by". I have used several sites where blog censorship is considerably more relaxed, and as far as I'm aware, these sites are still up and running and do not seem to have put any noses out of joint. Is it something to do with the country in which the server is based? The issue of hate speech is - of course - common sense, but one thing I've found in the UK is that one is not even allowed to broach certain subjects or areas in everyday speech, even if the object is to *prevent* people or groups being discriminated against. In such an inhibitory environment, it becomes actually *harder* to root out prejudice, and everything just goes underground, which is not democratic or healthy. People feel the need to blog because it provides them with an opportunity to share opinions and concerns, but it often turns out that the well-meaning and innocuous are getting squashed with the same hammer as that used for bigots. Clearly the "filter" needs to be a lot more sensitive.

And finally......yes I do concur wholeheartedly that admin staff need to be more consistent in their moderation zeal. Are they actually *trained* to do this job, or are judgements made on a purely arbitrary and individual basis ?

9:58 am Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Hi folks. Yes, the above guidelines will be going up on the site at some point. Yes the guidelines are generalised, this has to be so because of the vast subject matter. Anyone wanting further and more specific information regarding your posts can message me privately so I can try to help you individually, I would be happy to.

Our staff are very dedicated to the work they do on the site. When trying to moderate a very large community it is sometimes hard to make a judgement on what constitutes as acceptable and what is not when you are trying to keep so many people happy. Yes there is a lot of legislation we have to adhere to, even more as this is an adult site with a blog feature and not a dedicated blog site so that makes it even more tricky. In terms of words not allowed there are several factors, some are legally banned words whilst others are not allowed as they breach other companies’ T&Cs whom work alongside us in one format or another to keep the site going.

We are a large site and straddle several continents and therefore laws and regulations change, so rather than different rules and content blocking we have taken the approach of putting everything into a pot and working within these laws and regulations to ensure we meet them without restricting content or content blocking based on location.

11:35 am Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Hello Maria. The guidelines are very succinct but the blogs are mainly submitted by fiendly and erudite people and I must admit I don't see too much of people transgressing the rules. The main problems i think are in the chat rooms. There are some real weirdies who get in there I have known numerous ladies to whom they have caused distress. I do my best and try to slap them down with invective,heavy,sarcasm...and it does work but not before the damage has been done. I think more focus should be given to this area . Hope you don't mind me mnetioning it . Fetch xx

11:39 am Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Sunshine Girl. Don't worry your pretty head that the rules are difficult to follow. Your demeanor is never anything less than perfect xx

11:43 am Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Hi Fetch. Kudos on your chivalry. If there are incidents within the chatrooms please ask the offended ladies to report it to our team so we can investigate and take appropriate action.

12:09 pm Thursday, 1st October, 2015

I will Maria but an immediate remedy is sometimes necessary .Without wishing to appear a "clever sod " I( can normally get rid of those types pretty quickly. Ridicule and the use of long words seems to work best .

7:51 pm Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Maria, I think this is a really good start as a basic framework, but clearly there are a number of areas that need to be included or clarified at some point to alleviate some of the frustrations that us blog weirdos regularly experience.

One of the main reasons I stopped posting regular blogs was due to the random deletion of comments that contained no 'rule breaking'. Perhaps it's my imagination, but I do have to say that it seems the site's weekend shift of moderators are the most heavy handed at this.

9:04 pm Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Nope Luv2 it isn't just your imagination as i too have noticed that.

Though a big pet peeve of mine is the endless one line blogs, though can't see how that could ever pass as being called anywhere near a blog as they are nothing more than adverts for meets.... Grrrrrr really P's me off!! As there are other places better suited for posts such as the aforementioned. Don't imagine it would go down too well if bloggers were to start posting blogs in the chat rooms, forums or events sections of the site. But yet meet adverts seem to be flooding the blogs in abundance on a near daily basis of late. One does wonder if that is something we are going to see an end of? :-) x

9:07 pm Thursday, 1st October, 2015

Why thank you Fetch, you are as always too kind :-) x

6:02 am Friday, 2nd October, 2015

That's not exactly what I'm promulgating,Lost man. I'm sure you can take care of yourself and what you do privately on a consensual basis is no one's business but your own.However, there are ladies who are genuinely frightened or feel menaced by some of the " nasties " in the chat rooms and turn for help and support.It goes against my instincts to ignore such requests.

9:41 am Saturday, 3rd October, 2015

Maria,
Great that this is now being looked into...
The biggest issue for me is the randomness of deletion of posts, almost based upon who has posted rather than the content of the post.......just saying...
The other bug bear is the asterisks as mentioned repeatedly, the word recognition just does not work...
I appreciate people will try to hide words by breaking them up or adding punctuation between but it wouldn't be too much too look at the sentence context as well...one for the programmers to consider.

5:49 pm Sunday, 4th October, 2015

Lost man, we'd all miss your contributions 😢
Don't go!

9:29 pm Sunday, 4th October, 2015

Told you ... it's the weekend shift! 😡
Come back 9am tomorrow x

10:15 pm Sunday, 4th October, 2015

Hey Lostman,
don't let them get you down...
Now go have a nice cuppa tea, that will make it all better...
failing that,a large G & T will help.
I've been helping myself all night and everything seems great.
Will miss yer if you go. Px

1:29 am Monday, 5th October, 2015

Be like me and take a deep breath when blog censorship frustrates. I often drop off the radar for a day or three and miss a few blog posts, but then I return when I'm in a better and more productive mood. If you go at this continuously, it just winds you up. Save your grey cells and energy. The blogs ain't going to disappear, and you don't have to contribute continuously to make a mark. The more one sticks around here, the more obsessive one becomes, and therefore more wound up about niggly aspects of site policy. This site is not the centre of the universe :-)

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