Forum house rules

Don’t forget that your use of the TES Community is subject to these house rules:

Community Guidelines

The TES Community Team is keen to maintain healthy, vibrant and intelligent debate, however in order to keep our platforms enjoyable and inviting we require users to adhere to the following guidelines. These apply to forum posts as well as comments on articles and blogposts.

Full Terms and Conditions can be found here


1. Personal attacks: Users will not personally attack fellow members of the community, including authors and staff. Offensive, lewd or threatening language will not be tolerated; neither will attacking users based on their race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age.


2. Anonymity: Users will not identify (nor describe in a way which could feasibly lead to identification) schools, students or fellow members of the community.


3. Inappropriate language: We do not tolerate obscene or inflammatory language on the forums. An automatic filter will censor them out and users should not attempt to bypass the filter (eg by using alternative characters). If you’d like to make a comment about the language filter please do so by emailing the Community Team.


4. Misrepresentation: During a debate, it can be frustrating for users to appear to be misrepresented. When using the ‘quote’ function, please refrain from changing anything within the quoted text. When bolding or italicising cannot be avoided, please note in square brackets beneath that it was your addition.


5. Conversations/Private messages (PM): Users are welcome to interact privately using the PM feature and request responses in this manner where appropriate. The above guidelines apply to PMs as well as public interactions. Users are welcome to contact the Community Team via PM. However, users should refrain from making the contents of a PM public in any way. PMs can be reported for abuse by sending a screengrab to the Community Team.



Code of Conduct

The TES Community is where anyone interested in education can come to debate and share advice, find others that share their interests and let off steam. We understand that some of the debates can get heated, but we expect our members to treat others with courtesy and respect. When posting a message on the TES Community, please use the same courtesy you would show when speaking face-to-face with someone.

Don’t forget that your use of the TES Community is subject to these guidelines and our terms and conditions.

Respect others

• The TES Community has thousands of members who may not agree with your opinions or share your beliefs, but please be polite and respectful when communicating with other members.
• Do not use the TES Community forums, groups or blogs to threaten, harass, bully, stalk or abuse anyone. We do not tolerate personal attacks.
• The impersonation of another person – whether a friend, family member, celebrity, TES employee or other TES Community participant – is not allowed.
• Do not collect or distribute personal data concerning other members of the TES Community or personally identifiable information about another person that has been published without their express consent.

Keep it legal
We do not allow any illegal activities in the TES Community. This covers the uploading of content that is unlawful, defamatory, libellous, obscene or prejudicial to active legal proceedings, in contempt of court, or in breach of copyright law.

Please do not make allegations about individual establishments or their staff as there might be legal implications.

Accept responsibility for your actions
You may be held legally accountable for what you say or do online. In particular, you may be held liable for any defamatory comments, threats and untrue statements or other illegal or fraudulent claims made by you.

Remember that everything you post is a public comment, so be careful about how much personal information you give away.

TES may release information about you (both present and past) to the relevant authorities where we believe that you have breached the rules, or have used TES to commit unlawful acts. We may be obliged to disclose your personal information where required to do so by law and where we deem it appropriate in response to complaints of a substantial nature.

Do not advertise
We do not allow the advertising of commercial products services or job vacancies in the TES Community.

Do not spam
We will delete anyone’s attempts to spam the TES Community with links as a way of promoting their own sites, products or blogs etc.

Don’t rise to the bait
From time to time, we get posters who set out to stir up trouble or to promote their own agenda. These posters are also known as trolls. If you suspect somebody of being a troll, please do not accuse them publically. Instead, report your concerns to us by clicking the ‘Report Abuse’ triangle icon at the bottom of any of their posts and we will investigate.


Netiquette

• Avoid using all capital letters. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING! Plus it's difficult to read. Use it only to emphasize the odd word.

• Try not to criticise another user's grammar or spelling.

• Don't pick on or bully another user.

• Don't attack another forum or encourage others to do so - if you have a problem with any thread, post or user please use the Report abuse option and provide us with details.

• Welcome and help the newbie (a term used for new users who may not understand forums the way you do) and don't assume that every newbie is a troll.

• If you suspect a troll, the best thing to do is not respond in any way. Without your attention, they will soon get bored and their threads will disappear off the page. Please report them to us by clicking on 'Report abuse' next to the offending post.

• When you talk, the tone of your voice conveys great meaning. To add personality and humour to your messages, use emoticons or smileys.

• Keep your written communications to the point. Few people like reading text on a computer screen for too long at a time. To keep messages short, use some abbreviations but avoid full text speak as this can be difficult to read.

• Remember that anything you post is a public comment. You never know who's reading it or who may copy it and spread it around. It could come back to haunt you so be careful how much personal information you give away.

• Don't post PMs (personal messages) in the public forums. This can cause upset and disruption to the forums.

• Stick to the topic when posting a message. Don't post unrelated comments, or worse, advertisements. Sometimes you might offend someone unintentionally but be prepared to receive an angry message. To contain the heat, the best response usually is no response at all or a heartfelt apology.

• If you post a message with the sole purpose of winding others up, this is called flaming. If you are flamed and you attack back, you will spark a flame war.

• When posting, make sure that the subject line accurately describes what the message is about.

• A swear filter is in place to block out offensive words, don't purposely swear using methods to get around this.

• If you don't enjoy the topic of the thread, close it and open another or start your own but don't leave a rude post.

• Don’t revive or resurrect old threads. Bumping up historic content often diverts attention from new and current queries and makes it hard for people to follow the old topic or enquiry, which has probably been resolved.

• Cyberbullying will not be tolerated - to support the Campaign log ontowww.teachersunion.org.uk/cyberbullying

• Do not ask TES members for their phone number or address.

• Remember other users are human beings with feelings and emotions so think before you type.

Forum members should only use one username on the forums. Disruptive elements in the forums have been known to use more than one. Please be aware that the Moderation Team can see if forum members have linked or multiple accounts. Members who are found to be using more than one account will face sanctions.

Please remember that you are responsible for your account and you should only be submitting posts on behalf of yourself. You are not allowed to post on behalf of another person. If you post messages on behalf of another person (member/former member/banned poster) you could face sanctions including having your posting privileges removed.

Please note that the moderation policy clearly states:

We reserve the right to remove content, lock threads, ban members or moderate user posts in our moderated forums at our discretion - we won't enter into debates regarding any sanction.

Threads or posts may be deleted and members may be banned at the sole discretion of TES moderation staff without notice.

We reserve the right to amend our moderation policy at any time without notice.