General stuff you need to know

These guidelines are designed to ensure the GREENSCHOOLSALLIANCE.org experience is an enjoyable, beneficial, and productive one for all our users. They boil down to common sense, basic courtesy, respect, and not using the site as a blatant advertising or spamming platform.

When we say “WE”, we mean GREEN SCHOOLS ALLIANCE. When we say community we mean GREENSCHOOLSALLIANCE.org where users hang out and can contribute.

We may update these guidelines and recommend you check back once in a while. We'll also continue to introduce new community features which will fall under these guidelines.


Important things to remember

You are responsible for your interactions with other users. We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to monitor disputes between you and other users.

These guidelines apply to all content you contribute as part of the GREEN SCHOOLS ALLIANCE, including your profile.

User content on GREENSCHOOLSALLIANCE.org reflects the opinions and experience of those users, not GREEN SCHOOLS ALLIANCE.

Certain GROUPS within GREENSCHOOLSALLIANCE.org may have their own guidelines posted. Please read these carefully and respect them. 


Community Guidelines

DO:

  • Be sincere in your contributions. Post with purpose - to inspire, enable or share with fellow MEMBERS.
  • Respect that other people have different points of view, styles, and experiences. Don’t take things personally and get to the ‘must look at pictures of kittens to calm down’ stage.
  • Welcome newcomers. We love it when another person joins the COMMUNITY and participates.
  • Give feedback to your fellow members, and us, in a helpful and constructive manner.
  • Lead by example. Add positive content that shares your opinion and experience, especially content that you think will be helpful to other members. 
  • Report problems by using the report abuse or flag function to alert us to problem content or members.
  • Keep it legal. Don’t get yourself into trouble by defaming others, posting porn, plotting illegal activities, or posting other people’s private information.
  • Use Common Sense and balance when seeking advice. Make your own inquiries, especially around subjects like health, safety, and legal matters.
  • Be safe and smart when sharing personal information and meeting other members.  Don’t let people know when your entire family is going to be out of town and where you live.  Use common sense when meeting other members.  We’d hate to hear of anything bad happening when people meet up, but we can’t be responsible for the actions of each person in the community.


DON'T:

  • Create content of a discriminatory or derogatory nature. Rich debate is wonderful, and you can do it without being offensive, humiliating or intimidating based on:
•   race, color, ethnicity, nationality or physical characteristics
•   gender or sexual orientation
•   religion or non-religious viewpoints (i.e. secular humanism, atheism)
•   political opinion
•   socio-economic status
•   age
•   physical, mental or intellectual disability/impairment
•   the ways people express themselves (people come from different cultures)
  • Create content which would be reasonably classified as exclusively 'adult' and restricted accordingly (such as pornography or graphic violence).
  • Defame, harass, flame or hold grudges. You’ll participate better without a chip on your shoulder.
  • Post personal details or private information about any other person (or anything contrary to our privacy policy)
  • Impersonate another person, including GREEN SCHOOLS ALLIANCE staff or authors.
  • Advertise commercial products or services – or openly accuse others of the same. We don’t mind if you include links to your personal blogs or websites in your profiles.  However, when doing so, please make those links open up in a new window (i.e., insert the [target=”_blank”] tag into your html links). But commercial solicitation, or contributions solely designed to plug your traffic, aren’t acceptable. If you think you spot someone breaking the rules, use the report abuse or flag function.
  • Be - or - feed a Troll. Trolls post messages or content deliberately designed to get the blood boiling. Replying to or arguing with a Troll is feeding. The best pest-control is to ignore, and use the report abuse or flag function to alert us to them.
  • Use coarse language. All our members attend or work at a K-12 school. If you can’t tone it down, you probably shouldn’t be working in this field. Remember, even if it’s not offensive to you, it might be to other people.
  • Discuss how to commit illegal activity (like buying drugs, avoiding visa restrictions, ticket scalping). It’s OK to talk about the existence of these things, but don’t advise how and where to do them.
  • Be a know-it-all. Show off your insights, not your attitude.
  • Users  – We provide a rating and review platform so individual users can share their genuine experiences and opinions. We do not permit businesses to create fake reviews and will not allow them to rebut or contact individual members directly. For fellow members to get maximum benefit, remember to make your review constructive and balanced.
  • Businesses – Individual members might review you on our website. We ask that you embrace the good with the bad, as not everyone will have the experience you plan or hope for.  
  • If you think a review genuinely constitutes defamation please use our report abuse function and it will be brought to the attention of our moderation team.

 

Reporting abuse

All over our website you’ll see ‘Flag’ buttons that let you notify us of stuff that breaches the rules. This helps you look after the community too.