The equalitiestoolkit team will moderate website content in the following ways:

Posts to discussion/special interest forums

Only people who are registered on the site can post and/or reply to the discussion forums

Learning and Work Institute staff will moderate discussion forums and news posts on a daily basis.

We have published ‘netiquette’ guidelines that we signpost people to.

• In the cases of instances of flaming or maybe a clumsy post we will ‘step-in’ to resolve the issue as quickly and quietly as possible between those involved

• Anything inappropriate/offensive will be removed immediately and the person informed giving our reason why. A note to this effect may also be posted  by us (not naming the person whose contribution we have removed

• For posts that are ‘ambiguous’, we will ask another network member who we know has a particular interest or expertise to give their judgement on the offensive nature of the material.

• We are able to remove people from the website if necessary. Users then have the right to use the Learning and Work Institute complaints procedure if they are unhappy with any material/activity on the site. 

Posts to the News forum 

People registered on the site can post and reply to news items.

We would expect NEWS items to be directly relevant to our site audience – usually people sharing details of events they are organising and copies of newsletters or articles they have published . We will moderate posts to the news forum in the same ways as for the discussion forum.

Training/events

People registered on the site can post details of training/events.

We will moderate that these are appropriate to the audiences and content of the site and will be able to remove them if required.

Personal stories (learners)

We ask learners who want to share their stories to contact us –rather than post directly.

Our aim in asking people to contact us is to ensure that our ethical principles of beneficence and non-malfeasance are upheld by providing them with help and support to produce their story in a way that:

• they are happy with
• explores different ways of sharing their experiences e.g. a focused interview with one of us might work better than trying to write a whole story
• involves them in any editing process
• gives us their formal consent
• means they get something out of the experience
• realise where it will appear, e.g. on a Google search  and that others may download and use it in ways that we cannot control
• protects them from revealing too much of themselves in public
• involves some reflection on the experiences they are describing
• prepares them for any comments their story provokes
• know the process for asking for it to be removed in the future

Our aim is to make story sharing a positive and safe experience for learners as well as creating a resource for the site

Personal stories (workers)

Can be uploaded directly via the discussion forums – may then be added to the site content by us (i.e. we will weave it into a story on a page or add it to the resources accompanying a relevant page)

Staff will post a request to the person to ask if we can add it to the ‘public facing’ site content and gain permission to proof read it, suggest amendments (e.g. anonymising identifying details, references etc.) before obtaining their consent and then upload as appropriate).

Uploaded content – articles/resources, images, audio, videos

Content can be uploaded as part of a forum discussion post or uploaded live at a webinar.

We will ensure that all images have alternate text and where a source needs to be attributed that this is done and that we have signed permissions/consents. Staff have a standard consent form re: photographs and images. We sometimes pay learners/service users an honorarium for any art work that we use (but they retain the copyright).

We carry a disclaimer for the whole site which makes the ‘author’ ultimately responsible for accuracy and that the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Learning and Work Institute.

Feedback/comments on/ranking of resources

Anyone who accesses a resource in the virtual library will be able to ‘rank’ it.

People who are registered on the site will be able to post comments on resources and these will remain with the resource.

We will moderate these as and when posted to ensure that there is nothing that requires our comment. If people spot an error/inaccuracy in a resource we will post a response as to how we will deal with/correct  this (if we can, i.e. if it is our resource and in a format that we can update).

Reviews

Registered as members of the community are invited (and occasionally guests who we invite to do so directly) to ‘review’ new resources.

Reviews will be published in e-bulletins and on the site.

We will produce guidance on writing reviews and will offer to support people.

They will be submitted to us by email –allowing us to check them before using them.