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Community Guidelines

Moderation guidelines for public comments

These guidelines help us to make sure our Engage Calderdale platform is a safe space for everyone. We ask everyone to follow them when they post comments or responses.

We have a zero-tolerance policy against any form of cyber-bullying. It will not be tolerated on our platform.

We monitor our platform, but if you notice any offensive comments at any time contact: consultations@calderdale.gov.uk

Challenging or deleting comments

We want to encourage feedback in our consultations. However, we may have to challenge or delete comments if a person ignores our guidelines.

Political neutrality

The Council (not the elected members) must be neutral in how we communicate and engage with residents. Therefore, we ask you not to use our Engage Calderdale platform to promote party political messages or other content.

We will remove any comments we believe may compromise our obligation to be politically neutral.

Staying on-topic

Our consultations are usually about particular topics or subjects. Your comments should be related to the consultation. If you have comments or questions about services or local issues, visit the Contact Us page on Calderdale Council’s website.

Please be aware: We will take swift action if any content on Engage Calderdale:

  • Is abusive or threatens including swearing and adapted spellings with the same meanings.
  • Is defamatory, slanderous, misleading, or false.
  • Intimidates our staff, elected members or other users.
  • Is the same message posted multiple times, also known as 'spamming'.
  • Is controversial, irrelevant, and off topic, also known as 'trolling'.
  • Incites hate crime or hate crime words.
  • Is obscene, profane, or sexually oriented.
  • Discriminates in any way.
  • Promotes illegal activity.
  • Promotes individual products or services.
  • Is completely off-topic.
  • Incites abusive and threatening behaviour away from social media.
  • Is private or has details that identify a specific person. This is typically posted with malicious intent, also known as 'doxing'.

What we will do if this happens

It depends on the content, but we may:

  • take immediate action to hide or delete the post;
  • contact you (if possible) and ask you to re-word and re-submit the post:
  • screenshot posts and consider legal action or send them on to the police to investigate.

Safeguarding allegations or disclosures

  • Safeguarding is very important to us. If you raise concerns on our platform, we will pass them to the relevant organisations to be investigated.
  • Any posts about safeguarding issues will be removed whilst they are being investigated.

What we do with your data

  • We have a number of privacy notices to explain how we use the information you give us.
  • These are usually linked alongside each relevant consultation project.