Conduct

Our community is a family friendly, and just plain friendly, community and we want to keep it that way. People from all walks of life, cultural backgrounds and ages come here to enjoy the broadcasts, look for information, and to chat to and get to know others.

Many friendships have been built this way.

To keep our ‘ecosystem’ accessible and pleasant for all these different people requires that everybody is considerate towards others and that certain topics of conversation are better avoided. These include language and remarks or comments that could be seen as threatening, abusive, racist, demeaning, controversial, political, religious, of an adult nature or otherwise not appropriate for children. This applies across the whole site, in our chat rooms and forums as well as in all other places on wildearth.tv and any of our embedded players with chat (including those on other streaming sites like e.g. Ustream, Periscope and YouTube), Twitter, our Facebook pages, etc.

Furthermore the primary intent of our ecosystem is to provide background info on our broadcasts and a place to discuss what is happening in and around them. This certainly does not mean these are the only things that can be talked about, but we do ask to not digress from it too far and to stay away from spamming or soap-boxing. So what does this mean? Spamming, promoting something commercial is simple: not allowed at all! Soap-boxing is a bit trickier. While it is fine to discuss issues that interest you and that are reasonably expected to interest others on our site, it is not ok to keep going on and on about them in an attempt to convince others to join your cause.

This is a little hard to gauge and manage, but if you imagine a room full of people, and one person trying to force everyone else to listen to their point/subject only, that’s soapboxing. Its just no fun for all the others … exactly like in the real world. So when we ask you to stop, please do so.

Communications

WE love hearing your opinions about your experiences with WildEarth and our broadcast partners, and sometimes you might want to make suggestions about how WE could be better, or even complain about something that we are doing that you just don’t like. That is great, please do so! But, please do so in a courteous and respectful manner.

WE promise to respond to you if you do, and … to ignore the message if you don’t.

WE work hard to ensure your enjoyment, and a little respect goes a long way. And one more request: When communicating with others privately through e.g. a PM (Private Message) or e-mail, remember that anything shared in private is just that: private, and should not be shared with others without prior permission from all parties involved.

Advertising

No form of advertising of products or services on the WildEarth social network or wildearth.tv is allowed without prior written consent from WildEarth.TV. For enquiries in this regard please send us an email.

Consequences

No set of rules or guidelines will work if there are no consequences to breaking them. Therefore we have a group of moderators and admins who have been tasked with maintaining a very high standard in our community. They are empowered, and required, to follow a process of moderation. That process starts with a gentle reminder (where possible in private) of what our community guidelines are and that you might be contravening them. The next stage (or in case of a serious offence the first action) for repeated offences might also be a straight ‘time out’. Beyond that, if someone repeatedly offends and is clearly not respecting the guidelines, the moderator or another user, the moderator has the power to ban that user from the site for a period of time or indefinitely. This is obviously not something that WE want to do, but in the interests of protecting the character of our community, and keeping it friendly and open to all, we will if we have to.

Appealing a Decision

If you feel that you were unfairly treated, or were within the guidelines and a moderator or admin ‘maliciously’ timed you out or banned you, or spoke to you inappropriately, we encourage you to send an email to appeal@wildearth.tv and WE will investigate the incident. For this purpose, every single word that is ‘spoken’ in chat is archived for a period of time. Secondly, any emails that you send do not go to any of the admins, producers or moderators, only WE management sees them. Peter Braat (WE Technical Director), famous for his Vulcan-like logic, will investigate the complaint and decide whether or not the admin/mod was within their mandate to time you out or ban you or tell you you were wrong. His decision will be final. If you have been found to have been wronged in some way, your status will immediately be reinstated. If you were in the wrong, then you will have explained to you why, and that will be the end of it.

These guidelines are being implemented in consideration of all our extended WildEarth family members no matter what nationality, race, religion or age. Please remember that people from all over the world enjoy this website, therefore it’s important to always consider how and what you are saying or discussing will likely be perceived by other cultures and nationalities. If you feel that what you are saying could be offensive to someone else then WE ask that you refrain from saying it, even if it is not specifically dealt with in these guidelines.

This is not a limitation of free speech as some past offenders have claimed, but simply a request to remain on topic and to adjust the content and tone of your conversation to the place and company you find yourself in: A family-friendly area where everyone can share their love for wildlife.

The WildEarth Team wants to thank each and every one of our members for helping to build the WildEarth website and the WE ‘movement’ into what it is today!