House Rules

The IOG has set these house rules so that everyone can get the most out of the IOG website. We welcome good-natured debates and encourage you to express your considered opinions, both positive and negative, about the latest issues. But please stick to the rules below so that everyone can enjoy reading and interacting with the site.

General guidelines:

• IOG members are expected to act in a community spirited way. It is unacceptable to behave in an anti-social manner.
• Do not create multiple IOG accounts. Doing so may be deemed an attempt to mislead other users and may result in a ban.
• Do not abuse the complaints system. It exists so that users can alert our moderators to content that breaks the house rules (ie. offensive material and not typos and spelling mistakes). If a user repeatedly abuses the complaints system, we may terminate their account.
• As author of an article on IOG, please do not abuse your right to delete comments on that thread. Do not delete a comment simply for disagreeing with you.
• IOG members may only create up to five articles per day. Please consider adding your thoughts to an existing article rather than starting a new one.
• Apart from failing posts and articles which breach the house rules, IOG reserves the right to close entire threads when they stray off topic or become too long. As a guideline, you should look to start a new article when the total number of posts approach 2,000 because your article may be closed to comments at any time.
• You must be over 16 to contribute to IOG.
• By sharing any contribution with the IOG you agree to grant to the IOG, free of charge, permission to use the material in any way it wants (including modifying and adapting it for operational and editorial reasons) for IOG services in any media worldwide (including on the IOG's site accessed by international users).

• Are considered likely to disrupt, provoke, attack or offend others.
• Are racist, obscene, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable.
• Contain swear words or other language likely to offend.
• Are deemed to constitute harassment. Repeatedly posting personal or offensive comments that are abusive, threatening, offensive, obscene, harassing, harmful, inflammatory, racist or otherwise objectionable about individual members of the public or people who work for the IOG may be considered harassment. We reserve the right to remove such messages and take action against those responsible.
• Break the law or condone or encourage unlawful activity. This includes but is not limited to breach of copyright, defamation, contempt of court and incitement to commit a crime.
• Advertise products or services for profit or gain.
• Are seen to impersonate someone else.
• Breach copyright. You may only make written contributions that are your own work or to which you have the copyright or other permission to distribute electronically. You may not violate, plagiarise, or infringe on the rights of third parties including copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, personal, publicity or proprietary rights. If attributed and in context, using a couple of short paragraphs of text from another source may be OK.
• Include contact details such as phone numbers, postal or email addresses.
• Are written in anything other than English – except in specific areas of individual sites where it is marked that other languages can be used.
• Contain links to websites which break our Editorial Guidelines.
• Describe or encourage activities which could endanger the safety or well-being of others.
• Are considered to be ‘spam’, that is contributions containing the same, or similar, content sent in multiple times.
• Are considered to be off-topic for the particular area of the site.
• Contain any photos or unapproved html coding.

• You will be sent an automatically generated email informing you that your contribution has been failed.
• Anyone who seriously or repeatedly breaks the rules may be banned from some or all of the IOG site.
• IOG reserves the right to edit, move or delete any contribution, at any time, for any reason.
• The right is also reserved to change these rules at any time. Posts must comply with the rules current at the time of posting.

• Contain website or email addresses.
• Contain contact information ie phone numbers, postcodes, etc.
• Impersonate someone else or appear to do so.
• Contain swear words or are otherwise objectionable and in breach of these rules.