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ADVISORY ABOUT COOKIES

This website uses cookies only for the purpose of making your experience on the site more enjoyable.

We do not have advertisement on our website (no social media, or advertising partners), therefore, our cookies do not hold any tracking information which would be stored in cookies for those purposes. Thus, PoetBay can be freely used without cookies.

About our Terms of Membership

These terms serve as an agreement between you and PoetBay.com, which you are accepting online, and which govern your code of conduct while being active on PoetBay's environment and interacting with other members of the site, the Editorial Team members, and the administrators of PoetBay.com.

Since PoetBay is an online interactive service, you agree that we may provide you with important information and terms electronically, either by a private message to your PoetBay inbox or by posting such notices online through the Editorial Team's account. You may not use PoetBay.com unless you comply with the following terms.

Assessment and implementation

  • PoetBay is not responsible for incidents between members that are taken place outside PoetBay.com. If a member of PoetBay breaks one or more of the Terms of membership, the Editors of the website will act accordingly.

  • The time, place, and manner of exercising expression and advocacy is subject to the regulations that provide for the noninterference with PoetBay's primary function and vision and protect persons against practices which infringe upon the legally defined rights of others.

  • PoetBay's Editors shall apply the following terms and place restrictions in a reasonable fashion in a manner that promotes and protects free speech, and such restrictions shall be enacted in a manner that minimizes the limitation on expressive, civilized, creative activity. Each case will be assessed individually with PoetBay's Terms of membership as a guideline.

Vision of PoetBay.com

PoetBay.com a safe haven. A global meeting and networking place for authors or web poets interested in publishing and/or improving their writing. PoetBay.com strives to provide a pleasant and constructive environment for those interested in the written word, help those who wish to further develop creative skills and perhaps become a published author.

Friendly atmosphere

The terms of membership are governed by the vision of PoetBay: the reason why most of our members chose PoetBay as the right author's community, environment, to publish their writing or artwork, get some feedback from their readers - fellow authors.

We want you to feel free to be yourselves, express yourselves, and enjoy the PoetBay site. For your benefit, we, with unwavering commitment, do our best to keep PoetBay.com fun, friendly, and open; you can help us by obeying the following basic restrictions which are necessary to keep this website civilized.

Most rules focus on what is not allowed which serves the purpose of maintaining PoetBay.com as a safe haven for authors interested in publishing their written works. To this end, PoetBay's administrators and Editorial Team ask all members to realize that the rules of this site are intended to protect PoetBay's continued existence as an environment conducive to creativity and for the benefit of its members.

Censorship

In order to keep a pleasant atmosphere on this site, we do not allow posts or comments that reference directly or indirectly another PoetBay member in a derogatory manner (this includes name calling, flaming, personal insults, etc.) or any material that contains discriminatory comments or displays of bigotry towards any person or any group.

If a post or comment doesn't explicitly breach the rules, but is obviously targeted at a member in a negative manner, the community's comfort will be the prevailing factor to determine our course of action (if needed) in the context.

If and when a publication is seemingly in breach of PoetBay's agreed Terms of membership, it will be unpublished until the author brings it in line with our mutually agreed terms, otherwise it will remain unpublished.

If a member is seemingly in breach of the agreed Code of conduct, the following course of action will be taken in order to prevent a situation from escalating, and to maintain PoetBay as a friendly environment conducive to creativity for all: The member's account will be suspended and put in 'Read Only Access' until the situation can be resolved.

In support of free speech, PoetBay.com recognizes that opposing or unpopular views are important. PoetBay's creative talents, can, from time to time, provide opportunities for dialogue - based on mutual respect - and probably welcome well thought out arguments.

Such expressive activity may occur underneath the writer's work or art, if the author in question finds it fitting, as long as it is not to further a personal dispute. If not, we advise you to try to solve any possible conflicts through private messages.

Comfort

Though we highly value freedom of expression, we strive to make all members welcome and comfortable on this site, therefore we encourage members to report material posted on the site (poems, art, comments) that they think go against the Terms of membership.

Any material that is threatening, excessively violent, or excessively disturbing will be removed. The judgement of what is acceptable will be determined by the Editors. Although we do reserve the right to unpublish any material posted on our site, we will make every effort to allow diverse individual poetic exploration/expression.

Children under 13

For legal reasons, we do not allow children younger than 13 years old to become members of this website. We regret that this is necessary.

Comments

Comments should be focused on the author's poem, and not on others' comments or anything distracting the focus. They should be diplomatic and respectful. When negative feedback is required, we should all attempt to give it in a constructive manner. Excessive profanity is not allowed in the comments section.

Deleting your account & Comments

As of September 2010, PoetBay members have expressed in the community poll on this topic, the desire to have all comments remain on the site even if an author deletes their PoetBay account.

This means that any author who chooses to delete their account will delete ALL of their profile/account information, publications, pictures, and private messages from PoetBay, EXCEPT for the comments they have left on other authors' poems.

Their comments will remain on the authors' publications but they will show without a name attached to them.

Erotica content - Age limit

PoetBay welcomes all people from the age of 13. Therefore, we'd like you to keep in mind that we have minors in the community. Unfortunately, because our poetry website is 'non-profit', we don't have the means to create an over 18 area of PoetBay. We would like to advise you to take this fact into consideration and provide an age limit at the title (e.g. Age limit or Over 18 years old).

Extreme content will be removed, but each case will be assessed individually with PoetBay's Terms of membership as a guideline. If your written works are explicitly devoted to detailed description of sexual activities, etc., we advise you to find the proper web place to publish them.

Persona feature - Creation of a second account

Trust and Honesty are valuable commodities. As a member of PoetBay, you are allowed to create one (1) additional account under the Terms of our mutual agreement.

On that second account's profile page (PoetHome page) presentation, it must be clearly indicated that it is a persona (or second account) to let your visitors know that you are not a newly arrived member of the site.

As an example, it can be specified the following: "This is a second account" or, "This page belongs to a persona", or optionally, you can specify your original account's name. This is in order to not create any confusion among the community.

However, the Editorial Team has to be contacted prior to the creation of the additional account to be informed about who the author is. If the Editors come across unannounced accounts by a member, the additional account(s) will be immediately suspended. It is of course totally unacceptable and forbidden to create different accounts for covert attacks - anonymous hostility.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is not allowed. We will ban members from the site for this offense. Plagiarism is the act of posting someone else's work as your own, without giving credit to the true author.

Posting someone else's copyrighted work without permission, even if you give credit, is not allowed. Copyrighted materials will be removed.

Self-promotion

Like anything in life, balance is important. We do allow our members to self-promote (ex. you published a book), but it must not be intrusive so as to not disrupt the basic purpose of PoetBay. As you'll notice, there are no advertisements on our site, and this is because we much prefer that vibe.

Blocking a member

As a regrettable but effective mean of keeping conflicts from escalating, any user may block a specific user from sending them messages and comments. This can be done from the page My Account | Block, or from the Block link in private messages.

Images

Images must be rated G. Any picture which is pornographic, excessively violent, otherwise disturbing in nature, or copyright protected will be removed. As usual, what is acceptable will be determined by the Editors according to PoetBay's Terms of membership.

Self-portrait

If you choose to publish a picture for your account's profile page (PoetHome page), it should preferably contain your face and should not be copyrighted by someone else. PoetBay reserves the right to remove pictures that do not follow these rules.

Your picture will not be displayed automatically because we screen these kinds of picture uploads to our site before publishing them. It may take 24hrs-48hrs before being assessed - this is in order to cater for the different time zones the Editorial Team members are from.

Usernames (Author names)

Use common sense in choosing a username to this site. The username should be rated G and not chosen to make fun of another user. If an Editor comes across an author with an unacceptable username, he or she will modify it.

If along the line you wish to change your account's displayed author name, contact the Editorial Team and provide the new name you would like, and they will change it for you.

Privacy

The administrators reserve the right to access all areas of the PoetBay site. We will only ever access private areas for no other reason than in the event that it is necessary for resolving disputes.

Children under 18

For obvious reasons, we do not allow users to engage in sexually explicit talk with children under the age of eighteen. It is also forbidden to make explicit comments regarding their sexuality, desirability and/or physical attributes. Encouraging, luring or in any other way attempting to attract a child under 18 into private conversation that contains any sexual comments/discussion will result in the user's account being suspended without notice.

Solicitation

It is not allowed to solicit (ex.: ask for money, sell a product or service, find registrants for another website, etc) the members of this community for any reason. Anyone engaging in this type of activity will be immediately removed without notice.

Removal of Publications and Other Posts / Banning

The judgement of what is acceptable will be determined by the Editors with the Terms of membership as a guideline. 'Any material' refers to poems, comments, pictures submitted to our site. We proceed in this manner for these particular situations:

  • We will remove any material that is plagiarized.

  • We will remove any material that is copyrighted.

  • We will remove any material that is threatening, excessively violent, or excessively disturbing.

  • We will remove any comment an author requests to have removed from their works OR any comment which is a private dispute with another member.

  • Users will be banned for plagiarism for one week on first offense, indefinitely on second offense.

  • The administrators will ban users who purposely or consistently ignore instructions or warnings about anything related to this site.

  • The administrators will ban users who harass or try to provoke other members or the Editors of this site.

  • A user who has been banned and registers under another PoetBay username before the term of the ban will be immediately banned again without warning, sometimes for a longer period of time.

  • The administrators reserve the right to terminate a user's membership if their actions disrupt the good functioning of the site or the Editors.

Suicide and Self-Injury

We reserve the right to unpublish excessively disturbing posts about suicide or self-injury.

Please use good taste when writing about suicide and/or self-injury. Poorly worded content may be unpublished.

Please use sensitivity when interacting with a person who appears to be suicidal or otherwise self-destructive.

If you need someone to talk to, you can contact the Editorial Team. However, none of the team members are professionally trained in suicide or self-injury counseling. We encourage you to seek professional help if you are experiencing thoughts of suicide or self-injury.

We may need to change the Terms of membership

As PoetBay evolves, we may need to modify these terms. You agree that we may modify these terms at any time. Therefore, you should review these terms regularly to learn about any changes, and you are free to express your opinion about the changes by contacting us here. We value your opinion and it will be taken into consideration. Your ongoing use of PoetBay.com after we post changes to this agreement means that you accept the new terms.

--- updated 2021-03-30 ---