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Terms
We want you to feel free to be yourselves, express yourselves, and enjoy the PoetBay site. For your benefit we do our best to keep PoetBay 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. However, don't let them hamper your creativity as long as you are pleasant!
Friendly atmosphere - In order to keep a pleasant atmosphere on this site, we do not allow posts that reference another PoetBay poet in a derogatory manner. This includes name calling, flaming, personal insults, etc. Moderators will remove posts that are deemed inappropriate.
Plagiarism - Plagiarism is not allowed. We will ban poets from the site for this offense. Plagiarism is the act of posting someone else's work without giving credit to the true author.
Copyright infractions - Posting someone else's copyrighted work without permission, even if you give credit, is not allowed.
Comments - Excessive profanity is not allowed in comments. Comments should be diplomatic. We should all attempt to give negative comments in a constructive manner.
Comfort - Though we value freedom of expression highly, we strive to make all members welcome and comfortable on this site. Poems that are threatening, excessively violent, or excessively disturbing will be deleted. The judgment of what is acceptable will be determined by the moderators. Although we do reserve the right to delete any post, we will make every effort to allow diverse individual poetic exploration/expression.
Images - that are pornographic, excessively violent, or otherwise disturbing, will be deleted. As usual, what is acceptable will be determined by the moderators.
Usernames - 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 a moderator runs across a poet with an unacceptable username, he or she will change it.
Self portrait - If you choose to publish a picture of yourself, we ask that you do use your own picture. The picture should contain your face and it should not be copyrighted by someone else. PoetBay reserves the right to delete pictures that do not follow these rules.
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 being banned.
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.
Privacy - The administrative personnel reserves the right to access all areas of the PoetBay site. This means that we can and will read your private messages if we deem it necessary for resolving disputes.
Deletion of Poems and other Posts
We will delete poems and texts that are plagiarized.
We will delete poems, texts and pictures that are copyrighted.
We will delete Poems and texts that are threatening, excessively violent, or excessively disturbing.
Blocking
As a regrettable but effective mean of keeping conflicts from escalating, any user may block a specific user from sending them messages and commenting their texts.
Banning
Users will be banned for plagiarism. A user will be banned for one week on first offense, indefinitely on second offense.
The moderators will ban users who consistently ignore administration's instructions or warnings about anything related to this site.
The moderators will ban users who harass, more than occasionally, other members or the moderators of this site.
A user who has been banned and registers under another PoetBay username before the term of the ban is complete will be banned again, sometimes for a longer period of time.
Suicide and Self Injury
We reserve the right to delete 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 edited or deleted.
Please use sensitivity when interacting with a person who appears to be suicidal or otherwise self-destructive.
If you need help, you are invited to contact the administrative personnel of this site. However, none of the personnel is 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.