About these terms

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 owners 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 who 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 judged 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 texts. PoetBay.com strives to provide opportunities for promising authors and web poets, help those who wish to further develop creative skills and perhaps become a published author.

Friendly atmosphere

We don't make false promises. That is why the terms of membership are governed by the vision of PoetBay, the reason why most of our members chose PoetBay as the right authors' community, environment, to publish their artwork or texts, 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 texts. To this end, PoetBay's owners 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 and when a text is seemingly in breach of PoetBay's agreed Terms of membership, the text in question will be unpublished until the author brings the text in line with the Terms of membership, 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.

Facebook Group

You are welcome to join our Facebook PoetBay Group under the same Code of conduct in PoetBay.com's Terms of membership, and of course, in accordance with Facebook's Terms. On our Facebook Group, once a week, a member of the Editorial Team recommends video art-related links. Feel free to participate or create a book discussion or an art-related discussion topic at our Facebook Group.

But keep in mind that our Facebook Group is intended only for support. It is not allowed to air any personal views on the ownership or other members of PoetBay, degrading the public perception of the site, which, as an object, has nothing to do with any issues or problems that are occurring on PoetBay. You are welcome though to use our forum. You can also contact the Editorial Team.

Persona feature - Creation of multiple accounts

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 as long as it is clearly indicated on the additional account's author profile page presentation that it is a persona of an already existing member of PoetBay.

However, the Editorial Team has to be contacted prior to the creation of an additional account to be informed who the author of the persona 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 use different accounts for covert attacks - anonymous hostility.

Erotica content - Age limit

Although the age limit is 13, we still have some underaged members and because this is a non-profit poetry website, 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 texts will be removed but each case will be judged individually with PoetBay's Terms of membership as a guideline. If your texts are explicitly devoted to detailed description of sexual activities, etc., we advise you to find the proper web place to publish your texts.

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 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.

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 information (including their name), texts, pictures, and private messages from PoetBay, EXCEPT for the comments they have left on other authors' texts.

Comfort

Though we value freedom of expression highly, we strive to make all members welcome and comfortable on this site, therefore we encourage members to report material posted on the site (texts, 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.

Images

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

Usernames (Nicknames)

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 comes across an author 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 preferrably contain your face and it should not be copyrighted by someone else. PoetBay reserves the right to remove 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 administrators reserve 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.

Removal of Texts and other Posts

The judgement of what is acceptable will be determined by the Editors with the Terms of membership as a guideline.

- We will remove texts that are plagiarized.

- We will remove texts and pictures that are copyrighted.

- We will remove 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 from their account Options.

Banning

The judgement of what is acceptable will be determined by the Editors with the Terms of membership as a guideline.

- 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.

Suicide and Self-Injury

We reserve the right to remove 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 removed.

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 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. 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 2010-11-06 ---