Policies

General

Act Responsibly and Ethically: When participating in online communities, do not misrepresent yourself. Be aware of your association with WHC in online social networks. If you identify yourself as a WHC member, ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with WHC members and the wider hockey community.

Respect Our Differences: Live the values. WHC will not tolerate discrimination (including age, sex, race, colour, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, disability, or marital status).

Speak in the First Person: Use your own voice; bring your own personality to the forefront. Spirited and passionate discussions and debates are fine, but you should be respectful of others and their opinions. Be the first to correct your own mistakes.

Refrain from Objectionable or Inflammatory Posts: Do not post anything that is false, misleading, obscene, defamatory, profane, discriminatory, libellous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, or embarrassing to another person or entity. Make sure to respect others' privacy. Third party Web sites and blogs that you link to must meet WHC’s standards of propriety. Be aware that false or defamatory statements or the publication of an individual's private details could result in legal liability for WHC and you.

Personal Information: Never share personal information about WHC members or anything that belongs to someone else. Let them post their own stuff; you stick to posting your own creations. This includes illegal music sharing, illegal file sharing and copyrighted publications.

Declare your Affiliation: If you talk about WHC related matters that are within your area of club responsibility you must disclose your affiliation with WHC.
State That It’s YOUR Opinion: When commenting on WHC, unless authorised to speak on behalf of WHC as an official spokesperson, you must state that the views expressed are your own.

Don't Post Anonymously: Whilst you are not an official spokesperson, your status as a WHC member may still be relevant to the subject matter. You should identify yourself as WHC member if failing to do so could be misleading to readers or viewers.

Protect Yourself: Be careful about what personal information you share online. WHC members are personally responsible for the content they publish on-line, whether in a blog, social computing site or any other form of user-generated media. Be mindful that what you publish will be public for a long time-protect your privacy and take care to understand a site's terms of service.

Respect Copyrights: You must recognise and respect others' intellectual property rights, including copyrights. While certain limited use of third-party materials (for example, use of a short quotation that you are providing comment on) may not always require approval from the copyright owner, it is still advisable to get the owner's permission whenever you use third-party materials. Never use more than a short excerpt from someone else's work, and make sure to credit and, if possible, link to the original source.

Use Video Responsibly: Remember that you may be viewed as endorsing any Web video (whether hosted by YouTube or elsewhere) or other content you link to from your blog or posting, whether created by you or by third parties. Also, recognise that video is an area in which you need to be particularly sensitive to others' copyright rights. You generally cannot include third party content such as film clips or songs in your video without obtaining the owner's permission.

Use Your Best Judgment: Remember to always use good judgment and common sense in deciding what you publish. If you're about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, review the suggestions above and think about why that is. If you're still unsure, and it is related to WHC, feel free to discuss it with a WHC management committee member. Ultimately, however, you have sole responsibility for what you post to your blog or publish in any form of online social media.

Facebook Guidelines Based on the Above

Don’t do anything that breaks the law.

Be polite and courteous, even if you disagree. Excessive name calling, profanity, fighting words, discriminatory epithets, sexual harassment, bullying, gruesome language or the like, will not be tolerated.
Stay on topic. Keep the conversation relevant to the community and contribute to the dialogue. We reserve the right to remove off-topic, out of context, spam or promotional postings.

Keep it real. All wall postings should come from a real person and Facebook profile. Postings from fake or anonymous profiles will be deleted when discovered.

WHC reserve the right to remove content posted to Facebook that violates these guidelines.  

Club Disciplinary Committee
Don’t forget that members who do not keep to the above policy may be disciplined under the Disciplinary section of the Club Constitution.

9th January 2013