User Expectations

This site is intended for a community of education professionals to collaborate, discussing and sharing ideas and resources to further their understanding of inquiry. As such, a professional standard of behaviour is expected:

• Please use your actual name as your Display Name, not a nickname. We hope that this site will be a place for building a community of relationships between real people, not their digital projections, and using real names will help to facilitate this.
• Treat others with the professional courtesy and respect that we should all be able to expect from our colleagues, both offline and on. Above all, users are expected to be kind, helpful, and respectful. Assume the best of people and try to make things better!

Attributing resources

We started this journey using resources that were freely given under a Creative Commons licence, and are committed to sharing as freely and as widely as possible. Unless otherwise stated, all resources on this site are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 4.0 Licence. If you post a resource with different copyright restrictions, please make that clear.

When you use a resource you are require to attribute it with a copyright statement. The “Credit” field in our resource bank tells you who to attribute the resource to in your CC copyright statement – the “Author” field is there to give more detail, but is not required in the attribution.

Full attribution guidelines can be found in our FAQs section.

Contacting the Moderators

If you feel a post or comment violates the guidelines below, please contact us, giving the Forum, Topic and post number (#??? found in the top right hand corner of the post), or the title of the Memo or Newsroom item in the case of a comment, and reason for your concern. We will aim to look into the matter within 24 hours (although it may occasionally take a little longer during school holidays).

Guidelines

Guideline violations may result in your ability to post being restricted or your account being blocked from posting.

Keep discussions on topic

The purpose of the site is to construct a shared understanding of inquiry, and to build a community of educators committed to that purpose. Discussions that are not related to this purpose may be deleted.

Do not spam or offer or ask for payment for work

This is not the place to advertise, offer or ask for paid services – all help on this site should be offered freely. Users may wish to discuss the merits of particular named, paid-for third-party services (such as subscription databases or books) in the context of inquiries, but this should not stray into blatant advertising!

Do Not Bump Posts

Do not bump posts. Only post in a topic if you actually have something to say. Moderators will delete bumps they find.

Do Not Create Multiple Accounts

Do not create multiple accounts, aka sockpuppets. Sockpuppetry is often used for nefarious reasons, and as such we ask that you simply don’t do it. If a sockpuppet account is identified, it will be banned immediately.

The Bad Stuff…

We need to keep the forums friendly, so, occasionally, topic content will be moderated. In severe cases, users may be blocked. This might mean anything from the light editing of some posts to complete removal of topics and deactivation of accounts. It should really go without saying, but the following are likely candidates for moderation or intervention

• Do not post email addresses or ask others to post their email addresses. If you wish to contact someone privately, use the Private Messaging facility from their Member profile. If you have any concerns about Private Messages you have been sent by another user, please contact us.
• Do not post login information, even test IDs and test passwords.
• Do not post another person’s private information (job, gender, living situation, location, etc.). Individual users decide how much of their profile to make public.
• Be polite. Do not make personal or offensive remarks about other people – either other users or your colleagues – and keep your language professional. It is fine to disagree with someone’s opinion as long as you are polite about it!
• Do not post spam and affiliate links, offensive posts, or posts without content.
• Do not post in all caps.
• Do not seek advice that is inappropriate to the context of the forums (e.g. legal, medical).

Please note that this list is not exhaustive. Every post is judged on its own merits.