Content Guidelines-Keeping It Appropriate and Legal
At some point we may come up with a more formalized document which spells out a variety of important things for our magazine authors to keep in mind. One aspect of this is "What is and is not appropriate to be published in our magazine on the Joomla! Community site?" That's the point of this discussion.
These guidelines are very important and everyone who contributes content to the magazine needs to adhere to them. If we don't comply with these guidelines, at a minimum our credibility will be severely damaged. I would expect that if violations of these guidelines becomes a recurring problem, then eventually the magazine may not be allowed to be hosted on the Joomla! Community site any more. Further, there could be some serious negative legal repercussions both for the violators and potentially the Joomla! project which no one should want to deal with.
Current Joomla! Community Site Posting Guidelines
Here are the unedited current content posting guidelines for the Joomla! Community site (some of these points apply more to blog comments than to magazine authors). These guidelines were developed by Airton Torres, who along with myself are Webmasters for the Community site.
* All posts must be in English, unless posted in a specific international area. If posting in a international area, please use the language of that area, and not English.
* Do not discuss illegal activities. Our server is hosted in the USA and so is subject to US law. Please do not expose us to any unnecessary legal liability.
* Use your own words. If you wish to use the words of somebody else, quote them, citing the source. Plaigarism is unethical and is illegal in many countries.
* Do not use any copyrighted material unless it's released under a free use license such as Creative Commons or compatible. If such copyrighted material is used, proper credit/attribution must be given.
* In case you use copyrighted material that demands authorization from the author, make sure you have that authorization before you post.
* Do not link to any site that contains adult content, sexually oriented material or might otherwise be considered offensive. Any post containing an inappropriate link will be deleted and the poster will receive a warning.
* Do not propose/link to any site that contains warez/copyrighted software/materials that can be downloaded illegally.
* No commercial advertising is permitted. This includes advertising of any services and/or products not fully compliant with the GPL license.
* Any posts deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam can and will be removed. NO SPAM - NO ADVERTISING eg. Posting and making excessive, inappropriate and unnecessary references to your products and websites is self promotion.
* This site is centered on Joomla, Open Source software and other Internet and computer matters. It is not a place to promote ideological, religious, or political matters. All such discussions will be deleted.
Disclosure of Compensated Relationships
Also, the US Government Federal Trade Commission has recently issued some new rules requiring the disclosure of any compensated relationship (employment, for pay, or in return for free/discounted products and/or services) that an author has when they review/evaluate/recommend a product or service.
Open Source Matters has made it clear that the Joomla! websites fall under these new FTC rules, and OSM is working with us to develop a Terms of Service statement that will support these new rules. Ken Crowder and Peter Martin recently drafted the following compliance statement for the Joomla! Forum website. It is again presented here unedited, but I think it's a good basis that can be generalized to apply to our magazine content:
"When recommending an extension or other product to help a user solve their issue, you must disclose any affiliations you may have with the company or group that authors that particular product. This includes, but is not limited to: any paid or non-paid relationships past or present, receiving any promotional products or services, or any other similar information."
Joomla! Leadership/OSM oversight
I started an email thread on October 29, 2009 on the subject of if anyone from either OSM or Joomla! leadership wanted to review or approve magazine content before it was published. I sent this email to OSM leaders as well as Joomla! Community Working Group leaders. Here are all of the unedited responses which were sent back to this distribution:
"I haven't seen the posting guidelines drafted by Airton - are they linked somewhere on the Community site? I am sure they are just common sense guidelines that anyone would wish to follow. :) Adding the new requirements by the FTC is a definite must. The only other thing that I could think of is having a general statement saying that the Joomla Project and OSM reserve the right to remove any content at any time without notice. (not that it is something that is going to happen all that often but it is good to have that just to cover the bases.) The JED, JRD and Joomla Connect all have this as a general statement, and I don't know many websites that allow community contribution that doesn't have that sort of disclaimer."
"OSM does not get involved in content except worrying about things like the FTC issue. libel and the copyright. The OSM site has a copyright policy for all "other" content (not on specific sites that have other rules). I think it's a policy most author's are happy with, in that they keep their copyright but we also have the right to reuse the work. If someone does not want to give us that right, it could be discussed at that time."
If you have thoughts on this subject, please add them here!
These guidelines are very important and everyone who contributes content to the magazine needs to adhere to them. If we don't comply with these guidelines, at a minimum our credibility will be severely damaged. I would expect that if violations of these guidelines becomes a recurring problem, then eventually the magazine may not be allowed to be hosted on the Joomla! Community site any more. Further, there could be some serious negative legal repercussions both for the violators and potentially the Joomla! project which no one should want to deal with.
Current Joomla! Community Site Posting Guidelines
Here are the unedited current content posting guidelines for the Joomla! Community site (some of these points apply more to blog comments than to magazine authors). These guidelines were developed by Airton Torres, who along with myself are Webmasters for the Community site.
* All posts must be in English, unless posted in a specific international area. If posting in a international area, please use the language of that area, and not English.
* Do not discuss illegal activities. Our server is hosted in the USA and so is subject to US law. Please do not expose us to any unnecessary legal liability.
* Use your own words. If you wish to use the words of somebody else, quote them, citing the source. Plaigarism is unethical and is illegal in many countries.
* Do not use any copyrighted material unless it's released under a free use license such as Creative Commons or compatible. If such copyrighted material is used, proper credit/attribution must be given.
* In case you use copyrighted material that demands authorization from the author, make sure you have that authorization before you post.
* Do not link to any site that contains adult content, sexually oriented material or might otherwise be considered offensive. Any post containing an inappropriate link will be deleted and the poster will receive a warning.
* Do not propose/link to any site that contains warez/copyrighted software/materials that can be downloaded illegally.
* No commercial advertising is permitted. This includes advertising of any services and/or products not fully compliant with the GPL license.
* Any posts deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam can and will be removed. NO SPAM - NO ADVERTISING eg. Posting and making excessive, inappropriate and unnecessary references to your products and websites is self promotion.
* This site is centered on Joomla, Open Source software and other Internet and computer matters. It is not a place to promote ideological, religious, or political matters. All such discussions will be deleted.
Disclosure of Compensated Relationships
Also, the US Government Federal Trade Commission has recently issued some new rules requiring the disclosure of any compensated relationship (employment, for pay, or in return for free/discounted products and/or services) that an author has when they review/evaluate/recommend a product or service.
Open Source Matters has made it clear that the Joomla! websites fall under these new FTC rules, and OSM is working with us to develop a Terms of Service statement that will support these new rules. Ken Crowder and Peter Martin recently drafted the following compliance statement for the Joomla! Forum website. It is again presented here unedited, but I think it's a good basis that can be generalized to apply to our magazine content:
"When recommending an extension or other product to help a user solve their issue, you must disclose any affiliations you may have with the company or group that authors that particular product. This includes, but is not limited to: any paid or non-paid relationships past or present, receiving any promotional products or services, or any other similar information."
Joomla! Leadership/OSM oversight
I started an email thread on October 29, 2009 on the subject of if anyone from either OSM or Joomla! leadership wanted to review or approve magazine content before it was published. I sent this email to OSM leaders as well as Joomla! Community Working Group leaders. Here are all of the unedited responses which were sent back to this distribution:
"I haven't seen the posting guidelines drafted by Airton - are they linked somewhere on the Community site? I am sure they are just common sense guidelines that anyone would wish to follow. :) Adding the new requirements by the FTC is a definite must. The only other thing that I could think of is having a general statement saying that the Joomla Project and OSM reserve the right to remove any content at any time without notice. (not that it is something that is going to happen all that often but it is good to have that just to cover the bases.) The JED, JRD and Joomla Connect all have this as a general statement, and I don't know many websites that allow community contribution that doesn't have that sort of disclaimer."
"OSM does not get involved in content except worrying about things like the FTC issue. libel and the copyright. The OSM site has a copyright policy for all "other" content (not on specific sites that have other rules). I think it's a policy most author's are happy with, in that they keep their copyright but we also have the right to reuse the work. If someone does not want to give us that right, it could be discussed at that time."
If you have thoughts on this subject, please add them here!
Views: 9
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Amy Stephen on
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I assume these will be located one place on the site and apply to all content, including the Magazine? If so, I think it's good.
The magazine "rules" could then focus on a friendly call to action to our community, explaining why the magazine matters, how we value their involvement, focusing on the information they need to get involved: submitting idea, selection process, notification of inclusion or rejection, approximate dates, and how to provide feedback to the team. (And, link to the rules.) -
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Permalink Reply by Dex Randall on -
Thank you Paul! Would you like me to chip in ideas on style guide too?
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Paul - can you also provide the license that all work will be published under? I'm just not sure, anymore, what license is used for Community Web site blog posts and the Joomla! Community Magazine. I don't think it's the same as the documentation because that license does not allow for adsense. So, if you could find that out so all writers know from the beginning their work will be submitted to OSM with that license, that would probably be smart. I'll do the same with the documentation efforts, too. Thanks!
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Permalink Reply by Paul Orwig on -
I think these will either be located in one place on the Community site, or each J! site may have it's own. I get the sense that lawyers may decide how that will be handled.
I like your idea about the magazine "rules". Do you want to write that up? -
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Permalink Reply by Paul Orwig on
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Sure I'll check on that, thanks for raising that question.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Orwig on
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Hi Dex,
Thanks please do start chipping in on style guide points! I think you might get more attention from other like minded people if you started a separate discussion for that. To that point I have re-named this discussion so it's clearer that this one is more focused on legal type issues.
At some point I suspect we will pull things together from multiple sources to become our master style guide. -
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Permalink Reply by Paul Orwig on
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Here is the license information that all magazine work will be published under:
http://www.opensourcematters.org/index.php?Itemid=166 -
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Permalink Reply by Paul Orwig on
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Because of ongoing discussion regarding what the oversight roles of Joomla! leadership and OSM are (as it pertains to the magazine content published on the Joomla! Community site), I have added a "Joomla! Leadership/OSM Oversight" section at the bottom of the original discussion post above.
In order to keep things as clear, open, and straightforward as possible, I have simply excerpted all of the verbatim responses I received to an email I sent out on October 29, 2009 to leaders from the Joomla Community Working Group and OSM. The subject of that email was if there was any need or desire for Joomla! leadership or OSM to review or approve magazine content before it was published. -
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Excellent - The last paragraph is consistent with my understanding of OSM's role. The oversight of content development and responsibility to include or remove content, is the responsibility of the Community Working Group. (Just like the review and oversight of code development and inclusion in core is the responsibility of the Development Working Group.) The protection of resultant digital assets and legal issues (libel, etc.) are OSM. Perfect.
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Permalink Reply by Paul Orwig on
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I am glad you agree with the last paragraph. However, don't overlook this excerpt from the preceding paragraph:
the Joomla Project and OSM reserve the right to remove any content at any time without notice.
That is a simple point which I have tried repeatedly to communicate to this group, but it has seemed to me that you have tried very hard to characterize things differently. -
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It's a distinction I hopefully explained better in this post.
It's easier to understand when you think of coding guidelines and the developers. Yes, OSM has responsibility over safeguarding the copyright of the code and protecting the license. That doesn't translate into OSM having authority to determine what gets included or rejected from Trunk. That's the responsibility of the Production Working Group.
OSM protects digital rights. If there were a legal issue, then OSM would take the lead. The production of the magazine tho, and final decisions of what is published, etc., is the responsibility of the Community Working Group.
It's good - we are on the same page. I agree with that last paragraph. Brian's right, too, there is likely some unrelated noise that has made this more challenging than need be.
Let's move forward! Thanks, Paul! :) -
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Permalink Reply by Paul Orwig on
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I am way on board with moving forward. Thanks Amy!
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