Contribution Policy

For contributions to Incisive Media websites

1. By sharing any contribution (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) with Incisive Media you agree to grant to Incisive Media, free of charge, permission to use the material in any way it wants (including modifying and adapting it for operational and editorial reasons) online or in print. In certain circumstance Incisive Media may also share your contribution with trusted third parties.

2. Copyright in your contribution will remain with you and this permission is not exclusive, so you can continue to use the material in any way including allowing others to use it.

3. In order that Incisive Media can use your contribution, you confirm that your contribution is your own original work, is not defamatory and does not infringe any UK laws, that you have the right to give Incisive Media permission to use it for the purposes specified above, and that you have the consent of anyone who is identifiable in your contribution.

4. We will normally show your name with your contribution, unless you request otherwise. Incisive Media may need to contact you for administrative or verification purposes in relation to your contribution, or in relation to particular projects.

5. If you do not want to grant Incisive Media the permission set out above on these terms, please do not submit or share your contribution to or with us through our websites. Instead, you should contact the editorial department of the product concerned.

6. You agree to use Incisive Media website (including message boards and forums) in accordance with the following ten simple rules. These apply across all Incisive Media sites and services.

Incisive Media's 10 point Code for Successful Forums and Message Boards

1) Be civil to other members. Constructive arguments are fine, but abuse will not be tolerated.

2) Do not swear. This includes profanity that is masked using ast*r*sks, etc.

3) Do not post adult content (nudity etc) - our forums are open to all, so must remain family-friendly.

4) Do not post anything that is unlawful or objectionable: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable. This includes inappropriate user names.

5) You agree to submit to or share with Incisive Media only contributions that are your own original work. You must not violate, plagiarise, or infringe the rights of Incisive Media or third parties including copyright, trade mark, trade secrets, privacy, publicity, personal or proprietary rights.

6) Do not create more than one user account. All accounts must be registered with a valid personal or business email address that you access regularly so that moderation emails can be sent to you. Accounts registered with someone else's email address, or with temporary email addresses may be closed without notice. We may require users to re-validate their account if we believe they have been using an invalid email address.
Incisive Media reserves the right to close accounts if any user is seen to be using proxy IPs (Internet Protocol addresses) in order to attempt to hide the use of multiple accounts or disrupts any of our websites in any way.

7) Political discussion is welcome in the off-topic forum, but do not post direct appeals on behalf of any political party. The forum is not a political soapbox for campaigning.

8) No spamming or off-topic material: we don't allow the submission of the same or very similar contributions many times. Please don't re-submit your contribution to more than one discussion, or contribute off-topic material in subject-specific areas.

9) No advertising or promotion of products or services.

10) We advise that you never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else (for example, telephone number, postal address, home address or email address) or any other details that would allow you to be personally identified.

If you see a post that violates any rule, or which is spam, report it using the appropriate icon or link displayed next to each post.

Anyone who breaks any of the forum rules can expect to see the post in question deleted without notification, and will receive a warning. Users who fail to respond appropriately to warnings may face further action, such as a temporary or permanent suspension from the forum.

We hope you will appreciate that these rules are simply in place to keep the Message boards and forums a friendly place for all to enjoy. We hope that they will only have to be enforced infrequently, if ever.