The forum and post-moderation
Here are some details on how OVF is moderated for those of you who may not be aware…
What is post-moderation?
OVF runs a post-moderated comments system. This means that users are free to post comments as they wish, and we then remove them if they breach our house rules or pose a legal threat.
This is by far the best way of facilitating an open and interesting debate between users.
The only alternative would mean we’d need to pre-approve every comment before it’s published; this is a system that’s been tried by other sites before and ended up being abandoned because it was simply too much work (we’d need 24 hour shifts for the Admin team, for a start) and stifled debate.
What does that mean?
Firstly, if something bad has been posted, it does NOT mean it is condoned by the Admin team. And please do NOT expect the team to have read every post on the site.
As volunteers, not on the site all the time, it is unrealistic to expect the team to be reading everything posted, 24 hours a day.
So, if you spot something you think is wrong…
Send it to the team. Either through the “Report” button next to the post or the “Contact Us” link. We will respond as soon as we can and take action if we think it is needed.
Your responsibility…
A lot of responsibility for the reputation and the quality of this site falls on you, the users.
You are being given a large amount of leeway to post what you like. But you should all remember our site rules can be roughly summed up as “be nice to each other and do not post something you would not say to someone face-to-face…”
People who breach our rules (by trying to get past the swear filter, posting libelous, sexist or racist content) not only make more work for the Admin team, but they also spoil it for the rest of the OVF audience.
We don’t have a massive number of rules and most are common sense. If you don’t like them or agree to them then you shouldn’t have agreed to our terms and conditions when you registered and you should go elsewhere.
Your rights…
This is a privately operated site. There is no freedom of speech on here. You are here by invitation of the site owners and subject to our site rules.
No-one has a right to be on here and no-one has a right to post what we, as site owners, don’t like. We do not have to justify our decisions nor explain them.
We will simply remove your access if we feel you are causing us undue work, damaging the reputation of this site or that we feel that you will not accept the decisions of the people who run and pay for this site.