From DiscoverWorks.org

Contents 1 Guidelines for Constructively Participating in the DiscoverWorks Community, plus a note on Style 2 Use of Website 3 What You Can’t (or Shouldn't) Do 4 Constructive Collaboration 5 What you should expect from the Moderator(s) 6 Disputes 7 Legal Limits 8 Other Important Observations

Guidelines for Constructively Participating in the DiscoverWorks Community, plus a note on Style

DiscoverWorks is a free information exchange, in the form of a Wiki. It is a place where people interested in creative works that may be under copyright (referred to herein as “Works”) can share and discover rights status and other pertinent information about those Works. DiscoverWorks is neither a lawyer nor a law firm, and we’re not providing any legal advice on this site – in fact, the information provided here is, in large part, posted by other participants.

Accordingly, what you find here may be inaccurate and unreliable, and you should use your discretion in using or relying on anything you find on or through the site (see our Terms of Use). All that said, we hope that, through the contributions of you and other participants, DiscoverWorks will become a progressively more valuable resource for people seeking to provide or obtain information about Works.

In order to encourage and enable you and other participants to pursue that goal collaboratively and more effectively, we have begun putting together the following outline of User Guidelines for “good citizenship,” if you will, while participating in the DiscoverWorks community. Our aim is to provide a place where people are comfortable posting and sharing metadata, commentary and other useful information pertaining to Works. These User Guidelines are intended to express our hopes and expectations for what the DiscoverWorks community can be, and how you and other participants can help realize those goals.

As part of a site based on user-generated content, these User Guidelines can and will develop over time. They are not cast in stone, or even in sand. They are cast in recycled electrons and photons.

You should also understand that these User Guidelines are just that – guidelines – and your use of the site is also subject in all respects to the DiscoverWorks Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Intellectual Property Policy, the terms of all of which you agreed to by using the site.

Use of Website

• What you can do as a user of the site (without registering or logging in):
  DiscoverWorks is intended as a resource for everyone, including those who are only interested in window shopping. Accordingly, all users, whether registered or not, may browse the site and search, retrieve and view Works Pages. In order to contribute Content to the site, however, you will need to register and create an account. Once you have registered, you will also have the ability to:
  • Create Works Pages ( Terms of Use ).
  • Upload small portions of Works for purposes of allowing the Work to be identified by other users of the site. However, you may not upload a larger portion of a Work than is necessary for that purpose.
• Insert links to other websites relevant to the Works.
• Engage in ongoing discussions via the discussion pages
• Create and maintain a Profile page including your user profile and other information about yourself or the organization you represent.
• Edit the Works Pages created by yourself or others.
• Flag Works Pages with markers indicating alerts and cautions, etc. (See DiscoverWorks Templates)

What You Can’t (or Shouldn't) Do

• No matter what your role or your degree of participation, there are some things you shouldn’t do on the site. Some of these we prevent you from doing, others are enforced by rule or community effort. The Terms of Use lists activities that are prohibited and you should review them carefully, but the following are some examples of things you shouldn’t do on the site:
  • You may not resell access to or use of the DiscoverWorks site, its contents, or services. This constitutes a violation of our Terms of Use.
  • You may not harass or demean other participants or engage in other offensive, unethical or illegal activities.
  • You may not download or replicate all or any substantial portion of the Content on the site.
  • You may not to intentionally circumvent security measures
  • You can’t use the site for the primary purpose of gaining advertising or subscription revenue.
  • You can’t engage in solicitation/marketing on the site (other than providing information about a Work to facilitate a potential transaction regarding that Work).
  • You can’t engage in spamming (including links or redirects to spam).
  • You may not misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or entity.
• Limits on Posting Content
  • DiscoverWorks is not a file exchange service; nor is it a content repository.
  • You may not post copyrighted content of others except as follows:
    • you may post small portions of a Work where you do not know, in good faith, the Work’s copyright status and ownership, and you are making a good faith effort to identify the copyright owner(s) and/or rights status of the underlying Work; and
    • you should not post a larger portion of a Work than is necessary to allow other users to identify the Work for the intended purposes of the site
  • You may not post or link to any material that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, pornographic, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.
  • See also : DiscoverWorks' Intellectual Property Policy for our policies and procedures regarding copyright and intellectual property generally, including our response procedures for DMCA-compliant takedown notices.

  Constructive Collaboration

  • Participants in DiscoverWorks, in effect, volunteer to help build the site through constructive collaboration. To make this resource the best it can be, we urge all participants to:
    • Only contribute information that is likely to be useful to others and that falls within the scope of what DiscoverWorks is trying to accomplish.
    • Cite sources where available and provide as much supporting information as seems useful. See The Columbia Guide or The Chicago Style Guide for assistance.
    • Refer to facts rather than opinions
    • Compose and express your thoughts in complete sentences, using a simple and direct style. See: Wikipedia Manual of Style
    • Apply some basic advice:
      • Avoid the passive voice.
      • Use nouns and verbs.
      • Don’t talk about yourself more than necessary.
      • Spellcheck.
      • Ask yourself: What would Strunk and White do? (WWS&WD?)
    • We require civility and respect among participants and about Works their creators and other rightsholders at all times DiscoverWorks Moderators will enforce these standards.
    • Finally, we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Thou Shalt Respect the Copyright and other IP rights of Others. Think about it. This site is built on an absolute need for that level of respect. See also our Intellectual Property Policy

  What you should expect from the Moderator(s)

• Moderators manage issues among participants. For reference, see:Wikipedia Administrators. Specifically, Moderators can, and occasionally will,
  • Lock work pages and discussions
  • Remove work pages and discussions
  • Move or Merge Work pages
  • Apply templates to Work pages
  • Activate new Templates for use on DiscoverWorks
  • Block and unblock access to the site
  • Activate (or deactivate) participants' accounts
  • Discuss these tasks with other moderators.
  • Correspond one-on-one with participants, when appropriate and necessary
  • Seek in all appropriate ways to minimize abuse of the site and any inappropriate content, as indicated above.
  • Seek new participants and new participant communities.
  • Generally, if a call has to be made, one or more of the Moderators will make the call.

Disputes

• DiscoverWorks will not play the role of lawyer, arbiter or judge in any dispute regarding a Work or any other dispute between users of the website.
• It is our policy to respond quickly to complaints of defamation, harassment, infringement or any other conduct that violates our Terms of Use and we may, in our discretion, edit or delete any postings, or block access or suspend or terminate the accounts of users who engage in prohibited activities.
• Complaints regarding copyright infringement will be handled in accordance with our Intellectual Property Policy, which includes DMCA-compliant takedown procedures. For other complaints, you should contact us at moderator@discoverworks.org We take complaints seriously, so we encourage you to contact us and let us address any issues rather than threaten legal action as a matter of first resort.

Legal Limits

The outside limits of what we can all do and expect here are defined by the Terms of Use and the law. We are not lawyers and normally would not have to resort to lawyers, but anything can happen. DiscoverWorks is not a place for lawbreaking, whether in the form of copyright violations or otherwise.

Other Important Observations

• When you post something to the site or edit a page, you are publishing a public document and granting a license to DiscoverWorks and other users to view and use your contributions in accordance with the DiscoverWorks Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Removing text or other content from a Works Page does NOT permanently delete it.
  DiscoverWorks administrators and other registered users may access pages preserved in the site history and see what was there. DiscoverWorks may, in its sole discretion and under very limited circumstances, permanently delete content from public areas of the site in response to user requests, legal action or under other appropriate circumstances. If you would like something removed from public areas of the site (since we all make mistakes), you may contact us and put in a request to moderator@discoverworks.org, but we’re not making any promises that we’ll take it down. Bottom line: you should assume that whatever you submit will be retained forever, and that you will be identified as the source of anything you submit.
• When you create an account, you are required to provide a valid email address. DiscoverWorks or its moderators may, from time to time, make efforts to contact you at the email address you provided for various reasons relating to your account. If you fail to respond to our emails on a repeated basis, we may, in our discretion, suspend or terminate your account.