Community Guidelines

These guidelines are inspired by our Westie Community. Our site is currently home to over 1,000 members and guest by respecting these guidelines it will allow everyone to have the best time possible. While we understand that not every person may appreciate our requirements, however, you will need to adhere to them at all times. We ask that you make every effort to abide by the Guidelines, in all of your activities on The Westie Place. 

The Spirit of The Westie Place

The most important thing is to familiarize yourself with the site and its rules. This site is for the love of Westies. It is about caring and support. It is about fun, friendly and informational sharing of our passion for these beautiful loveable furry friends. If you're used to the type of dog fighting that goes on in other online communities, you can put that all aside when you join this site. The Westie Place is a fun, friendly place for everyone.

Overarching Community Guidelines

Participation in all areas of The Westie Place must be kept within the spirit of having fun, being friendly and helpful at all times.

The Westie Place needs to follow the laws of the area you in which you reside. You must not violate any laws in your jurisdiction (including but not limited to copyright laws).

A member may not create more than one membership account without advance permission. You are responsible for all activity on your account.

You are responsible for your interactions with other members. Please act maturely and kindly.

There is absolutely no personal name-calling allowed. In the spirit of our best friend snarling, snapping, biting and other rough behavior is strictly forbidden.

Avoid pack behavior including ganging up on another member. Because most people of all ages love animals, especially the Westie, The Westie Place is a family-friendly site.

All content on The Westie Place included but not limited to text, images and video must be appropriate for all ages.

Content that contains profanity; is sexually explicit; depicts the torture and abuse of animals; or contains graphic, descriptive and lengthy portrayals of serious violence against animals; blood, injury, and/or death are not allowed on The Westie Place.

Although we love every Westie we meet on our site, there should never be activity related to studding, breeding anywhere on The Westie Place. However, the exception is for Westies that are being adopted through an animal welfare or rescue organization and require an adoption fee to cover medical and general operating expenses.

We work hard on keeping this Community a safe place. Please use caution when sharing personal information and do not encourage others to post personal information publicly on The Westie Place.

We would love to help everyone, but for safety reasons, The Westie Place cannot allow for the public solicitation of charity or donations unless verified and approved by The Westie Place Administration.

Racism and hate-language are never acceptable - ever. Content intended to victimize, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group on the basis of age; disability, ethnicity, gender, race, religion or sexual orientation is not and never allowed.

The Westie Place Terms of Service stipulates that, "The The Westie Place.net service is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. Businesses, organizations or other legal entities may not use the The Westie Place.net service for any purpose, however, because we want to allow some flexibility to accommodate active members of the Community who wish to mention a product or service as part of their pet's life.

In the public Forums, members are allowed to post about their product or service as it relates to the life of their dog in context of an existing Forum discussion, as long as they're not "pitching" the business or product. If you have any concerns or problems with other members, the proper action is to contact The Westie Place Administration. Our Administration will resolve any and all Community abuses and intervene and take action as appropriate.

Pet Pages

Since they're so special, we believe every Westie deserves to have their own page. The primary photo on your Pet Page must be of your pet and no more than 25% of your pet page should be about things other than your pet. The Westie Place is for Westies. The picture can be of one of your Westie with other pets or people but photos of other pets or people without your Westie in it are not allowed. No profane or obscene content, names or nicknames are to be used on your page no matter how cute the name might be. All photos and videos that you upload through The Westie Place must be of your Westie(s), Westies’ with family, friends and other pets, etc. Please take care not to post any content that isn't yours.

 

 

Forums

Remember that you are receiving advice from other Westie lovers. If you have a major problem, always seek the advice of a professional. Forum discussions are to be fun, friendly and informative at all times.

It is never appropriate to personally attack anyone. Westies at times may snarl, snap, bite and have other rough behavior, but that is strictly forbidden by you.

Posts that are not considered friendly, civil and open to all will likely be deleted within minutes. While the Forums are great for sharing information, they are lousy for gaining consensus or debating emotional issues. Do Not engage in arguments. Starting an entry with "I don't mean to be rude, but..." does not mean one can be rude. In public forums the best and easiest way to respond to a person that is behaving inappropriately is to simply ignore them and that topic. Assume good will and allow that the poster may not have intended for the message to be interpreted the way it came across to you. Before responding always consider how you would feel if someone else had written the same thing to you.

Please avoid aggressive responses, and counter ideas and opinions with which you don't agree with friendly and helpful advice. New forum threads should only be posted in one topic area. Please refrain from submitting posts that promote off-topic discussions.

We request that members do not post non-Westie related, political and religious statements in the forums. If you feel that a forum post is against our guidelines, please Notify our Administration or forum moderator. When notifying on a post you should always give an explanation so our moderators can clearly understand your reasoning.

The Moderators are diligent about reviewing flagged posts and taking appropriate action within a reasonable amount of time. Members should always respect the statements of forum moderators and Administration. It is fine if you disagree with Administration or a moderator action, but never forget the correct way to share your grievance is to directly contact our Administration. The incorrect action is to challenge, defy, debate or ignore the moderator or Administration action in any of the public forums.

Responses to Violations

The Westie Place Administration has the right to take action if you disregard the our Guidelines. Violators risk having their content edited or removed. Furthermore The Westie Place reserves the right to revoke any abusive user's privileges on the site altogether, up to and including the deletion of all pet pages, photos, diary entries, messages and other user created content. The Westie Place Administration retains the right to place an account under temporary review. If your account is under review by The Westie Place, under no circumstances should you try to create a new account, login using another person's account or try and circumvent the review process in any way.

If you have done anything so extreme as to lose your membership rights, you will lose all rights to create an account, pet pages or participate in community features. Any attempt to circumvent this ban will guarantee that your membership status can never be reconsidered. If you are unsure of the exact meaning of any of these terms simply seek clarification from Administration before risking an abuse.

Also note, that while we profoundly value your privacy and as a rule ignore all private conversations and actions, please remember that if we need to research any abuse of our community terms we retain the right to review all private messaging, Forum posts, Group messaging, IM conversation, Comments or any other communication done through the site. Also note that such information is for our eyes only and is never shared beyond our immediate team. Out of respect for our members' privacy, The Westie Place will not discuss a member's account with other members of the Community.

Contacting Administration

The Westie Place depends on the Community to help us moderate the site for violations of our Guidelines. If you feel that there are members abusing a policy, please use one of the many "Notify" or "Tell The Westie Place" links located throughout the site or visit The Westie Place Community Site Support.

Community violations are taken very seriously. We take care to review and address every concern. We strive to respond to any Community issue as soon as practicable. It's very important to remember that on occasions when we cannot respond as quickly as desired, this in no way allows for terms of our Guidelines to be ignored. Never forget two wrongs never make a right. If someone behaves badly, no one else is ever justified in breaking any of our terms in response. Ever.

Always Room for Improvement

If you have ideas for the Community Guidelines please share them with us. The community is always changing and the guidelines should always stay up-to-date.

Rev. 3/18/2010