House rules

The project team is committed to providing an atmosphere in which friendly and mature dialogue takes place. To enable this to happen, we've developed some 'House Rules' you should follow when contributing material to the site. We trust everyone to keep the contributions civil, tasteful and relevant. Remember - the site is for everyone to learn about and understand New Zealand's experience of the Vietnam War.

Contributing to this site

By contributing to this site, you agree to abide by the following rules. Please take a minute to read them, and before you post your submission, do ensure it follows these simple rules:

  • The Vietnam War Oral History Project website's golden rule: treat others with respect.
  • Contributions must be constructive and polite, not mean-spirited or contributed with the intention of causing trouble.
  • No unlawful or objectionable content: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.
  • No flaming. Flaming means sending unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive, or otherwise objectionable material. None of this is acceptable.
  • No swear words used in an offensive, gratuitous or objectionable way. Swear words will be ****d out when they are used in those ways, except for the first and last letters.
  • No spamming or flooding. Spamming is the posting of the same (or very similar) messages to lots of forums. Flooding is when the same (or a very similar) message is posted over and over again to the same conversation. It's especially anti-social if it's off-topic for those forums. If you do this, we will remove your postings, and possibly your account.
  • Stay safe. Think carefully before revealing personal information on the site. You may include your own personal email address in contributions, but remember that people may use it to send emails you don't want to receive, such as adverts or offensive material. If you are sure that you want people to be able to contact you like this, we recommend you set up a new email account specifically for this purpose. If you are under 16, never reveal any personal information.
  • It is unacceptable to publicise anyone else's contact details, and we will remove any postal addresses or telephone numbers from contributions. It is only acceptable to include general publicly available contact details for organisations, for example, the address of a library or museum.
  • Be patient. Users of all ages and abilities, and from a variety of backgrounds and with different perspectives, will be taking part in this project. Debate is healthy; abuse and intolerance are not.
  • No advertising is permitted.
  • Impersonating someone else is unacceptable, as is adopting an inappropriate username (one that is vulgar, offensive, etc).
  • Use only appropriate and suitable URLs (website addresses) in your contributions. Links to pornography, commercial services or other inappropriate content will be deleted at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage's discretion. A moderator will check any URLs you include.
  • Stay on-topic. This is a site for people to record their memories of New Zealand's experience of the Vietnam War.

Disciplinary procedure

Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage (MCH) reserves the right to terminate accounts immediately at its discretion (in the event of such things as criminal behaviour or personal abuse of staff, for example). MCH may also implement a period of individual pre-moderation instead of or in addition to the following, at its discretion.

If you fail to abide by these House Rules, the following procedures will be followed in most cases.

  • For the first offence you will receive an official warning.
  • A second offence will mean that your account is suspended for seven days.
  • A third offence will mean a suspension period of one month.
  • A fourth offence will result in your account being closed permanently.

In each case the warning or suspension notice will be sent to the email address in your preferences, explaining the nature of the breach. Returning to the site while suspended by creating another account will constitute a further offence and will extend the suspension to the next period, or will result in your account being closed permanently.

MCH will endeavour to deal fairly and promptly with any issues or complaints raised.

MCH reserves the right to delete any contribution, at any time, for any reason, and is under no obligation to publish any work submitted.

Our role

The project team also plays a role in ensuring the content of the site is tasteful, civil and relevant.

Moderation

Your contribution will be 'moderated' before it appears live on the site. 'Moderation' allows the project team to ensure the contribution follows the House Rules, and that the contributions are clear and easy to follow.

The project team will moderate submissions as they come to hand, and will endeavour to have contributions live within seven days of posting.

Editing

Moderation will involve some light editing. The purpose of the editing is to help the readability of the text, and to tidy minor errors of fact. The editing process is not designed to change your interpretation of events or your reporting of your experiences, although we will edit out gratuitous and offensive swear words and expletives.

Light editing may include: correcting obvious typographical or grammatical errors; correcting obvious errors of fact; correcting misspelt names.

We may email you about your contribution during this process, especially if there appear to be substantial matters that could potentially alter the meaning of your contribution.

Transcripts of the oral history interviews are all lightly edited to make them flow more smoothly when read as written text. This includes removing 'throat clearing' words and phrases such as 'um', 'er', 'sort of', 'you know', or obvious repetition that impedes the readability. The original phrasing is retained in the audio file.

Unpublished memoirs are lightly edited, such as correcting obvious typographical or grammatical errors; correcting obvious errors of fact; correcting misspelt names.

Published material remains as in the original.

Vietnam or Viet Nam

We recognise that many people who served in Vietnam still prefer to use 'Viet Nam', so we'll leave that in your contributions.

How to cite this page: ' House rules ', URL: https://vietnamwar.govt.nz/about/house-rules, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 09-Dec-2020