The Poet Sanctuary Terms Of Service And Guidelines
(Last Updated: May 2012)
The Poet Sanctuary is provided as a free public service to you, the poet. As a free public service we reserve the right to refuse service to whomever we choose. As a member of our website you are subject to the following Terms Of Service which may be updated from time to time without notice.
We do our best to make The Poet Sanctuary one of the best free poetry communities on the web, however, as with many sites, there are certain rules of the community that we ask our members and visitors to follow.
We've set aside our own guidelines that we'd like our members to follow while posting in the community to keep things civil, interactive, and friendly. We ask our members to please follow these simple rules. Breaking these guidelines may cause your account to be suspended for a period of time warranted by our Admin staff depending on your offense or may even merit banishment from our forums in which you will no longer be able to be an active participant in our community. As a free service, we reserve the right to do so.
General Forum Posting Guidelines
In order to keep TPS active you must reply to at least 3 other writers' posts for every one that you make.
We all appreciate mild and supportive comments. Voluntary staff work hard to ensure that each post within the forum receives at least 3 replies. When every member contributes replies at a 3:1 ratio, it helps with reviews to your work, yours to others, and keeps the site running effectively.
Please limit yourself to posting 3 new pieces of work in a given board per day. We also ask that you post your poem on “one” board only; we will delete excessive posts to avoid flooding. TPS is a family oriented site.
NOTE: The Poet Sanctuary is a free managed community. We reserve the right to remove, edit, or move any messages for any reason. When this is done, we will notify you via Private Message.
To Those Of You Seeking Constructive Criticism
We provide a separate board for comprehensive critique. If you're interested in receiving advice on how to improve your work, simply click here and go to our Writers Workshop. Please keep in mind that this particular board alone is dedicated to overt criticism. Rules for using the Writers Workshop boards differ to the rest of the website so please take a moment to read them before participating! A mature attitude is required in this section so you won't take offense at harsh reviews and re-write suggestions.
TPS Guidelines/Terms Of Service
Try limiting yourself to posting 3 new pieces of work a day. Posting mass amounts of work won’t necessarily gain you more feedback but most likely, will ward members away from viewing your posts.
For each post you make, please leave feedback on 3 other writers' pieces. Giving replies helps you and other members receive a variety of feedback. We welcome mild comments and reviews. The Writer's Workshop is a separate board for members seeking harsher, constructive critiques.
Upon placing your work on our forum, please make an offline copy for yourself. TPS is not liable for any lost work. Should you be banned from our forum we are not responsible, nor are we entitled, to send you a copy of your posted material. This also applies to feedback, Private Messages, and any other material or discussions anywhere on the website.
Respect each other and our differences. TPS is an international, multi-cultural site where members have a wide range of differing principles. Should you post in a language other than English we appreciate when you also include an English translation in the original thread.
Discussion topics that are found to be overly controversial, causing arguments between members, offensive, and/or discriminatory will be automatically removed from the site. These include but are not limited to: topics discussing religion and topics discussing sexual orientation. We no longer have a philosophical debate forum for good reason. In most cases if the thread would have gone there in the past, it will no longer be allowed on site. If unsure about suitability for posting, please send it to an admin before submitting.
Detailed criticism and suggested re-writes are not appropriate in Realm Of Poetry threads. Please go toour Writer’s Workshop.
We do not abide posts that denigrate members from other poetry sites or TPS members. Any posts found containing this subject matter will be deleted. TPS is based on respect and we recommend you acquire much of that same respect when posting. If you wish to speak of anyone in an adverse fashion, please keep his or her identity confidential. TPS does not tolerate libel, defamation, or harassment of our members or staff, either privately or publicly.
Deal with personal disagreements off the site. If you conflict with someone on the forum, discuss it maturely through private messages or email! Do not post disputes in discussion boards or continue an argument in the thread where disagreement began. Should another person do so, please report it to the Administrative staff. Clashes must be dealt with sensibly and privately.
FLAMING IS not acceptable! Soft critiques are welcome, however denigrating an authors piece simply because you do not like it is rude and selfish. If you cannot be polite and positive, then please do not reply. Please refrain from making unkind remarks towards an author. Flaming is not permitted on the boards or in Private Messages. Anyone found leaving flaming comments will receive a warning and, if these types of comments continue, we issue Red Warnings. After 3 Red Warnings, we ban the account. If you simply do not like a write or disagree with expressed opinions, skip over it.
Explicit Material - We don’t suppress creativity in what you choose to “write”. Certain writing is not suitable to post in our family-oriented community. When found on the forum, we will delete threads with the following content; bashing any race, gender, age, sexual preference, social status, political or religious view. We do not allow overly explicit material. Any sexually explicit material that we deem distastefully written will be removed! You agreed to COPPA law upon registering, which means we try to keep all content on our forum PG13 compliant. If you post a write that includes tastefully written or very vague explicit sexual references, please put an Explicit/Mature/Language warning in your title before you post it! We also do not accept crude work: this includes bathroom humor, any offensive writes, and bestiality. If you're not sure that your piece is too overly explicit or inappropriate for posting, please send it to an Admin for approval beforehand!
Picture/Avatar Restrictions - TPS does not allow images that display nudity or obscene vulgarity. TPS is considered a family oriented site with our member age starting at 13y/o. We do operate under the COPPA law which means users that are under 17 have access to the site. We will remove any images found on TPS containing lewd material and Warn or Ban the person who posts them.
Plagiarism - The Poet Sanctuary does not tolerate plagiarism! Any account found on the forum posting plagiarized work (not your original material) is permanently banned immediately. This includes sketches, paintings and photos on the Canvas board and songs in The Songwriter’s Block. If you use excerpts from any other work, that is NOT your own, we strongly recommend that you give credit where credit is due.
Homework help - please do not ask for help with homework or assignments. If you joined solely for TPS member’s feedback to assist you gaining higher grades, we will terminate your account.
Copyright - The Poet Sanctuary IS NOT and CANNOT be held responsible for any lost or stolen work. The author is responsible to keep copies and properly copyright their material before posting it anywhere on the Internet. TPS is provided as a free service to showcase your work; we do not hold any legal rights to your work. Note: We have set up the forum so that only registered account members may view author's postings however, this is the only security measure that we, and many other sites, have. We strongly advocate that you copyright your material before sharing it on the Internet in any way.
Report TOS Violations! If you find a thread, comment, signature or image that you find personally offensive, or feel may be against our Terms Of Service, please report it to the Administrative staff.
Account Warnings - TPS has a “three strikes and you're out” policy! Upon major violations of our Terms Of Service offenders receive a 1 - 3 warning on their profiles. The warning is viewable only to those members with the warning and our Administrative staff. Should the member receive 3 warnings the account is then permanently banned. Also, warnings are a permanent fixture on your account; we will not remove them! Please do not try creating a new account to rid yourself of these warnings: we monitor extra accounts and the warnings carry over!
Banishment - Upon creating a membership with our website you agree that we may permanently terminate your membership should you violate any TOS, written or unwritten, without prior notification. As a free service we reserve the right to terminate any and all accounts that breach our terms; this also applies to accounts with matching IP addresses. TPS is not and cannot be held liable for yours or others' actions.
The Poet Sanctuary's Anti-Spam Policy
THE POET SANCTUARY DOES NOT SUPPORT SPAM/ADVERTISING! Please, do not spam our members with your website links.
Be warned: if you joined TPS for the sole purpose of ripping and spamming our members, or for advertising of any kind, you account will be banned from the forum without warning. Members may not Spam here.
SPAM includes promoting your personal poetry site, blog links, etc where you post poetry. We also monitor signatures and thread posts so do not include links. Youtube, and similar audios, are permitted only where the link is directly to a spoken poem or to a song, performed by you and posted on TPS’ appropriate board. Links to collections of writing or songs are not acceptable. We will be remove any Spam found on the site. We will also remove it from the TPS Facebook group.
On The Poet Sanctuary, members may use their link as Homepage in their Profile. Please note that member profiles and e-mail addresses are “private” and we highly monitor private messages through the site’s system. We will not support Spam so do not do it here.
All text posted on The Poet Sanctuary expresses the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the owners and administrators of The Poet Sanctuary.
All submitted items are Copyright © to their original author/creator.
Website images on this site are Copyright © 2002- 2018 to The Poet Sanctuary
Please copyright © your material: we are not responsible for stolen work.
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Thank you and have a nice day!