We use Melville Talks and social media to engage with our diverse community on a range of topics and encourage you to share your ideas, comments and opinions with us and others in the community through these platforms.
While we support lively, open discussion and debate, we expect our community to demonstrate a certain level of courtesy, ethical behaviour and respect when interacting with us and/or others online, so everyone can feel safe and comfortable participating and contributing. We routinely moderate content, as resources allow, and don’t permit certain types of content, which may be removed at our sole discretion.
Read our house rules below which set out how we moderate content and what sort of behaviour we expect from our community when interacting with us and others online.
House Rules for Melville Talks and Social Media
Generally, we don’t remove content submitted by the community, unless it breaks one of the following house rules. Our aim is to ensure our channels are appropriate for people of all ages, backgrounds and beliefs.
When We May Remove Content
- It contains copyrighted or trademarked material – only share content you have created or have the rights to share.
- It may offend someone – this includes swearing and/or language or links to content that could reasonably be considered violent, obscene, profane, racist or sexist.
- It is intolerant or discriminatory – this includes a person’s race, culture, appearance, gender, sexual preference, religion or age.
- It is threatening, bullying or harassing someone – we want our social media channels to be a welcoming and safe space for everyone, and we won’t tolerate threatening, hateful, shaming or bullying behaviour.
- It personally and/or commercially unjustly vilifies a person or business.
- It is promoting or engaging in unlawful, untruthful or distasteful behaviour – this includes defamatory/derogatory remarks which could damage the reputation of a person/organisation, or the promotion/glamorisation of terrorism, organised crime, hate groups, child or adult exploitation (including sexual), suicide and self-injury, tobacco, alcohol or illegal drugs.
- It contains misleading information – we encourage our community to share their opinions, however we reserve the right to remove or address misleading information or factual errors.
- It may endanger you or another person’s privacy or safety – to help protect our community, staff and contractors, we will remove comments containing personal phone numbers, addresses (including emails) or any other personally identifiable information.
- It is off-topic, repetitive or irrelevant or trolling– we want to keep our discussions focused and may remove comments that are irrelevant to the topic at hand or that are repeated indiscriminately across a number of posts.
- It promotes, advertises or seeks endorsements for a business, product or service – unless we have specifically stated otherwise.
- It is apparent that it of a scamming nature.
The above are general guidelines for when we may remove content and we reserve the right to remove any other content we deem to be inappropriate, or to block users who don’t comply with these house rules, or for any other reason at our discretion.
Our house rules are closely aligned to Facebook’s Community Standards, Instagram’s Community Guidelines and Twitter’s Rules and we encourage you to read these before engaging with us on social media.
Monitoring hours
We monitor Melville Talks and social media between 8.30am and 5.00pm (AWST), Monday to Friday.
Reporting Inappropriate Content
Social Media
If you see inappropriate content on our social media channels, we encourage you to report it directly to the relevant platform using the in-built reporting function:
Melville Talks
If you see inappropriate content on Melville Talks, we encourage you to report it directly to us via email to talk@melville.wa.gov.au.
How We Deal With Inappropriate Content
Social Media
If we see inappropriate content, we will hide and/or delete the content, depending on what is most appropriate in the situation. We will not notify you if we moderate your content.
Melville Talks
If we see inappropriate content, we will remove the content and you will receive a notification via email. This email will inform you why we removed your content and you will be able to review and re-submit your content in a way that does not breach our house rules.
If you disagree with our decision, you can contact our engagement team at talk@melville.wa.gov.au. While they have final say, you can indicate to them why you think your content should be published.
Content within a survey or submission may be altered to remove identifiable information. The word would be replaced with either **** or the word HIDDEN.
A participant who repeatedly and flagrantly flouts the moderation rules may be suspended from access to contribution on Melville Talks digital engagement. The period will reflect both the severity and consistency of the breach.
Terms of Use for our Website and Social Media
These house rules should be read in conjunction with our Terms of Use, as well as our Privacy Policy, which apply to our social media channels and website.
Keep up to date on Melville Talks
Don’t forget that you can follow projects on Melville Talks to receive email notification every time an update is posted for a project.