Community Guidelines

Welcome to Freedom Gardens. We strive to make this social networking website the best possible experience for as many members as possible. The guidelines are developed to maintain the integrity of Freedom Garden’s mission, your ability to use the site safely as a method of free exchange of local information, gardening instruction, and Freedom Garden’s particular brand of social revolution, one plot at a time.

By using Freedom Gardens, you agree to follow these guidelines.

By using Freedom Gardens, you further agree to abide by the Freedom Gardens Terms of Service. The guidelines below do not replace the Terms of Service. Freedom Gardens staff will assume members have read said terms and will not take ignorance of any guidelines as an excuse for not following the rules, policies, and guidelines outlined here and/or elsewhere.

We reserve the right to remove, modify or move posts at our discretion and without explanation, and we may terminate your account at our sole discretion. Please contact us if you do not understand any of the rules, guidelines or policies outlined below.

These guidelines may be changed by Freedom Gardens at any time. Please check back regularly to ensure that you are kept up-to-date of the latest guideline modifications.

**For media: Please direct all media inquiries to Jules Dervaes at info@freedomgardens.org. Do not post messages on the forum or elsewhere on Freedom Gardens.

External Interests

• Business Promotion: Advertising, publicity, or any other type of business promotion, including services, publications, workshops, events, etc., either your own or a colleague’s, are not permitted on Freedom Gardens, except in specifically designated areas. Recommendations of resources for gardening and related pursuits are allowed, but advertising is not.
• Gleaning Contacts: It is not permitted to glean information from Freedom Gardens and use that information to contact someone for commercial or any other purpose.
• Solicitation: No one, whether individuals, groups, or businesses, for profit or not for profit may not solicit users for any project or purpose external to the site – public, private, or commercial. Further, it is not acceptable for you to solicit help in the form of signatures, money, gifts or donations—either for personal interests or external causes. One exception to this is for relevant causes related to Freedom Garden interests—in this case please clear such calls with the site administrator before creating such a post.
• Signatures: To keep forum posts uncluttered and to avoid business promotion via signatures or posts made merely to display a signature, we do not permit use of signatures.
• Profiles: Do not use your profile to promote your or others’ businesses, organizations, or blogs by posting URLs or business/organization names in your profile caption, under your profile picture, or in comments.

Behavior

• Negative attitudes: Swearing, personal attacks, and any other related negative behavior have no place at Freedom Gardens. Dialogue, discussion, and spirited disagreement are welcomed—but it’s important to keep the dialogue constructive. If you have an issue with the nature of the discussion in the forums or in the tone of journal/blog posts, please bring it to the attention of a moderator.
• Political and religious discussion: These topics are not relevant to this website, and could create unnecessary divisiveness among site members. Please use other forums outside of Freedom Gardens to discuss these issues.
• Adult content: Out of respect for members who may have differing levels of tolerance for adult-themed language, topics, innuendos, links, and/or images, adult content is prohibited.
• Privacy: Any personal information, whether it’s yours, another member’s, or of people outside of Freedom Gardens, cannot be posted in forum posts and journal/blog entries or comments. This protects everyone on the site, as well as Freedom Gardens. This includes snail mail addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses.
• Posting relevance: Whenever possible, please keep your posts focused on what you specifically know about a particular topic.
• Posting etiquette: Do not flood the board with posts to build up post count. Everyone on the forums has a valuable perspective, and it’s vital that we all have a chance to comment and share information.

Private Messages

• Exclusivity: Keep the contents of all private messages between you and the original senders—unless you have their permission to share it with others. This includes private messages to you from the site’s moderators and administrators. Any violation of this privacy trust will result in a temporary or permanent ban from the private message forums.
• Sensitive information: For your protection as well as that of the site membership and Freedom Gardens, do not share information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, or other essential data on the site, even in private exchanges. Sharing of less sensitive information is also done on the site at your own risk.

Get-Togethers

• Freedom Gardens Get-togethers: Freedom Gardens Get-togethers may only be organized and announced in the Get-togethers section, not in the forum or in comments. See the Get-togethers Guidelines for further rules.

Final Points

• Posting rights: FreedomGardens.org has the right to edit, move or delete any forum post, blog entry or comment at any time. If you have a question about this kind of site modification, please address it directly to the site administrator in a private exchange.
• Member accounts: Freedom Gardens also reserves the right to ban members from parts or all of FreedomGardens.org as it sees fit. This is to protect the privacy of Freedom Garden’s members, the integrity of the site’s information, and the integrity of Freedom Gardens.
• Liability: By joining Freedom Gardens you agree that all information posted is to be acted on at your own risk. The administrators, moderators, webmasters, and Freedom Gardens are not accountable or liable for damage, injury or losses consequent to the use of any information on this site.
• Brand exclusivity: FREEDOM GARDENSsm, OUR EARTH, WE DIG IT, and the FREEDOM GARDENS logo are trademarks of Dervaes Institute and may not be copied, imitated or used, in whole or in part, without the prior written permission of the Dervaes Institute.

Last update: 2/25/09