We’ve all seen it before. Online discussions that spiral out of control and lose touch with common decency as nasty comments are flung across cyberspace. While we trust that dialogues on this website won’t become ugly, we decided to set some community ground rules and expectations.

Respect yourself and other community members

Before hitting the ‘submit’ button, please reflect for a moment on your comment or blog post – your choice of words, your tone, etc. True, it’s tricky on the internet to know how your comments might be perceived by others, but you are responsible for what you say.

We understand that you may be passionate about green entrepreneurship and related issues, but this is a community and we will not tolerate insulting, threatening or otherwise abusive remarks. Our Green Entrepreneurship Team will do a light amount of moderation, but we rely on you to maintain a high level of civility and respect.

Be ready to share and inspire

This is your platform, and its success will depend on your contributions. We expect you to feed the dialogues with your thoughts and ideas! As a Co-Creation Community member, all of your contributions are released under a Creative Commons license (see below for more details), in line with our belief that the future depends on an open and sustainable economic model.

Build on each other’s ideas

We understand that you might not have the time to read word-for-word every comment in a particular dialogue thread, but out of respect for other Co-Creation Community members, please try to read or at least skim what has already been said before posting a new comment or blog entry. Be curious! Be interested! Constructive and positive criticism (“Yes, and…”), while more demanding, will take us much farther than negative criticism (“No, but…”).

No politics

We believe there is a distinction to be drawn between politics and policies. We invite you to discuss government policies and even party platforms, where relevant. But when it comes to particular politicians and political parties, we find the discussion often gets out of hand. Because we want to concentrate on the substance, and politics should stay out of the dialogues and debates.

Self-regulation (Community Panel)

We consider peer-to-peer reviews are the best way to ensure that a community establishes its own rules without Big Brother looking over everybody’s shoulder.

To this end, a Community Panel consisting of an ever-changing selection of volunteers from the Co-Creation Community will convene whenever necessary. The members of the Community Panel will decide among themselves how to deal with a community member who abuses this platform.

If you find blog posts or comments that you consider are not contributing to the Co-Creation Community’s purpose, that are spam, offensive or just empty comments designed to increase the member’s quantitative complementary currency, you can click on the report form. If your suspicions are confirmed, the case will be submitted to the Community Panel, which will decide if the member should be allowed to continue participating.

If offending members are still interested in participating in our community, they will be appointed to participate in the next panel, as they are probably the best expert on how to scam our system.

If you have Skype and a schedule that allows you to participate in the Community Panel during normal working hours, please indicate this on the sign-up registration form. Your participation will be acknowledged in quantitative currency as is any other contribution to the Co-Creation Community.

Language

As much as we would like to encourage the expression of local cultures and traditions, to facilitate dialogue among a diverse community, we ask you to limit your comments and blog entries to English. English is a foreign language for many of us, and we all have different levels of skills and comfort, but we ask for everybody to at least try and for the community to be understanding with regard to this decision.

Privacy

Generation Europe Foundation respects the privacy of its community members. Community members have control over the privacy settings of their personal profiles.

Members will not be contacted for marketing purposes unless they explicitly agree to this. Members’ private data or information will not be sold to third parties.

Member’s private data or information will only be shared or used by third parties if community members specifically agree to this, and for the following purposes only: (1) Qualifying for coaching and mentoring on business ideas (2) Attendance at the Co-Creation Workshop in December or future meetings.

Licensing and Copyright

We do not believe that ideas can be owned. Ideas are to be shared. At the same time, today´s system of copyright – and intellectual property rights, more generally – offers rules related to the spread of ideas. For this reason, all of the original content produced by the Generation Europe Foundation or its community members in this context is hereby released under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike). We do not claim ownership over any third-party content that is embedded, quoted or linked on our site.

By posting content on our website you grant Generation Europe Foundation the worldwide, royalty free and non-exclusive rights to quote, reproduce, modify and publish your content in order to display, distribute, and promote the posted content for activities related to the purpose of the Forum on Green Entrepreneurship initiative, e.g. our GreEn Compass and Roadmap.

This work by Generation Europe Foundation Forum on Green Entrepreneurship is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 Belgium License. Based on a work at www.generation-europe.eu.

Non-responsibility clause

We will check all of the content in accordance with the above rules, but in any case Generation Europe Foundation cannot be held responsible for any incorrect or inappropriate content published on the website.

Generation Europe Foundation cannot in any case be held responsible for losses or damage that could result from the consultation and use of its websites nor from the connection of this site with other sites.

Have fun!