Social Media

Haddenham.net is the community website for the village of Haddenham in Buckinghamshire UK, with direct links to two social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter.

Administration & Moderation Policy

for the Haddenham.net Community Facebook page

The Haddenham.net community Facebook page was established with the following primary aims:

• To disseminate news and information relating to activities of interest to residents of Haddenham and its very close neighbouring villages
• To complement the Haddenham.net community website by highlighting and pointing to longer reports or news items that are too detailed to be published on Facebook (this policy statement being a good example)
• To provide a forum for the sharing of ideas and views, in a mutually respectful style, about the village of Haddenham
• To offer a communication channel for residents to seek recommendations of good local service providers, on the basis of direct personal experience of fellow residents
• To provide a platform for the loss of pets and personal items to be communicated in the hope of re-uniting them with their owners
• To assist those who are relatively new to the village to seek helpful information and practical help

What the Facebook page is NOT:

• It is not a commercial platform — no commercial Ads are allowed. (Minor exceptions to this occur when commercial organisations are involved in charitable or social activities, which moderators judge to be deserving of publicity)
• It does not cover events and news items that relate specifically to Thame or Aylesbury — these towns have lots of communication channels of their own
• As a very locally focused platform, the Haddenham.net Facebook page will not include posts that cover news, events or activities further away than Cuddington, Dinton, Stone, Aston Sandford, and Kingsey. Exceptions will occasionally be posted for activities that involve a high proportion of Haddenham residents taking place outside (but within a 5-mile radius) of the village.
• It is not a platform on which to criticise individual officers or leaders of local organisations or to 'bad mouth' local businesses. If you wish to do so, please write direct to those you wish to criticise.

Membership

There is nothing to stop anyone with a Facebook account from viewing the content of the Haddenham.net Facebook page — it is in the public domain. However, those 'joining' the page (and thus able to post to the platform) will need to be:
1) Haddenham residents;
2) close relatives of those living here;
3) former residents who continue to maintain close and supportive links with the village;
4) those currently working in Haddenham.

Moderators will also 'join' those applicants who reside in the immediate neighbouring villages (see paragraph above).

Unless there are other specific qualifying criteria, residents of Aylesbury, Thame and outlying villages will not be permitted to post to the page — there are many alternative Facebook pages available to those individuals.

The Role of Moderators

There are three moderators — the editor of the community website plus two others. All three monitor the Facebook page as volunteers, and maintain a part-time 'watching brief' to ensure that all initiating posts (new threads) are suitable for publication, according to the criteria outlined in this document. Sometimes this involves careful judgment calls and we take the responsibility very seriously.

It is not practicable or feasible for moderators to monitor all secondary postings (i.e., those in response to new threads) in real time — to do so would require them to be permanently fixated on their PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. They have lives to lead like everyone else!

There is a formal 'reporting' system if a secondary post appears that might be considered by some to be unacceptable — all such reports are considered by the moderators (see below).

We do not want to act as censors — we may not personally agree with some postings but we would like to maintain a platform for free speech as far as reasonably possible. However, there are limits (see below). Very few postings have ever been blocked — the total is less than 25 postings since the FB page was created (representing considerably less than 1 in 500 posts).

Permitted Postings

When the Haddenham.net community Facebook page was created, it was assumed that the local community would maintain friendly dialogue and would be happy to exchange ideas and views in a mutually respectful manner, even when strong differences of opinion existed. In the main, this expectation has been (and continues to be) met. However, there are occasional exceptions.

With an emphasis on initiating threads, the following postings have always been on our 'to be blocked' list.
Those which are:

• Profane
• Obscene
• Defamatory
• Racist
• Seditious
• Factually incorrect and overtly misleading

Moderators also block obscene or vulgar images.

Approximately one-in-every-two adult residents of Haddenham is linked to our Facebook page and we would like to maintain an open forum which encourages even greater levels of participation.

Reporting 'Unacceptable Posts

On some (thankfully rare) occasions, posts appear that do not maintain a level of civility that the vast majority of users seek. There are also some "wind-up merchants" who delight in generating a potentially disproportionate response from others. Unfortunately, not everyone spots this kind of input, and so the blue touch paper can be lit!

We would encourage any member of the Haddenham.net Facebook page to report potentially 'unacceptable' posts through the formal reporting channel provided on the Facebook platform. The moderators will review the reported post and assess its appropriateness against the criteria outlined in this document.

Those repeatedly posting threads or comments that are judged by moderators to be inappropriate will be temporarily muted or permanently blocked from using the Haddenham.net Facebook page.

What do we mean by 'inappropriate'?

Here are some guidelines:

• Sexually explicit, spiteful, discriminatory or other vulgar or inflammatory language
• Comments that harass, threaten, abuse, bully or criticise others in a personal manner
• Personal attacks on any FB contributor or moderator
• Personalised criticisms of individuals who are acting in an official capacity on behalf of village organisations
• Party political viewpoints
• Snide, vitriolic, malicious, mocking or overtly sarcastic comments that seek to denigrate others
• Comments expressed in aggressive language that is disrespectful of those who hold different opinions
• 'Bad mouthing' local businesses

As mentioned above, the moderators are all volunteers. They will have to make judgement calls when posts are inconsistent with the criteria outlined in this document.

On rare occasions, those looking to post unacceptable items on the Haddenham.net Facebook page will be 'muted' for a short period — typically a few days. On even rarer occasions those causing moderators to expend a disproportionate amount of their time and attention examining potentially unacceptable posts will be blocked from using the platform This action will always be one of 'last resort'.

Moderators will also consider blocking from the Haddenham.net Facebook page anyone who repeatedly uses other local social media platforms to criticise or bully individual moderators of this page — this is particularly offensive when those alternative social media sites knowingly block any right of reply.

If you wish to comment on this policy document, please feel free to email the editor here:

haddenham.net@hotmail.com