UK Moderators Manual

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Moderators Manual
Freecycle - UK Faq

UK Manual - Updates

Freecycle® U.K. Frequently Asked Questions - Rules

Contents

8. RULES

8. RULES

8.1 Advertising local events - is that ok?

Generally speaking, no. Refer the poster to your Freecycle Cafe group, if you have one. However, we allow local free events, particularly environment-related, Earth Day, recycling education events, global warming info events, etc.

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8.2 Age limit for members - is there one?

No.

However, Yahoo do require users under 13 to have parental consent and create a family account:

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html

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8.3 Borrowing and swapping - are they acceptable?

No - refer the poster to your Freecycle Cafe group, if you have one.

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8.4 Car seats - are they allowed?

Car seats are allowed on Freecycle® groups. Ideally mods shouldn't be limiting what members offer over and above the basics within the main rule, but they have the right to, if they feel they need to for their own conscience. The general feeling on UKMS is to give the decision on whether to take a seat or not to the member wanting one. The more freedom we can give the members the better.

When we start limiting things we potentially leave ourselves more open to legal issues as effectively if you say something can't go through because it is unsafe, then let something else through, by implication you are saying that item is safe. Once you start doing that where do you stop?

You may however have strong personal feelings on the matter and want to ban them on your group. This is okay too, but we would prefer you to run a well balanced poll to allow the members to decide.

You might want to send out the following link, or add it to your links page to refer people to. It details all the new elements of the car seat law in the UK:

http://www.childcarseats.org.uk/

A draft Admin message on the subject can be found at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKmodsquad/files/Admin?

Please feel free to adapt it for use with your group.

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8.5 Charities - are they allowed?

Yes - local charities are especially welcomed. Charities need to follow the same rules as individual members.
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8.6 Crash helmets & safety issues, do we get involved?

Ideally mods shouldn't be limiting what members offer over and above the basics within the main rule, but they have the right to, if they feel they need to for their own conscience. The general feeling on UKMS is the more freedom we can give the members the better.

When we start limiting things we potentially leave ourselves more open to legal issues as effectively if you say something can't go through because it is unsafe, then let something else through, by implication you are saying that item is safe. Once you start doing that where do you stop?

You may however have strong personal feelings on the matter and want to ban them on your group. This is okay too, but we would prefer you to run a well-balanced poll to allow the members to decide.

You may wish to inform members of the following link on Crash Helmet safety:

http://www.dirtbikerider.co.uk/website_content/how_to/ride/safely_crash_helmet

http://www.brake.org.uk/index.php?p=489

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8.7 Cross-posting - what is it and what can we do to reduce it?

Cross-posting is sending your Offer or Wanted request to more than one group at the same time.

It is very time consuming to monitor and unless all surrounding groups have a similar policy it can be very confusing to members where groups have different rules. Some groups send out an admin message to their group as a whole or to individual members along the lines of:

WHEN YOU POST AN OFFER OR A WANTED, POST IT *ONLY* TO YOUR HOME GROUP (the one you are closest to). If you haven't received a response after 24-48 hours, then post it to the next nearest group and so on and so on. Some of your neighbouring groups would consider it courtesy to wait 24-48 hours between each posting.

This simultaneous cross-posting is a problem for several reasons, most of which are contrary to the spirit of Freecycle:

It drastically increases the number of messages in each group
It is not fair to the members of your home community to get beaten to a good item by someone far away
It wastes fuel and increases pollution because people drive long distances to pick up items
It forces too many people to compete for the same item
It causes the person cross-posting to deal with excess responses
It is the cause of many no-shows when people realize how far they'll have to drive
It impedes the building of a local community through recycling items to our neighbours.
It severely restricts members with no transport and limited funds

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8.8 Distance - how far away is it acceptable for a member to live?

A member does not have to live anywhere near a particular Freecycle® group in order to be a member of that group: if, for example, they regularly work or visit family or friends in a town that is several hundred miles away from their home address, they can still participate fully in that town's group.

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8.9 Firearms - what is the rule?

Firearms are not permitted on Freecycle®. Firearms include shotguns, rifles, and pistols. All weapons are banned from Freecycle. When in doubt, the local moderator should feel empowered to not allow the post in order to be extra safe.

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8.10 Food - is it allowed?

There is no official policy on whether or not food can be offered on Freecycle®. It meets the requirements of being 'free, legal, and appropriate for all ages' so there is no obvious reason to ban it other than safety grounds. Each moderation team must decide what their local policy is going to be. Some moderator's believe that open foods are dangerous and could be tampered with. When people OFFER or WANTED food, the uses may not always be obvious and it may not be for human consumption. For example, people use baby formula as a fish or rat food, cola's can be used for removing lime scale and in a number of science projects, any organic matter can be used for composting. Various foodstuffs and their packaging could be used for craft projects or art installations.

Another question that arises is whether food should be offered if it is beyond the BEST BY or the USE BEFORE dates. USE BEFORE dates are generally important dates after which there is a substantial risk of food poisoning, whereas BEST BY dates are suggestions and may not indicate an increased risk of food poisoning.

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8.11 Fur - what are the guidelines?

Occasional posts may come up offering fur. For some people this may be divisive and some members may have strong objections to the use of fur. However, there is no reason for a moderator to reject a post asking for, or offering, fur. A moderator's job is not to police a site nor is it to impose their views on their member. As a moderator your job is to make sure things are free, legal, and appropriate to all ages. If you have reason to believe that the fur being offered or asked for is endangered, you can check the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) website ( http://www.cites.org/ ) or DEFRA (Department of the Environment, Fishing and Rural Affairs) website ( http://www.defra.gov.uk/ ).

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8.12 How do we use the ® mark?

Local groups need to use the official Freecycle® logo, exactly as it appears on:

http://uk.freecycle.org

on your local Yahoo! group sites, in articles, press releases & automatic notices: The first "prominent display" or introduction of the mark (i.e., the first time you use the term Freecycle in a document) needs to be distinguished from other text with an (R) or ®. This is in addition to the attribution statement. The other instances of Freecycle can be without an (R) or ® marking, though it is still important to capitalize or colour them to show they are not just common words.

Link to the relevant section of the Mod Manual: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/eu_trademark

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8.13 Landfill test - what is this?

Now this is one of the easiest things about Freecycle®. It's the moderators' mantra "Does it save anything from landfill?" If yes, allow, no, deny. However, some local groups choose to allow local free events and local free services to be posted, especially free recycling events, like Green Fairs and Earth Day events.

If you can potentially save it from landfill, no matter how small it is and if it is also "free, legal and appropriate for all ages" and doesn't fall foul of any other rules or guidelines, it is allowed.

Things like people asking for information, rooms to rent, advertising bands, wanting advice or tradesmen's numbers are all non-tangible, therefore do not save anything from landfill so are generally not posted on main Freecycle groups. They are ideal, however, on your nearest Freecycle cafe group, so do encourage them to be sent there! Borrowing and swapping similarly. However, a good community building option would be to encourage members decide where they would prefer such posts to be sent.

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8.14 Personal details on the list - what are the rules?

Keep them off the list if at all possible. There may be exceptional circumstances which would mean that you might chose to allow an individual to include a phone number in an OFFER posting, for example, but this should not be the norm.

Link to the relevant section of the Mod Manual: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/notices_safety

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8.15 Petrol costs - is it ok to request this?

By and large it is acceptable to offer to pay petrol costs if someone has offered to deliver an item to you, but it is unacceptable to attach any "strings" to a Freecycle® offer, so no, you cannot request them.
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8.16 Pets & animals - offers, wanteds & pet mods - what is allowed?

The question whether or not to allow pets and other animals to be offered on Freecycle® is controversial.

Aside from pets, moderators may have to consider whether they are going to allow rodents (such as pet mice), feed animals (mice, rats, etc are often fed to snakes and other reptiles) and livestock (generally poultry of some sort).

There is no uniform Freecycle Policy regarding the offering of or asking for pets and animals. Each group is free to form their own opinion based on local circumstances and perhaps a member vote. When deciding how to deal with animals a moderator should take into account their geographical area, the predominant views of the area they live in, and their own 'comfort zone'.

Some groups have decided to allow people to OFFER pets, but not post WANTEDs as some people asking for pets could be looking for 'puppy mill' stock. Putting some links to local animal rescue centres in the links section is helpful. As a general rule, adverts for lost pets have no place on Freecycle, however, these types of posts can be appropriate on Cafe Groups.

There is a 'pet moderator' handbook available at: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/mod_handbook

Pet moderators can share and learn about available animal resources including shelters, rescues and other animal lover issues on the Pet Mods group

To have your Pet Moderator invited to this invitation-only group, please submit the following information to: freecyclepetmods-owner@yahoogroups.com

Group name & Link
Pet moderator Name and email
Group owners name

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8.17 Recommendations for services/tradespeople - is that ok?

It is best to refer the poster to your Cafe group, if you have one.

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8.18 Reselling - what are the guidelines?

While claiming or asking for items in order to resell or redistribute them does not violate Freecycle® guidelines, some members prefer to give their items directly to the people who will use them personally. For this reason, members are entitled to ask responders if they intend to resell the item in question before agreeing to the transaction.

Resellers MUST disclose their intention to resell/redistribute any item when accepting an offer and when making wanted posts.

Members who fail to disclose this information when asked or when posting a wanted need to be issued a strike*, reminded of the rules and kept on moderation.

A strike is warning for a serious misdemeanour; two strikes can lead to a member being unsubscribed - at the owner's discretion.

Link to the relevant section of the Mod Manual: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/notices_reseller

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8.19 Sob stories - what constitutes one and why are they not recommended?

A sob story is anything that might be considered to be designed to appeal to the sympathy of a reader. Actually although sometimes annoying, sob stories are not actually prohibited. Some stories are quite good; deciding which is sob and which is not is very subjective. However, they cannot be verified, and may simply be the attempts of unscrupulous people to gain personal advantage, although members are able to judge this for themselves

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8.20 Tickets and vouchers - are they allowed?

This is up to you. Often moderators refer messages for tickets and vouchers to cafe groups. Please see the answer to the question - What items are NOT allowed on Freecycle®?

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8.21 "No Trading" - what does that mean in the rules - no selling or no swapping?

This is a confusing rule for us Brits because the Americans mean something different when they say trading. They tend to mean swapping. In fact, members who are traders (i.e. sell items away from Freecycle) CAN be members and they CAN even get items with the intention of selling them on, although some groups choose to prohibit this.

Members can't sell, buy or swap items ON a Freecycle group but they are allowed to do any of these things with the items afterward under the following conditions.

If someone posts an WANTED planning to sell the item afterwards they must declare it up front.
If someone answers an OFFER posting planning to sell the item they must declare this if asked by the person offering the item.
If local group policy does not prohibit selling on.

The following admin message is useful to explain this. http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/notices_reseller

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8.22 What does misusing the word `Freecycle®' mean?

The term "Freecycle" must be used as an adjective, never as a noun or verb. For example:
Please don't use the words `Freecycler', `Freecyclin', `Freecycling', `freecycles', `Freecycling group.'
Please don't say anything like `Please Freecycle your xxx.'
New groups may use the word Freecycle in their group name/title, but should not be approved with any variations of the word Freecycle in their name, title or description, like freecycler, freecycles.

The term "Freecycle" in text must always be capitalized to set it off from the surrounding text. Example: Yes, Freecycle groups are great!

Link to the relevant section of the Mod Manual: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/eu_trademark

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8.23 What items are NOT allowed on FreecycleŽ?

Please do not allow anything that:

is not free
has 'strings attached'
is illegal
is not appropriate for all ages (the post or the item)

Deciding whether to accept vouchers and tickets is up to individual groups. Most UK groups choose to route them to Cafes. The acceptance of animal posts is also an individual group decision.

Please see the answer to the question - Landfill test - what is this?

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8.24 Which rules are down to individual groups to decide?

Contrary to popular belief, most of them. The core rules that are mandatory for all groups are shown in section two of the Mod Manual at: http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/

Everything else is at the discretion of individual group owners/moderators. It is entirely up to individual groups whether, for example, they have a "No Pets" rule, or a "must give location" rule, or rules restricting the number or frequency of WANTED postings that may be submitted by individual members.

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8.25 Which rules are fixed and not negotiable?

The core Freecycle® rules that are mandatory:

http://www.freecycle.org/faq/manual/man_guidelines

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