We think the W&A community is rather special. It’s free, holds hundreds of articles that provide guidance and inspiration across each stage of the creative journey, and it’s a platform that presents the opportunity to connect with people that share your interest in aspects of the writing and publishing process. Creating an account means you can share extracts of your writing (as well as comment on the work of others), ask questions (or become involved in discussion threads), make connections, join or create private discussion groups, and spread the word about events, prizes, competitions (or any other literary or publishing initiative!) by submitting entries to our Writing Calendar.
However, to try and ensure the Community section of the W&A platform remains a positive place to be, here’s a reminder of the behaviour we’d like to see (as well as the behaviour that will have your profile removed…):
Think before you speak
We are a diverse community of people from a diverse range of backgrounds. Many people have different levels of experience, knowledge and feelings, and all participants should respect and embrace this diversity. Please consider how your contribution to a group – either in discussion or in the form of any original writing that you share – may make others feel. Inclusivity is everything.
Likes and dislikes
If you see an article or a comment that resonates with you, feel free to give it a thumbs-up. (It’s nice for people to receive praise as well as constructive criticism!) You can also recommend content across the site – from shared works to discussions – to other community members. On the other hand, if you see abusive content or material that violates these guidelines, click the report button to alert W&A Admin.
Be constructive
If a piece of writing doesn’t work for you, then be specific… but please be mindful of the other person, and try to provide suggestions that will help – in your opinion – improve the work in question.
Stay safe
Make sure you are comfortable about the personal information you share with others when you’re using publicly accessible parts of the site. Remember that there is a public-facing view of your W&A profile that displays your name, profile image, short bio, creative interest and writing stage tags, and any blogs or articles that you may have contributed to the site.
Keep the peace
Writers & Artists is not the place for personal attacks, aggressive comments, or language that can be interpreted as discriminatory (e.g. racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic or ableist). While we all don’t have to agree on everything, we should respect our diversity of opinions. We are a community of people with diverse beliefs, opinions and backgrounds, so please be respectful or your account will be blocked.
Speak from experience
If you’re sharing an experience about a self-publishing provider, editorial consultancy etc, please only contribute views related to your own personal experience and only submit content that you know to be accurate and fair.
Don’t fake it
Setting up and using a fake profile to submit content, especially to promote your own business or criticise another, is absolutely not permitted. If you misrepresent who you are, claim false credentials or expertise, give potentially harmful advice or mislead people in any other way, you could be breaking the law: take a look at ‘Keeping it legal’ below.
No spam
Advertising references found in shared works, groups, discussions, comments or any other areas of the site will be deleted immediately and users in question will be contacted by Admin. It is not permitted to post links, HTML, provide phone numbers, email addresses or to provide information that is unrelated to the topic in order to solicit personal or financial gain. It’s also forbidden to send bulk messages or submit any other unauthorised content with the purpose of promoting your business or product.
Don’t talk dirty
We want to keep things clean, which means no vulgar comments, no sexually explicit language or images and no lewd propositions. Also, please don’t write entirely in CAPS – it may be big, but it’s not clever.
Keeping it legal
Make sure you don’t break the law by:
- submitting fake reviews or paying someone to submit content that benefits your business
- copying other people’s content without permission or proper attribution: please be aware of copyright laws
- scamming people into sharing personal information
- stealing or borrowing anything from Writers & Artists or other sites, such as copyright or trademark material
- breaking or hacking into private unauthorised places, especially if it’s with the intention of causing harm or stealing information
- threatening, slandering, making libellous statements, harassing, invading people’s privacy or impersonating others
We are committed to doing everything we can to protect Writers & Artists from fraudulent activity. On the rare occasion that we do find bogus content, spam, or submissions from fraudulent profiles, we remove them immediately and take steps to ensure that the businesses and users in question are penalised in our rankings on Writers & Artists.
If you are a business owner, commissioning reviews violates the EU Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (UCPD), and the UK’s implementation of the UCPD. This means companies and sole traders cannot pay someone else to post reviews or write blogs about their own companies without fully disclosing the fact. Both civil and criminal penalties are possible.
When we have to step in: Writers & Artists does not edit the content of comments or other user-generated content on the site. However, we reserve the right to remove content that we determine to be inappropriate and/or in violation of the Writers & Artists community guidelines or the site’s terms of use. Depending on the level of offence, violating the community guidelines may result in the termination of your Writers & Artists account without warning, and the passing of any information to the police.
These community guidelines were written with the best interests of the Writers & Artists community in mind. If you have any additional suggestions on how to improve them, or any other feedback, please send us an email at writersandartists@bloomsbury.com with the subject line ‘Community’. We’re always looking for ways to improve our offerings so we’d love to hear from you!