Abuse

Please note, we’re not laying the law down here, these are our thoughts and feelings and perhaps some suggestions.

The number of requests going to the abuse address seems to be on the rise and while we are not saying don’t email us – after all, the abuse address is there for a very good reason – it would seriously make our lives easier if everyone could take note of a few simple things:

1. Ask before you borrow. Please ask before you borrow. We can’t stress this enough. It’s written at the bottom of every diary page, everything on there belongs to the diarist so you must ask them. Even if it’s on their own homepage and not on the Dear Diary website, it’s not too hard to drop them an email first and ask now, is it?

2. If you have a problem with someone or some group on the site we would really appreciate it if you could try to resolve the problem with them directly. Sometimes a polite email to someone saying ‘please could you change that, you didnt ask permission to copy it’ might solve the problem either by them complying or writing back and apologising and asking for permission. If you get no response or the answer isn’t to your satisfaction then definitely mail us and include all dialog that has gone on to date so we know what has happened, who has said what. Keep all mails until a situation is resolved.

Reviews of diaries on the site are becoming common and for the most part I am quite for them because they are a superb way for newcomers to the site to quickly find diaries that others enjoy. The problem with writing a review of a diary is that sometimes the reviewers forget that there are real people writing those diaries, they forget that those people aren’t writing it to be reviewed they are writing it for themselves. If you’re going to be negative about a diary please understand what it is that you’re being negative about. If it’s their colour scheme that makes you want to yack up then that’s one thing, i’m sure we can all have a bit of a laugh about that… but if you are saying that X person is boring, or doesn’t have much to say or something like that then you need to be careful. Make sure you state that you personally don’t find anything that grabs you in that diary, don’t just say ‘this diary sucks, they ramble on about nothing important’ because what is important to you is not the same as everyone else.

Nobody will complain if you write something positive about their diary, you can bet your bottom dollar that the diarist will complain to us if you write something negative about their diary.

So what’s the solution here? We don’t want anyone to feel they are being battered around or mistreated at all, we are trying to build a community here where everyone feels they are welcome (which ofcourse, they are!).

My personal suggestions are as follows:

If you don’t have something good to say about a diary, don’t mention them. Tell people about the diaries you do like, if you don’t list ones in the top ten then let people read between the lines on your thoughts about those ones.

Remember the Acceptable Use Policy at all times, personal insults are not going to be tolerated.

If you put anything on the web you should, in my opinion, be prepared to accept criticism whether it is justified or not, critics will always be critics and they have a bad reputation for a reason.

In order for this community site to work, and trust me this community is going to get bigger and bigger as we add more and more sites to it, everyone needs to talk to each other like a community. Feel free to email us if you want to discuss this 🙂

Oh, and I hope I haven’t offended anyone with this entry, please email [email protected] if I have. 🙂

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