Guidelines

BLATCHAT GUIDELINES AND CODE OF CONDUCT

The Club’s website contains BlatChat (the forum of the Caterham and Lotus Seven Club) where Club members can post messages about their interests, share their knowledge of their cars, buy and sell cars, parts and accessories, and discuss events and other Seven-related activities. BlatChat is a ‘virtual area’ and the Club expects the forum to be a place where members can post without fear of derision or personal attack.  

This updated Code of Conduct sets out the standards of behaviour that are expected from all Club members when using BlatChat.  It supplements the key provisions of the Club’s formal 'Website Use – Terms and Conditions’ documents and summarises the key provisions in plain language that, hopefully, is easy to understand.  Please remember that, unlike a conversation, a posting or message on BlatChat lives forever and may potentially be seen by anyone. It is therefore important that posts are accurate, reflect the true spirit of the Club and are not negative or unfriendly.  Please think before posting as to how your words could be viewed by others and remember that you are solely responsible for the content you write here. Your co-operation is appreciated.

Guidelines

As a condition of using BlatChat you agree not to:

• Post insulting, threatening or defamatory material.
• Post any material likely to cause undue annoyance, provocation, upset or embarrassment to any reasonable person.
• Post damaging content or messages about the Club or its members on BlatChat or any other forum, including the repetitive posting of negative threads that undermine people’s enjoyment of BlatChat and any content that is reasonably judged to bring the reputation of the Club into disrepute.
• Name companies or individuals in relation to allegations or accusations of malpractice, fraud or other criminal or civil offences. If you have a complaint about a product or service provided by a company or a person, please take this up with them directly and avoid embroiling the Club in individual disputes.
• Use the forums to harass anyone, including but not limited to posting personal or private information and images.
• Reproduce, without permission, private emails or other forms of private correspondence.
• Deliberately post material that contains viruses or other software or programs that may cause damage to the operation of another user’s computer. 
• Post material which infringes copyright or other intellectual property rights.
• Post material or links to material that may be considered pornographic, violent, racist, sexist, voyeuristic or unlawful, or which may otherwise be judged to be offensive.
• Offer to sell or buy any goods or services for a business purpose or post adverts for your own commercial gain other than by including links in signatures, which are permitted.
• Impersonate another Club member.

The Club will not tolerate personal attacks.  Posting content on BlatChat that personally attacks another forum member or contains profanity or any type of racial, religious, gender-based or ethnic slur may result in immediate suspension of your user account.

Responsibility for Content

The Club is not responsible for the content of messages posted and does not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any message.   All messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily those of the Club or any entity associated with the Club.  

Every Club member posting on BlatChat remains solely responsible for the content of their messages and agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Caterham and Lotus Seven Club and its agents with respect to any claim based upon their messages.

Any information contained in these forums is delivered ‘as-is’ without any form of warranty expressed or implied.  The use of any information contained within posted content and messages is solely at the user’s own risk.  

Moderation

Recognising the real-time nature of the forum, the Club cannot proactively review messages or confirm the validity of all information posted.  Any Club member who feels that a posted message is objectionable or is otherwise in breach of this Code of Conduct is encouraged to contact the Club via the ‘Report this Post’ function within each posted message to report the thread to the site moderators.

When a thread or post is reported to the site moderators, they will consider whether the content is unacceptable or not and any offending post can then be edited or removed as necessary. Where a post is edited or removed, this action will be recorded on the post.

The Club reserves the right to edit or remove any message for any reason as it so determines.  Efforts will be made to moderate offending messages within a reasonable time frame if it is determined that this course of action is appropriate.  However, moderation is a manual process performed by volunteers on a part-time basis and it may not be possible to remove or edit offending messages immediately.

The moderators have the right to take action as appropriate against Club members who breach this Code of Conduct.  In the event of a single minor breach, any individual moderator can issue a written warning notice directly to the breaching member.  Where a series of breaches or a single major breach of the Code of Conduct occurs, two or more moderators acting jointly can authorise an immediate suspension of posting rights that will be confirmed to the breaching member by the General Secretary.  Continued or repeated breaches will lead to an escalation of the suspension: in the first instance a suspension of posting rights for a week might be deemed sufficient; for a next breach this would be escalated to a month of suspension, then four months and subsequently 16 months, etc.  In extreme circumstances or in the event of persistent breaches of the Code, an individual’s membership of the Club can be terminated under the provisions contained in the Club’s Rules & Byelaws. 

The Club also reserves the right to reveal the identity of any poster and to pass on other relevant information, subject to and as required by law, in the event of legal action arising from any message posted on the forum.

Revised: 21st January 2024