Discussion forums

Legislation

[jackofalltrades]

Hi all

Does anyone know of any sources of legislation or industry standards for maintaining/running discussion forums?

Is there even such a thing? :)

Cheers
JOAT

[Marcia]

JOAT, it goes further than discussion forums, it's much broader. There's a whole area related to corporate and educational environments, some often referred to as "communities of practice." A term used related to moderating is facilitation - and you can find a lot of information by doing a search for "online facilitation." There's a lot of good information available, and that's a good place to start, though a lot of it is quite academic.

There's related legislation, but as far as industry standards go, though there are academic papers and books written on online communities, standards are often set by those who do it best in actual practice.

[Crazy_Fool]

the UK ecommerce directive is important as it sets out the legal obligations, liabilities and responsibilities of web designers / hosts / site owners etc with regard to site content and removal of libellous stuff etc. anyone running or hosting forums should be aware of this.

there was a case where an ISP (demon?) was sued for hosting a site with "libellous" content - not the hosts fault, but they were held liable. the ecommerce directive now says basically that the host only becomes liable for the content from the time they are informed of it and must take action within a reasonable time.

[dti.gov.uk...]

[jackofalltrades]

Cheers all thats great! :)

I have read up on the Demon Internet case before - BBC article i think.

Ill have to look at that link and try a search for online facilitation.

Cheers again

JOAT :)

[andreasfriedrich]

the UK ecommerce directive

;) ;) ;)

[jackofalltrades]

Good point Andreas...:)

I am looking for information on an International scale, but the UK directive is a good place to start!

JOAT