The Macdonald-Laurier Institute is pleased to welcome thoughtful and respectful debate and commentary on our social media platforms. To that end, we encourage social media users who engage with our content to abide by the following social media community guidelines.
These guidelines apply to all of MLI’s social media platforms and activities.
General Guidelines
User engagement on MLI’s pages, posts, platforms, etc. should:
- Remain respectful at all times
- Be relevant to discussions at hand
- Raise the quality of debate for all other users
- Reflect that users are engaging with content and one another in good-faith
To assist in applying these guidelines, users are encouraged to apply strategies such as considering whether they would engage in the same activities and behaviours in face-to-face conversations with peers. In so doing, users may be better able to reflect on how their engagement may be perceived by others.
Content Management Rules
Engagement which may be subject to content management includes, but is not limited to:
- Use of curses/swear words
- Use of offensive, malicious, or aggressive language
- Spamming
- Use of threats
- Content that is clear, repeated, or otherwise deliberate misinformation
- Harassment
- Hate speech
- Excessively irrelevant, discursive, or otherwise “trolling” content
- Content that is in violation of any Canadian laws
- Content that includes suspicious links, images, or other content
- Foreign language content that may reasonably be misunderstood or misinterpreted as violating general guidelines or content management rules
Enforcement
Failure to abide by these guidelines may result in:
- Posting failures
- Warnings and encouragements
- Content restrictions
- The removal of offending content
- Reporting of content
- Muting
- Blocking of offending users
- Other measures intended to encourage respectful debate
These general guidelines, content management rules, and enforcement measures will be applied at the discretion of the Communications and Digital Media Manager on a case-by-case basis. Due to high volumes of comments and engagement received across many platforms, automatic filtration and algorithmic content assessment may be applied in some cases to manage user engagement.
This policy is meant to serve as a general outline for acceptable and encouraged behaviour related to MLI’s social media platforms; it is not intended to be entirely comprehensive in nature. Cases may arise in which user activity is deemed inappropriate for reasons not described adequately in these guidelines. In such cases, the appropriate response will be determined by the Communications and Digital Media Manager.
This policy is subject to review and amendment at the discretion of the Communications and Digital Media Manager.
