Are there any rules or legalities involved when I use the Ethics Forum?

Yes. As is standard on most websites we have copyright limitations in place, as well as a general legal disclaimer - read this legal and copyright information, which covers the entire website.

The interactive areas of the website (primarily the Ethics Forum at this stage) also have their own rules governing how these areas are to be utilised and what responsibilities users and the Centre have in regard to this content. This is to protect both the Ethics Centre and our site users.

Key to our participation rules are that you do not defame people and that you attack another user's arguments rather than attacking them on a personal level.

Of course spam is not permitted and will be removed as quickly as possible - please report any spam to us asap.

Visit the Ethics Forum to view these rules - you will be asked to agree to them and abide to them on an ongoing basis when you register to use the forum.

How do I report a breach of the Ethics Forum rules, including spam?

The easiest way to do this is to go to the particular post you wish to report and click on the 'report' button on the top right. You will need to be a registered user and logged into the Ethics Forum to see this button.

Alternatively, contact us immediately to let us know what the problem is with a link to the page in question.

However, please avoid reporting trivial issues - such as feeling another user has been rude to you - that can easily be ignored, debated in terms of ethics or easily resolved by having a civil discussion with the person/s involved. Complaints we deem to be trivial will generally be ignored.

Read our Ethics Forum rules to learn more.

What can I do if someone has offended me in the Ethics Forum?

Debate in the Ethics Forum can become heated given the complex issues involved and of course not everyone will agree with the views that you may hold dear. We have no wish to stifle robust debate and ask that all participants be prepared for this and accept it as part of the nature of the Forum.

Consider what an ethical response to being offended by another person might be and how you could resolve the matter civily or if you could just ignore it and rise above it.

We also ask that you take an ethical stance generally in your approach to the Ethics Forum and we require you to avoid personally attacking other members, no matter how vehmently you disagree with their views.

Also, given that there are users participating from all over the world, often something which can seem harmless to one person can seem highly offensive to another - in such circumstances probably both parties would learn something from a civil discussion about the issues.

Why do you ask for an email address when registering to use the Ethics Forum?

To help reduce the incidence of spammers making use of our Ethics Forum, we now require all new users to click on a link sent to them in an email in order to activate their account. This means you must provide a working email address that you have access to in order to have your account activated.

While this does not stop spam, it certainly requires more effort on the part of the spammers meaning it happens a lot less.

Also when the fully upgraded version of our website is implemented, we will need to contact Ethics Forum members by email to ask them to migrate to the new user accounts system so that they can keep their existing Ethics Forum identity. If we do not have a correct email address for you, we will be unable to migrate your account and there is a chance you will lose your identity name.

Please note that we will never knowingly share your email address with any third party, except in the very unlikely event that we are legally obliged to do so. We will also not contact you other than in relation to administration of your user account unless you opt in to receive other communications from us.

Will my email address be visible to other Ethics Forum users?

No. Your email address will only be visible to other users (including non-registered Forum users) if you decide to make it so in your Ethics Forum profile.

We very strongly recommend that you do not do this as you will start to receive a large amount of spam given that your email address will be visible to the world.

In the fully upgraded version of the website you will not have an option to make your email address visible.

What can I do if I can't activate my Ethics Forum registration?

Very occasionally some Ethics Forum users are unable to activate their new accounts using the link provided by our automated activation email. If this happens to you, please contact us and we will get back to you as soon as we are able. Given that we only have a single staff member managing the site, please be patient - we will contact you asap.

In the interim, try copying and pasting the full text of the link in the email into your browser and see if that works. You might also like to try using a different browser if you have one available. We highly recommend Firefox as a reliable and modern web browser.

Why am I having technical problems using the Ethics Forum?

We confess that our current Ethics Forum application is old and creaky! It has not been upgraded for some time. The reason for this is that behind the scenes we are working very hard to build a completely new forum application which will be integrated with other functionality across the entire website. For now this is where we are placing all of our energies, rather than spending time upgrading our current application.

If you are having technical problems, please try using a different browser if you have one available. If you are on PC, try using Internet Explorer rather than Firefox (as much as we hate to suggest that!), or the other way around.

You should experience no particular problems if you are a Mac user with Safari as far as we know, other than text that you input being wrapped in odd places - if this happens, please put links on a separate line rather than within a sentence to avoid any problems.

Can minors use the Ethics Forum?

We believe this is a decision to be made by the parents or guardians concerned and we would encourage you to always supervise minors if they are using the Ethics Forum.

However, note that in some countries, including the US, it is not legal for minors below a certain age (13 in the US) to participate in discussion forums on the web. You will need to be aware of and take responsibility for any such legalities in your own jurisdiction.

We very rarely remove or edit any user-added content in the forum in the spirit of free speech and encouraging free debate of all ethics-related issues. Given this, there are occasions when discussions are of an adult nature.

Unmoderated user-added content by nature carries a risk with it. If you wish for minors in your care to avoid such content altogether we strongly suggest using filtering software.

Shorly our forum will contain an ICRA label to identify it as unmoderated user-added content and filtering software should detect this.

In the new version of our forum which will be launched at a later date, users will have the ability to themselves add (or remove) an ICRA label to any given page to identify it as adult content.