Community Rules & Etiquette
Thank you for being part of our community. To ensure the best possible experience for all members, we have established some basic guidelines for participation.
By joining and using this community, you agree that you have read and will follow these rules and guidelines. You also agree to reserve discussions and shared files and content to that best suited to the medium. This is a great medium with which to solicit the advice of your peers, benefit from their experience, and participate in an ongoing conversation. Questions should be directed to our member services department via the Contact Us link on this site.
Please take a moment to acquaint yourself with these important guidelines. If you have questions, contact the member services department. In order to preserve an environment that encourages both civil and fruitful dialogue, we reserve the right to suspend or terminate membership in this community for anyone who violates these rules.
The Rules
- Respect others. Focus on the content of posts and not on the people making them. Please extend the benefit of the doubt to newer guests and members; there’s no such thing as a stupid question.
- Respect the purpose of the community. Use the community to share successes, challenges, constructive feedback, questions, and goals instead of products or services that you provide. If you’ve found a product or service helpful, please share your experience with the group in a respectful way.
- Use caution when discussing products. Information posted on the discussion groups and in the libraries is available for all to see, and comments are subject to libel, slander, and antitrust laws.
- All defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, or illegal materials are strictly prohibited. Do not post anything that you would not want the world to see or that you would not want anyone to know came from you.
- Respect intellectual property. Post content that you have personally created or have permission to use and have properly attributed to the content creator.
- When posting items in our collaborative environment, please indicate if the item is not available for reuse. It’s also advisable to contact the owner of any material if you would like to reuse it.
- Post your message or documents only to the most appropriate communities. This helps ensure all messages receive the best response by eliminating "noise."
Discussion Group Etiquette
- State concisely and clearly the topic of your comments in the subject line. This allows members to respond more appropriately to your posting and makes it easier for members to search the archives by subject.
- Send messages such as "thanks for the information" or "me, too" to individuals, not to the entire list. Do this by using the "Reply to Sender" link in every message.
- Do not send administrative messages, such as “remove me from the list,” to the group. Instead, use the web interface to change your settings or to remove yourself from a list. If you are changing email addresses, you do not need to remove yourself from the list and rejoin under your new email address. Simply change your settings.
Welcome to FarmFeed!
Thank you for being part of the NSW Farmers Association (us, we, our) online community, FarmFeed. FarmFeed is an online community where you can find resources, connect with your peers, share experiences and engage in ongoing conversions about issues in the farming industry. To ensure the best possible experience for all FarmFeed members, we have established some basic guidelines for participation.
What are these Terms?
These Terms and Conditions of Use (the Terms) apply to the our community website, FarmFeed, located at https://community.nswfarmers.org.au/home (the Site). By joining and using this Site, you agree that you have read, accept and will comply with these Terms. If you have questions, you can contact us via our member services department or the Contact Us link on our website.
Please take a moment to familiarise yourself with these important Terms.
Setting up an Account
Who can join the FarmFeed community?
Participation in the Site is open to all members of the NSW Farmers Association, as well as non-members as approved by us from time to time.
Account Registration
You can create your own profile on the Site by registering for an account and creating a user name and password (Account). You are responsible for all use of your username and/or password and must keep your username and/or password for that account confidential and secure. You agree to provide us with accurate, complete, and current registration information. Accounts must be held by individuals and you must participate under your own name. Businesses, entities or organisations must nominate a representative to participate on their behalf and may substitute the representative from time to time. Your name will be visible to others on the Site and included in a directory of users that can be viewed by other users (except where you modify your Account settings).
Looking after your Account
You are responsible for all activity on your Account. We rely on you to notify us if you become aware of any unauthorised use of or access to your Account. If you lose access to your Account or request information about your Account, we may ask you to provide information to help us verify your identity.
Account functions
We may assign privileges to certain user accounts or content, such as favourable rankings, ribbons or badges based on usage and participation. All privileges are at our sole discretion.
Acceptable use of the Site
FarmFeed is a great medium to connect with your peers, benefit from their knowledge and make new connections in the industry. To make sure everyone can enjoy it, we have a few rules which you (and your Content) must comply with when using the Site.
Things you must do
- Respect others and their privacy. Focus on the content of posts and not on the people making them. Please extend the benefit of the doubt to newer guests and members; there’s no such thing as a stupid question.
- Respect the purpose of the FarmFeed community. Use the Site to share successes, challenges, constructive feedback, questions, and goals but not products or services that you provide. If you’ve found a product or service helpful, please share your experience with the group in a respectful way.
- Use caution when discussing products. Information you post in the discussion groups and on the Site is available for all to see, and comments may be subject to defamation and competition laws. All information you share must be truthful and accurate.
- Respect intellectual property. Only post content that you have personally created or have permission to use and have properly attributed to the content creator.
- When posting items in our collaborative environment, please indicate if the item is not available for reuse. If you want to reuse material posted by another user, contact them to get their consent to reuse it.
- When using discussion group threads, post your message or documents only to the most appropriate communities - this helps ensure all messages receive the best response by eliminating "noise." You should clearly state the topic of your comments in the subject line. This allows members to respond more appropriately to your posting and makes it easier for members to search the archives by subject. Send messages such as "thanks for the information" or "me, too" to individuals, not to the entire list.
Things you must not do
There are some things which you must not do on our Site. You must not:
- Post any defamatory, abusive, profane, threatening, offensive, or illegal material. Do not post anything that you would not want the world to see or that you would not want anyone to know came from you.
- Use the Site to post any advertisements for any products or services, other than advertisements for employment.
- Use the Site in any manner or for any purpose which is illegal or prohibited by law.
- Use the Site in a manner that is or could be taken by any others as being harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, vulgar, obscene, invasive of privacy, immoral or otherwise offensive or illegal or prohibited by any law.
- Disclose or make available another person’s sensitive or confidential information without their consent.
- Use the Site in a manner that infringes (or could infringe) any person’s or entity's intellectual property rights or any other proprietary rights.
- Use the Site in a manner that could interfere with, disable, disrupt, overburden or otherwise impair the Site.
- Gain (or attempt to gain) access to another user’s Account or any non-public portions of the Site.
- Upload, transmit, or distribute to or through the Site any viruses, worms, malicious code, or other software intended to interfere with the Site, including its security.
- Access, search, or collect data from the Site by any means except as permitted by these Terms.
- Use the Site in any manner that we reasonably believe to be unreasonable, inappropriate or an abuse of or fraud on us or another user.
What happens if you don’t follow these rules?
If we think you haven’t followed these acceptable use rules or the Terms generally, we may in our discretion:
- Ask you to stop it or fix it
- Remove or moderate Your Content
- Close groups or threads
- Temporarily or permanently suspend your Account
- Remove privileges from your Account or add restrictions to your Account
- Where you are a member of NSW Farmers Association, take any other action permitted under our Constitution
Your Content
You can use the Site to upload and publish materials including text, images, information, comments and other data to or through the Site (Content). You retain ownership of any Content you upload and publish (Your Content). Other users retain ownership of any Content they upload and publish (User Content).
You are responsible for Your Content
You acknowledge and agree that you create and provide us with Your Content at your own risk. By submitting Your Content, you warrant that you have all necessary rights, power, and authority necessary to grant the rights to Your Content contained within these Terms. You are personally responsible and liable for your Account and Your Content. We are not obliged to use, maintain or display Your Content on the Site, but we may use Your Content to publicise and promote us, our services and the Site. You are not entitled to any payment from us in respect of Your Content or our use of it. You warrant that Your Content does not contain any information that is confidential, defamatory, which may breach a third party’s intellectual property rights. You acknowledge that Your Content may be seen by all others on the Site (except where you modify your Account settings otherwise).
How we use Your Content
When you post Your Content on the Site, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable licence to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, broadcast and/or otherwise exploit part or all of Your Content in any medium (including but not limited to the Site), by any means and for any purpose (including commercial purposes), and to authorise others to do so. You irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
How we monitor, change and remove Content
We do not verify, approve, endorse, sanction, encourage, support or agree with Your Content or User Content uploaded or otherwise posted on the Site. Other users may post content which breaches our Terms. You should be careful when communicating with and interacting with other users of the Site.
We may at our discretion amend, supplement, delete or update Our Content, Your Content or User Content, without notice to you and at our sole discretion for any reason. Particularly, if we become aware of any defamatory, misleading, false, offensive or otherwise illegal material, we may remove such material without notice to you.
Our Content
The Site and all materials on the Site (except for Your Content and User Content) are owned by us (Our Content) or our third party licensors, which includes materials protected by copyright, trade mark and other intellectual property rights. You acknowledge and agree that you do not acquire any ownership rights whatsoever in Our Content by using the Site. All rights not expressly granted in these Terms are reserved.
Subject to your ongoing compliance with these Terms, we grant you a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive, revocable, limited license to access and use the Site.
The materials and content we post on the Site, including but not limited to any “Resources”, are not comprehensive. They are intended to help you inform yourself generally of common industry issues and concepts. We have not created Our Content with your specific needs, objectives or circumstances in mind and it should not be considered advice. We use reasonable efforts to ensure that Our Content is accurate, but to the extent permitted by law, we do not warrant, represent or guarantee the accuracy, currency or completeness of Our Content or the information available on the Site.
Third party websites may post statements, information, features, content, products or other materials on the Site from time to time (Third Party Posted Material).
You must not, except as permitted by law or with our permission:
- copy, adapt, reproduce, broadcast, store, transmit, distribute, print, publish or create derivative works from, sell, re-sell or otherwise exploit any information or material on the Site, including Our Content, Third Party Posted Material and any other content or material owned by Linked Sites;
- alter, decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or modify any material or information that you receive from the Site which can be accessed through the Site, including Our Content, Third Party Posted Material and any other content or material owned by Linked Sites; or
- use or apply for commercial purposes any material or information on the Site, including Our Content, Third Party Posted Material and any other content or material owned by Linked Sites,
Third party links and advertising on the Site
Third party links
The Site may contain links to third party websites, including social media sites, which in turn may contain hyperlinks to further third party websites (collectively, Linked Sites). These hyperlinks are provided for convenience only and you are responsible for evaluating whether you want to use a Linked Site.
You acknowledge that:
- when accessing and using any Linked Sites, you will be subject to their terms and conditions of use;
- we do not control or endorse and we are not responsible for any features, content, products or other materials on or available from a Linked Site;
- we are not a party to your relationship with the owners or operators of a Linked Site;
- any rights, claims or actions you may have in respect of a Linked Site may only be brought directly against the owners or operators of the Linked Site; and
- we may receive payments and/or commissions from owners or operators of Linked Sites and you will not have any claims, benefits or rights on these payments.
Advertising
We may post some content that constitutes advertising. Placing such advertisements does not mean that we recommend or endorse the use of the advertisers’ products and each advertiser is solely responsible for the content of the advertisements (including hyperlinks to Linked Sites and any representations made in connection with the advertisement). Your correspondence or dealings with, or participation in promotions of, advertisers on the Site are solely between yourself and such advertisers. We will not be liable or responsible for any loss or damage of any sort incurred as the result of any such dealings or as the result of the presence of advertisements on the Site.
Will the Site always be available?
We supply the Site using communications links and other networks. We take reasonable steps to make sure that those links and networks are available, but make no warranty that the Site will be continually available, that there will be no failures, errors or omissions or loss of transmitted information, or that no viruses will be transmitted on the Site. We exclude all liability for loss or damage if the Site cannot be provided because of the unavailability of the links or networks.
We may also need to perform maintenance operations from time to time, which may affect the continuous operation or functioning of the Site. We will attempt to notify you of the maintenance downtime in advance, except when circumstances beyond our control prevent us from doing so.
We are always improving our Site. This means we may add or remove features, products, or functionalities. While we will try to notify you beforehand, that won’t always be possible and we reserve the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Site (in whole or in part) at any time, with or without notice to you. We will not be liable to you or to any third party for any modification, suspension, or discontinuation of the Site.
Liability and indemnity
To the extent permitted by law, neither we, nor our directors, officers, agents, employees or contractors are liable to you for any claims, loss, damage or costs suffered or incurred by you in connection with the Site. We exclude and will not be liable for any special, consequential or indirect loss or damage in connection with the Site. Our maximum aggregate liability to you in connection with the Site must not exceed A$100.
You indemnify and hold harmless us, our directors, officers, agents, employees and contractors in respect of any and all claims, loss, damage or costs (including legal costs on a full indemnity basis) suffered or incurred by us, however arising (whether in negligence or otherwise), in connection with: (a) your use or misuse of or reliance on the Site, Our Content, User Content and any content accessed through the Site; (b) your failure to comply with these Terms; (c) Your Content; or (d) your breach of law or any third party’s intellectual property rights.
Terminating your Account
You can terminate these Terms at any time by contacting us and requesting that we deactivate your Account. If you stop using the Site without deactivating your Account for an extended period, your Account may be deactivated due to prolonged inactivity.
To the extent permitted by law, we may suspend or terminate your Account, or ability to access or use the Site at any time for any or no reason, including for violating these Terms.
The following sections will survive termination of these Terms or your Account: Liability and Indemnity, How we use your content, Terminating your Account. These terms are governed by the law of New South Wales, Australia.
Australian Consumer Law
Consumers have certain rights under the Australian Consumer Law and similar state and territory legislation (ACL). If you have rights under the ACL in respect of the Site, including rights arising from any statutory guarantee, nothing in these Terms operates to exclude them. Subject to the preceding sentence, you acknowledge that the Site is provided “as is” and your use of the Site, Our Content, Your Content, User Content, Linked Sites and Third Party Posted Material, is entirely at your own risk and are provided without warranty, either express or implied.
What about privacy?
Our Privacy Policy explains how and why we collect, use, and share information about you when you access or use our Site, and forms part of these Terms. You understand that through your use of the Site, you consent to the collection and use of this information as set out in the Privacy Policy.
Who can make changes to these Terms?
We may make changes to these Terms at any time. If we change these Terms, we will publish an updated version on the Site. You should check the Site regularly for such changes. Your access or use of the Site after an updated version of these Terms is available on the Site confirms your acceptance of the Terms as changed by us.