Community guidelines

Our moderation policy

Talk London operates a reactive moderation process: anything that you publish to the community will appear almost straight away. We rely on you, our community members, to alert us of any content or behaviour that is inappropriate.

When you post a comment or discussion on Talk London, you automatically grant us the right to share your contribution – including your username. We may wish to do this through our newsletter or on social media, to increase engagement and keep the conversation flowing. If needed, Talk London moderators reserve the right to edit your contribution before sharing it, for instance to take out typos or add a fitting title.

The moderators are here to help keep the community a lively, friendly and comfortable place to spend time in. They read all of your contributions and share them with the relevant teams at City Hall. Sometimes they need to request a response or further insight. This can take some time.

Occasionally you might find some content you don’t like or feel breaks the guidelines. Please report anything you disagree with to the moderators and they will be happy to review it for you. You can do this by selecting the ‘report’ option below any piece of content. We’ll review and take action as quickly as is reasonably possible.

We feel this is the best way to moderate the Talk London community so that it can be kept open for discussion 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Moderators will give out friendly reminders rather than warnings wherever possible. We don’t enjoy having to warn community members and will think very carefully before doing so. We seldom ban first offences unless they are particularly severe.

However, if it becomes clear someone is unwilling to follow our community guidelines, they will be banned permanently. We issue permanent bans only as a last resort to protect the Talk London community.

Our three strike policy

The Talk London community operates a three strike policy for anyone found to be breaking the community guidelines or site terms and conditions. The three strike policy is:

• First warning: a reminder of conduct.
• Second warning: a warning that further infringements will result in a ban.
• Third warning: exclusion from the community.

You and your account:

To use the Talk London community you need to register and set up an account. Please only use one account, as we may remove any accounts that appear to be duplicated or suspicious.

If you can’t remember your password you can request a new one.

Your username is how other members of the community will identify you. To avoid confusion, please don’t use terms that misrepresent yourself or other community members.

For your safety online, we ask that you don’t include your email or website address, telephone or fax number in your username. We also request that you do not use any terms that others may find offensive.

Please remember

• You must be aged 16 or above to use the Talk London community.
• The Talk London community must not be used for political canvassing, or to have discussions specifically about political parties – discussions should be issue-based rather than political.
• This is not the route to contact the Mayor regarding specific issues with his work – this is a forum for general issue-led debate and discussion.
• This is not the way to surface specific issues to service providers – the GLA is not a service provider and therefore holds no responsibility. People will need to contact their service provider directly.
• Most readers and participants on Talk London will have English as their first language. Please try to post in English (Google Translate may be helpful if needed). We will try to translate (using Google Translate) things posted in other languages but cannot guarantee that we will be able to in every case.

Personal information

Please remember that all the information that you post here is in the public domain. We want you to stay safe in the Talk London community so we strongly discourage you from posting your own or other people’s personal information.

Your safety and wellbeing are important to us. If you post or share something that reveals an immediate threat to life, we will follow our safeguarding process to keep you or others safe. This may include signposting to external agencies or reporting to the police in extreme cases. 

If you or others are in danger and need the police, please dial 999. If you can’t speak safely when calling 999, you can use the Silent Solution system: listen to the instructions from the operator, respond by coughing or tapping the handset if you can, or if prompted press 55 on your keypad to let the operator know it’s an emergency.

We have a Privacy Policy explaining how we handle personal information.

We use a third-party provider of our survey software: Alchemer (formerly known as Survey Gizmo). However, we don’t collect any of your identifiable data within Alchemer (formerly known as Survey Gizmo).

Remain respectful:

Please be respectful when posting on the Talk London community: use clear, friendly language and avoid using all capital letters. Remember most misunderstandings occur because it’s sometimes difficult to convey tone in text.

It’s your right to disagree with an opinion, but don’t attack the person or people who hold it and please make your point respectfully. We may remove any comments others find offensive or threatening.

If another community member doesn’t want to be quoted or has other objections, please be respectful of their requests.

Keep it appropriate

You should avoid using overly explicit, inappropriate, repetitive or generally offensive language. Please endeavour to make your points without this. We read all of your contributions, and there is no need to post multiple comments or discussions about the same issue when there is no new information.

Keep it relevant

Most of the conversations in this community relate to specific subjects. We know some conversations can be far-reaching, but content completely unrelated to the original topic may be moved to a more appropriate area or removed completely.

Campaigning for a cause

We want to hear your individual opinion and learn about your experiences. Please do not copy and paste campaign responses on Talk London, or repost the same contribution about a specific cause over and over again.  

Talk London is a space for open conversations and we will remove repetitive or identical posts. 

Swearing and abusive language

Offensive or abusive language is unacceptable in this community. You should avoid using swear words or words that others may find offensive.

We don’t tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism or other forms of hate speech or content that could be interpreted as such. There is no place for this content in the Talk London community.

Harassing other community members or any threats of physical violence will be taken very seriously and appropriate action will be taken by the moderators if this is the case.

Please note that we have a profanity filter in place, which scans your contribution for offensive words and potentially inappropriate combinations of words.

Impersonation and imitation

Impersonating other community members, members of the public, or public officials is a form of harassment and we take this very seriously. We may remove any content, delete accounts and ban users who are found to be imitating others.

Spam content and advertising

The Talk London community is an open forum for Londoners and should not be used for promotion or commercial solicitation to members.

We consider spam to include promoting web addresses, products or service. Action will be taken against any company found to be passing themselves off as an individual.

Misinformation and disinformation

Misinformation is where an individual may not know they are sharing inaccurate information e.g. sharing information or content that they believe to be true. Disinformation is the deliberate intent to spread information which is known to be incorrect. We may remove any content or links that contain misinformation or disinformation. 

Staying within the law

Please do not post any content that has an attached risk of prosecution for you or us, such as any content that is defamatory or breaks a copyright infringement. Please keep it legal.

Reporting content

Occasionally you might find some content you don’t like or feel breaks the guidelines above. If someone posts something you feel violates our community guidelines, please let us know immediately.

Report unfriendly content for review

To report anything you disagree with, please contact us by clicking on either ‘Contact’ button’ or ‘Report’ button and link us to the offending post. The moderators will be happy to review it for you.

Think before you act

Persistent misuse of the complaints channels is disruptive. Please sit back and have a think before you report content. If you misuse the channels then the moderators may have to take action against your account. 

Moderators have the final say

Talk London moderators reserve the right to delete any contribution, or take action against any user account, at any time, for any reason.