Community Guidelines

VGSpartans is a school platform. Everyone on it is a Vista Grande student, teacher, or staff member, and most of you will run into each other in a hallway later that day. These guidelines say what that means for what you post.

They apply everywhere on the platform. Each space then adds its own rules on top, because what makes sense on the wiki does not make sense on the idea board. Where a space’s rule is stricter than this page, follow the stricter one.

These guidelines sit under the Terms of Service, which is the actual agreement between you and the platform, and the Privacy Policy, which covers what happens to your data. Nothing here replaces either one. If you break a rule badly enough, the Terms are what let us act on it.

The rules everywhere

Treat people the way you would want to be treated. That is the whole idea, and the rest of this section is what it looks like in practice.

Do not post any of the following, anywhere on the platform:

• Harassment, bullying, or threats. This includes pile-ons, and it includes going after someone through a joke you would not make to their face.
• Attacks on someone for their race, ethnicity, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, or anything else about who they are.
• Sexual content, sexual language aimed at a person, or anything sexualizing a minor. Everyone here is a minor or works with minors. There is no version of this that is fine.
• Content that encourages suicide, self-harm, disordered eating, or drug use.
• Someone else’s private information: phone number, address, schedule, class period, family details, or a photo they did not agree to have posted.
• Impersonating another student, a teacher, an administrator, or the platform itself.
• Content about weapons, drugs, or alcohol at school, or anything that describes a plan to hurt someone or damage school property.
• Cheating material, including test questions, answer keys, and completed assignments handed over for someone else to turn in.
• Spam, scams, or advertising for anything commercial that has nothing to do with the school.
• Anything illegal, and anything you do not have the right to post, including copyrighted work that is not yours.

That list is not complete and it never will be. If you are unsure whether something crosses the line, it probably does. Leave it out.

A few things that are easy to miss:

• Your account is yours. Do not share your login, and do not post as someone else.
• Do not try to get around a moderation decision by reposting the same thing somewhere else on the platform.
• Do not use the platform to organize something that breaks school rules, even if the post itself looks harmless.
• Automated posting, scraping, and bulk account creation are not allowed. If you want to build something against the platform, talk to the developer first.

Where each space adds its own rules

Eight spaces, eight sets of extra rules. Read the one for wherever you are posting:

• VGWiki guidelines for the campus encyclopedia, where anyone can edit anyone’s article.
• VGWrites guidelines for the writing library, including how content ratings work.
• VGSynergy guidelines for the help network, including arranging rides and lost and found.
• VGAgora guidelines for the idea board, where posts are about changing the school.
• VGClubs guidelines for club sites, which are run by students but speak for a real school club.
• VGSites guidelines for personal sites, which are the most yours and still carry the school’s name.
• VGNews guidelines for the newsroom, where you report under a byline and an editor approves what runs.
• VGGallery guidelines for the campus gallery and the arts wall, including how to have a photo of yourself taken down.

How content gets checked

Text and images posted to the platform go through an automated check before anyone else sees them. On some surfaces the check runs before your content publishes, so there is a short wait. On others it publishes right away and the check runs behind it. Which one you get depends on how much damage the content could do while it waits.

The check has four outcomes:

• Cleared. Your content publishes normally and nothing else happens.
• Published with a flag. It goes up, and a person looks at it afterward.
• Held. It does not publish, and a person has to clear it before it does. You can still see your own held content. Nobody else can.
• Removed. The content comes down and does not come back on its own.

Automated checks get things wrong in both directions. That is why a person can overturn any machine decision, and why a person makes every decision that removes content for good. The reverse is also true: a reviewer can take down something the machine cleared.

There is one more input. Each account carries a standing that goes up as you post without problems and down when your content is removed or a reviewer upholds a flag against you. Low standing means your posts are more likely to be held for review before they publish. It is not a punishment on its own, and it recovers.

What happens when a rule is broken

The response depends on what happened and whether it has happened before. In rough order:

• The content is held, and publishes once a reviewer clears it.
• The content is removed.
• Your account standing drops, so more of what you post gets checked by a person first.
• You lose access to a specific space while keeping the rest of the platform.
• Your account is suspended.
• The school is told.

Most things stop at the first or second step. We go straight to the last two for threats, sexual content involving a student, and anything that puts a person in danger. In those cases the school hears about it regardless of what you do afterward, and deleting the post does not undo that.

If your content is taken down

You will notice a take-down because the content is gone from where you posted it, or because it never appeared. Content that is held is still visible to you.

When content is removed, the platform keeps an exact copy first, before anything is deleted. That copy exists so a reviewer can answer you honestly about what came down and why, so a repeat problem can be proven rather than argued about, and so a mistake can be undone. It is not public and it is not kept forever: once a removal is final, the copy is destroyed on a countdown unless there is a live reason to hold it, such as an open appeal or a school matter.

To appeal, open a support ticket at /support and say what was removed and why you think the call was wrong. A person reads it. The platform is run by one student developer with a small number of admins, so the honest promise is that a human being who can reverse the decision will read your appeal and reply in the ticket, not that it goes to a separate panel. If the reviewer got it wrong, the content comes back and the hit to your standing is undone.

Appeal while the content still exists if you can. Once the countdown runs out on a removal, the copy is gone and there is nothing left to restore.

Reporting something you have seen

Every post, comment, article, and profile has a report control on it. Use that one where you can, because it tells us exactly what you are reporting. If you cannot find it, or the thing you are reporting is not a single piece of content, go to /report.

You pick a reason when you file: spam, harassment, hate, sexual content, violence, self-harm, misinformation, illegal content, impersonation, or other. Photographs carry one more, a request to take down a picture of yourself, which is the first choice on the list there and needs no explanation from you. Add a note if the reason alone does not explain it. A report is not a vote, so the same report from ten accounts is not stronger than one, and reporting something you simply disagree with wastes the time of the person reading it.

Reports are not anonymous to the reviewers, who can see who filed them. They are not shown to the person you reported.

When it is an emergency

This platform is not monitored around the clock and it is not a crisis service. If someone is in immediate danger, call 911. If it is happening at school, tell a teacher, a counselor, or an administrator in person. Report it here too if you want, but do that second.

If you see a post about suicide or self-harm, report it and tell a trusted adult. You are not overreacting and you are not getting anyone in trouble by taking it seriously.

Changes to these guidelines

These guidelines will change as the platform grows, especially as new spaces launch. The date at the top is when this page last changed. If a change affects what you are allowed to post, we will say so in the platform rather than quietly editing the page.