Guidelines for VF Journals

[Chris]

Welcome to VF Journal!

VF Journal is a way to share your thoughts, feelings, views and your unique talents. VF Journal is a Blog. Here's some important information about Blogs before you get started:

All Journals that are public will be able to be read by people who are not VF Members, (at the moment they are only viewable by VF members, but the decision to make them public may be coming soon). Which means, a Search Engine will take that information and store it on their servers, which can then be accessed by anyone. It's VERY important that you keep personal information, such as your real name, phone number, address, birthday, employment, etc, off your Blog. Even if you are an adult, information on your Blog could eventually be in a search engine and could be easily accessed by anyone. Protect your identity.

VF Staff Members may choose to censor or close a Blog that contains personal information. This is for your protection.

If you are a VF Member under the age of 16, your blog may be closely monitored for personal information, and you may lose your Blog privs if you choose to have personal information within your Blog (information that could potentially be used to tell others where you live, your real name, etc).

Some Online Suggestions::

1. Never agree to meet a stranger you've only met online. The person may be a VF Member, but we have no real way to identify them. Protect yourself and NEVER agree to meet somebody 'in real life' that you've only met on VF. Don't share personal information with a stranger on VF, including cell phone number, email address, etc.

2. Your Blog should never give away clues as to your location, your school, your church, etc. Using clues child predators (or adult stalkers) might be able to obtain your home address or other personal information.

3. Parents should supervise Blog use if you are under the age of 16.

4. Use caution when posting photos of yourself. Avoid this if you are underage.

5. VF will fully cooperate with law enforcement to investigate illegal activities on our Blogs and website and will produce data or information if ordered to by law enforcement or by subpoena.

6. VF is not responsible for your actions on VF, nor are we responsible for your safety. Our guidelines forbid the sharing of personal information, and those seeking it on our boards or blogs will be banned.

VF Blogs, whether public or private, can be read by VF Staff.

7. Blogs cannot contain profanity, hate speech, gay bashing, harassment of other people or VF users, vulgarity, sexually explicit content, inappropriate photos, graphics or drawings. Copyrighted materials cannot be used in Blogs (You cannot put passages from somebody else's book, for instance). We are concerned with people trying to pass off poems or other writings as their own. Quoting a lyric (and giving credit to the person/band who wrote it) is acceptable.

8. Blogs can contain images, but they must conform to VF Guidelines. Images that take too long to load or otherwise disrupt the normal formatting of VF will be removed.

9. No sharing of Personal Information! (As if we haven't said it enough)

Additional Guidelines may be added at any time. Visit this page frequently for updates.



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Now, some Blog tips.

You can use the standard BBCode to include images from the VF Gallery, standard formatting options similar to those used in Userpages. However, HTML code cannot be used in Blogs.

You can specify a "Mood" for each entry. More 'Moods' are coming soon.

You can specify what you're currently listening to (music, sports, etc).

You can have your Blog be public, private or only share it with people on your Buddy List.

You can leave comments on other people's blogs.

Currently, a User must be logged in to VF to read a Blog.