The purpose of the Center for Rural Health Development’s social media communications through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube is to share science-based information about issues that impact the health of West Virginians and the strength of our health care delivery system. As the Center is the lead agency for the WV Immunization Network (WIN), this includes science-based information about vaccination issues and immunization policies.
We encourage your comments. Your ideas and perspectives are important to ensuring an engaging and informative conversation on important subjects. However, the Center does have some policies regarding comments to help make people who visit our blog and social media pages feel more comfortable and respected.
Social Media Policy
We expect that participants on our social media pages will treat each other, as well as the Center’s staff, consultants, and board members with respect. The Center reserves the right to remove any form of distasteful or disrespectful commentary at any time, in the Center’s sole discretion. Any comments containing the following elements will be deemed inappropriate and will be removed:
- Personal attacks of any kind directed at individuals or organizations;
- Vulgar or abusive language;
- Unsupported accusations;
- Offensive terms that criticize individuals based upon race/ethnicity/nationality, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, etc.;
- Spam or unsolicited advertisements;
- Marketing copy that promotes commercial services or products;
- Links to information that is unrelated to the post’s topic;
- Comments that are copied and pasted across multiple posts without a clear connection to the posts’ topics; or
- Content containing personal information, including but not limited to email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses, or personally identifiable health information
For the benefit of robust discussion, we ask that comments remain “on topic.” This means that comments must relate to the topic being discussed within the post or a previous comment existing within the same comment thread and must not be antagonistic in nature.
Comments that remain on our social media pages will not be edited. Therefore, those comments that feature inappropriate portions will be removed in full. Violation of this policy may result in actions up to and including being banned from further posting on our social media pages. Posts that comply with these rules shall be allowed to remain on our social media pages for the purpose of encouraging full and meaningful discourse; however, the Center’s decision not to remove any post should not be considered an endorsement of the Center of the comment or perspective of the commenter.
Thank you for taking the time to read this comment policy. Again, we encourage your participation on our social media pages, and look forward to an active, thoughtful exchange of ideas.
The Center reserves the right to modify this comment policy at any time.
