Colac Otway Shire Council Social Media Guidelines and House Rules
Colac Otway Shire Council's social media pages provide an opportunity for our community to receive information on Council services, projects and operations and are a platform for the community to provide commentary on these topics (adhering to guidelines as outlined below). We will not allow comments referencing Council, State or Federal Election candidates, or political parties. When accessing or participating on Colac Otway Shire Council social media platforms, you agree to comply with the terms and conditions specified. We welcome engagement, constructive and respectful freedom of expression, and we expect visitors to our pages to conduct themselves in a fair and reasonable manner when posting comments to our page. These standards apply to interaction within all Colac Otway Shire Council services including official Colac Otway Shire Council accounts established on social media sites. Please make sure what you have to say is relevant to the post and constructive. Off-topic comments, spam or irrelevant links will be hidden or deleted. Please do not post your own personal information or others personal information, this includes photographs which may lead to identifying persons or property. Negative comments directed to or criticising community members, Council staff or Councillors will be removed. Colac Otway Shire Council has ultimate editorial control over all its online services. We may edit, remove or exercise our discretion not to accept or publish your contribution for legal, editorial or operational reasons. Reasons may include (but are not limited to): making statements that are deemed to be harassment, discriminatory, abusive offensive or obscene; that are false or misleading. We retain the right to delete any post or comment we feel violates the guidelines above. In addition, defamation laws now apply to pages, and as the publisher of this page we reserve the right to delete comments or switch off commenting altogether if a topic, comment or post risks defaming anyone. We will also ban people from our page if we feel that they have consistently ignored our page rules.
