Policies & Guidelines

The goal of the BID Community is to further the practice of bio-inspired design through the support and collaboration of Community members. The following principles and guidelines define acceptable usage of the BioInspired! website.  They will evolve over time to reflect the consensus on how the community operates.

Content

Members are solely responsible for any content that they post.  Members retain ownership of their original content but allow that content to be reproduced for the benefit of the BID Community under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.  Additional information on Creative Commons can be found at About the Licenses while the rationale of using Creative Commons can be found in the February 2004 Newsletter (Issue 2.1).

Content should be:

  • relevant to bio-inspired design and should have a connection its practice
  • expressed in an objective manner, particularly if controversial issues are being discussed
  • attributed if the content was created by another author

Conduct

BID Community conduct should be based on:

  • respect for others: be civil, assume good faith, strive for consensus
  • transparency: no hidden agendas, open communication

Inappropriate content and conduct such as Spam or blatant advertising will be removed at the discretion of the editor who may also block the member's future access.  Members can request that the Advisory Group review the editor's decision. 

Money Matters

BID Community membership extends three calendar months from the date that the quarterly payment is received.  No refunds will be provided if a member cancels within the three month period.  Any participation rebate that has not been paid to a member will be returned to the rebate pool when membership ends.  

Credits

These policies and guidelines were modeled on those of Wikipedia (retrieved 2011/02/08).  Thanks to Janice McDougall for the suggestion!