Policies

Wikimapia Guidelines

The Wikimapia Guidelines is the official legislation for Wikimapia and should be adhered to and regarded as the official regulations enactment in addition to the Terms of Reference.

Terms of Reference

The Terms of Reference is an agreement notice which one must accept to abide by in order to use Wikimapia and its services. It also covers the Terms of Use, Copyright Notice and Privacy Notice in greater detail.

Forum Guidelines

The Forum guidelines is a set of community rules which must be adhered to by users participating in Wikimapia's forum.

Photo policies

A photo (or photos, photograph(s)) are images that assist in describing places in Wikimapia that words cannot accurately express. We encourage you to upload photos that will help describe places, and make Wikimapia tags even more worthwhile. However, we do have some rules, mainly because Wikimapia does not wish to, nor allow its users to violate copyrights; nor should photographs and images be used to bypass Wikimapia's philosophy of Neutral Point of View.

At present the photos in Wikimapia stand by themselves, and there is no method to associate them with notes, nor with any associated copyright information. If you wish to add notes, then the best you can do is to add a comment that describes the photo and write your notes there. Note, however, that if you are a registered user then your name will be displayed beside the photo when it is enlarged (click on it), so that makes it a little easier to associate a photo with a comment.

Photo uploading

You are free to upload any photo you took yourself. If you want to contribute a photo you found on the web, however, you must first determine whether it is protected by copyright. If the website you got the photo from states that their content is copyrighted, you must gain permission to use that photo, or follow their usage guidelines. once you have uploaded a photo you grant WikiMapia license to use and distribute it according to the Wikimapia Terms of Reference.

Photo deletion

Personal photos (in close up), images hurtful to someone's feelings, pictures inciting national, religious or political discord, pornographic images, pictures advertising goods or services as well as images that are not relevant to the place itself should be deleted.

Comments deletion policies

Offensive, meaningless, talk between users, unrelated comments, or comments written in the wrong language page (e.g. writing comments in French on the English page) will be removed by the Advanced Users or by the Wikimapia Team. If you find any comments that falls into this category, please report them for removal in this thread of the Wikimapia forum, providing a link to the place where you found the inappropriate comments.

Restrictions/banning policies

Restrictions and banning policies are applicable to users who infringe Wikimapia's policies. For the purpose of simplicity, a user who commits violations shall be called an infringer.

Banning is the act of restricting an infringer's account, and therefore the privileges it offers, by Advanced Users and Wikimapia Administrators. Although, Wikimapia Administrators reserve the right to ban any user, Advanced Users can only ban an infringer as per the ban reasons listed under section 4. of the Wikimapia Guidelines.

The Restrictions/banning policy comprises of four core modules:

• Wikimapia Guidelines
• Terms of Reference
• Banning Guidelines
• Ban Moderation

Banning Guidelines

The Banning Guidelines is provided by the Wikimapia Administration to guide Advanced Users on the process of determining and banning an infringer.

Banning Moderation

Ban Moderation is a corrective procedure that must be followed closely by Advanced Users in order to ensure an infringer is afforded exhaustive resources for rehabilitation before a permanent ban is considered. Ban Moderation comprises of four actions, they are: Guidance, Warning, Temporary ban and Permanent ban.

AU Codex

This AU Codex is a code of conduct for Advanced Users.

Interpretation issues

Please note, the interpretation of Policies should be literal (i.e. as is written) and not subjective. With this said however, there is no sure way to apply an absolute definition to the wordings of any legislative document and so there will always be a margin of vagueness or ambiguity involved. In situations where you are unsure about an interpretation, you should:

• use sound judgement
• discuss the point with Advanced Users
• contact the Wikimapia Administration