Moderation policy

This website  allows you the opportunity to post comments and ideas that will remain publicly viewable on this website. The site therefore operates a moderation policy to help maintain a civil space for debate and ideas sharing.  This site is pre-moderated which means a council officer reads your contribution before it is posted on the website. This can mean delays in posting during bank holidays and weekends.

We will moderate the site using these principles.

  • Contributions must be civil and tasteful
  • No disruptive, offensive or abusive behaviour: contributions must be constructive and polite, not mean-spirited or contributed with the intention of causing trouble
  • No personal attacks or offensive comments
  • No unlawful or objectionable content: unlawful, harassing, defamatory, accusative or abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable.
  • Postings seeking employment or containing advertisements for a commercial product or service
  • Contributions must be in English – we do not have the resources to moderate user submissions in other languages
  • Off-topic party politicking will not be published
  • No impersonation
  • Duplicative or substantially duplicative postings by the same person or entity
  • Ideas for something the council is already committed to may not be published e.g. the arena
  • Ideas beyond the legal power of the council e.g. requiring UK government legislation may not be published
  • Wildly unrealistic ideas where no consideration has been given to funding in the present climate may not be published
  • Ideas which are the same or similar to ones which already exist on the site
  • Information posted in violation of law, including libel, condoning or encouraging illegal activity, revealing classified information, or infringing on a copyright or trademark.

Remember the Ideas Lab is primarily a site for new original ideas to improve Bristol.  'Ideas' and submissions looking to campaign and oppose existing policy should use the council's e-petitions website or explore other avenues.  

Moderators also reserve the right to remove posts which do not address some aspect of the purpose of this Ideas Lab. We deeply value your time and input, and our desire is to remove as few posts as possible while ensuring that a focused, constructive discussion takes place. This moderation policy is subject to change to address additional matters as may be warranted.

Due to time and cost constraints, we do not have the resources to enter into correspondence with people whose contributions have been rejected. If this has happened to you, please re-read our Moderation policy and re-submit your revised comment or idea.

We aim moderate most ideas and comments within 2 working days - in fact, most are published the following working day.  Sometimes we need to check a fact in a submission or we have a query - typically, whether something is within the Mayor's power or Bristol City Council's area or legal powers.  If this is the case, an idea or comment may take longer to moderate as we seek further information.