Community Code of Conduct and Copyright Policy

Code of Conduct

PORTULANO is a community of educators - teachers, parents, administrators, researchers - who share a common goal: to disseminate and promote the Portuguese Language worldwide. However, PORTULANO members may come from very different linguistic, cultural and professional backgrounds. This community embraces diversity and welcomes bilingualism and multi-culturalism and aims to offer a virtual meeting point where everyone can feel comfortable. Please remember that others may not think what you think, believe what you believe or see what you see.

PORTULANO is primarily a bilingual community where both Portuguese and English will be used to various extents. It may seem a contradiction to use English in a community dedicated to the Portuguese language. Nevertheless it was found useful not to restrict communication and membership to speakers of Portuguese for four main reasons:

(a) English is nowadays seen as a global medium of (inter)communication, namely in all areas related to the use of ICT (information and communication technologies);

(b) Persons not yet fluent, but interested, in Portuguese may become active members by using an alternative communication medium;

(c) Administrators and policy makers involved in the development of Portuguese programs, but not necessarily fluent in the language, can participate;

(d) Large Portuguese-speaking communities live in Anglophone contexts and are actively involved in both linguistic realities.

PORTULANO members and guests must adhere to standards of conduct, as you would in any professional workplace or conference center. As a rule, members must be 18 or older. Exceptions may be made on a case-by-case basis. Temporary student memberships are available for K-12 students who are sponsored by a PORTULANO member. If you would like to moderate an activity which includes younger participants, please contact the Help Desk.

Please join with us in supporting the following interaction guidelines:

1. Swearing, offensive language (verbal or nonverbal), obscenity, harassment, rudeness, or other inappropriate conduct is not tolerated. If you feel that you have been subjected to unprofessional behavior in PORTULANO, please bring it to the attention of the administrators.

2. After registering as a member, please let the community know a little bit more about your professional, research and personal interests, your area(s) of expertise and the area(s) you would like to develop or learn more about. To update your profile, click on your user name and follow the link to the profile form. Although at present there is a technical problem with this version of the software that prevents member pictures to be uploaded, an alternative photo album can be created using a free web picture service like Flickr.

3. PORTULANO encourages you to engage in conversation with people whom you may not know yet. As a rule, try not to "barge" into or suddenly "disappear" from topical conversations or forums and member-led activities. Even if you do not have to introduce yourself at length every time you join in a conversation, forum or activity, since all the other members can easily access your profile, you may start your contribution by briefly letting others know that you have been following the activity with interest and would also like to participate. If you need to stop contributing or will be absent for a length of time, it is preferable to let others know about it. You may use private messaging to contact the moderators of any given area or activity, or your group members if that is the case.

4. Respect the privacy of conversations. Treat conversations as you would a face-to-face or phone conversation. Public chat sessions are routinely recorded, and transcripts are posted for a certain period of time (shorter for informal chat sessions; longer for thematic chat sessions). Transcripts are meant to be informative and should be used with discretion. It is assumed that the privacy of the people involved will be respected; they may not be posted publicly elsewhere (e.g., on a listserv or discussion board) without the prior consent of the participants.

5. PORTULANO encourages you to seek help from, and offer assistance to, other members and guests. If you are asked for help and feel you are not able to provide it, do not simply ignore the person. If you need help feel free to ask another member or contact the Help Desk.

6. As part of a bilingual community, PORTULANO members will be able to use both Portuguese and English in their communications with each other, even if they may personally give preference to one language over the other. Different areas (like specific discussion forums) may also opt for one language to the exclusion of the other. Although it is expected that extensive translation activities will occur, and both linguistic versions of the same information or resource will be available, time and experience will guide community members in the best use of both languages in order to avoid unnecessary confusion and duplication.

7. PORTULANO encourages you to become an active member and steward of the community by moderating or helping moderate areas or topics. Since PORTULANO's activities totally rely on the interest and voluntary participation of its members, promoting community ownership by all is an important goal. Participation modes are outlined in a separate document (available in the Library area, under Site Documents) and may be refined or expanded by the community as it matures.

PORTULANO administrators reserve the right to log off accounts that are inactive for an extended period of time.

PORTULANO website is designed to share and enhance access to information, resources and initiatives related to the teaching and learning of the Portuguese language. Our common goal is to keep this information timely and accurate. If errors occur, they may be corrected by individual members or brought to the attention of the administrators for correction. However both PORTULANO administrators and the University of Aveiro accept no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information on the site.

The information linked from the PORTULANO website is subject to the following terms and conditions. By accessing or browsing the site you accept these terms and conditions.

This site contains material which is subject to copyright and other intellectual property rights. In relation to the material in any form including software, documents, text, images, video and sound available on this site you:

(a) may view, copy, print and distribute material in electronic or other forms for non-commercial, educational purposes only, always mentioning the source of the material by including a statement such as: "Reproduced with permission from PORTULANO - the Portuguese Language Network - Online (http://www.dte.ua.pt/portulano). Individual web pages may be reproduced for distribution limited to participants in educational workshops, training sessions, seminars, and other in-service programs;

(b) must not use or distribute material from this site for any public or commercial purpose; and must not breach copyright or any other intellectual property rights. If you wish to use PORTULANO materials for commercial use, you must either retain copyright and other intellectual property notices from the original material, obtain prior written consent from its author(s), or contact us for additional information and guidance

Nothing you do on or in relation to the site will transfer any copyright or other intellectual property rights to you or licence you to exercise any copyright or intellectual property rights unless this is expressly stated. The above permission does not extend to items within the site that are reprinted by permission of other publishers and copyright holders. You must obtain separate permissions for these items. It is the responsibility of the user to obtain these permissions.

The site contains material uploaded, posted, emailed or otherwise electronically transmitted by community members. PORTULANO administrators do not monitor or exercise editorial control over that content. However the administrators reserve the right:

(a) to access or examine any content; and

(b) at our discretion move, remove or disable access to content which we consider to breach any law or to be otherwise unacceptable.

In relation to any material posted by you, you

(a) represent and warrant that the material is not confidential to or owned by any other person;

(b) license other PORTULANO members to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, create derivative works from and incorporate in other works that material provided they acknowledge the source save where otherwise stated. Where prior permission must be obtained for the reproduction or use of textual and multimedia information (sound, images, software, etc.), such permission shall cancel the above-mentioned general permission and shall clearly indicate any restrictions on use.

PORTULANO administrators do not consistently review URLs linked to or from any part of the Site which do not form part of the community site, and therefore are not responsible for any content found on a third party page, or any website of which it forms a part. You must determine whether any page is part of PORTULANO site each time you follow a link to that page.

You acknowledge that PORTULANO administrators may remove material posted by you in accordance with any applicable guidelines, such as guidelines relating to period of storage or the maximum disk space which is allotted to you. You agree that both PORTULANO administrators and the University of Aveiro have no responsibility or liability for the deletion or failure to store any communications or other content maintained or transmitted on the site.

Authors of scholarly works and those conducting research associated with PORTULANO must follow the fair use principles for excerpts from the PORTULANO website and publications. Appropriate citations are required.

These guidelines and policy will be amended and added to by the community and such modifications will be binding when published on the PORTULANO website. Please contact us if you have questions or want to make suggestions about this policy. If you prefer to contact us by regular post, our address is:

Ana Cristina Sousa - Projecto Portulano

c/o Prof. Doutor António Moreira

Dept. de Didáctica e Tecnologia Educativa

Campus Universitário de Santiago - Universidade de Aveiro

3810-193 Aveiro - Portugal

Last revised - March 2006