Community Post Guidelines

Thanks for joining the Berrett-Koehler Community! We want this to be a space for sharing of insights and best practices, collaboration and innovation, and healthy disagreement. In the interest of fostering positive dialog and creating a safe space for conversation, we ask that you abide by the following guidelines when writing BK Magazine articles and comments.

We encourage:

● Sharing of best practices and personal experiences, including examples from your own business, area of expertise, and personal life. You are welcome to share openly about your own business as long as it doesn’t take the form of advertising or spamming. We want to create an honest and helpful environment where people don’t feel “talked at” but rather “shared with.”

● Exciting news and innovative ideas. This can include information about causes relevant to the BK Mission or BK books, news stories you wish to comment on and discuss related to the BK Mission or BK books, or new ideas you wish to introduce for discussion. Posts of this nature should include analysis that makes it easy for readers to see the relationship between exciting news or ideas and the values of the BK Community.

● Healthy and respectful disagreement. Learning and innovation can only happen in an environment where our ideas are challenged and tested. Disagreement that occurs in a respectful manner and remains focused on the main idea and not on personal attacks is totally appropriate.

● Short but precise articles. Remember elementary school when you had the five Ws (who, what, where, when, why) and H (how) drilled into you? That still applies here. Keeping articles and comments focused and their purpose clear helps encourage discussion and will increase engagement!

● Creativity. Perhaps blogging or article writing isn’t really your style but you still want to contribute. Feel free to get creative with your format, as long as your contribution is still under 1,000 words and the content is clear and relevant.

Please refrain from the following:

● Advertising, solicitation of book reviews, and self-promotion that does not contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way. It is totally appropriate to share from your personal experience, business savvy, or area of expertise, but please do not use this site as a tool for only soliciting new business or bragging about personal success in an abrasive way. Inappropriate self-promotion includes writing posts that include excessive amounts of links to content outside the BK site and also does not contribute meaningful or useful content within the body of the post itself.

● Please don’t directly market your products in your user bio, or use your resume as your user bio. The most effective channel for sharing this is information is to enter your website and/or LinkedIn profile in the Contact Information tab of your profile. This help keeps our site streamlined. 

● Plagiarism of the ideas of others or the unlawful use of copyrighted material without appropriate permission. Plagiarism will not be tolerated, and an offending post is subject to immediate removal. Repeated offenses may cause your account to be permanently removed.

● Off-topic information and spam.

● Inappropriate material, including nudity, sexually explicit content, content encouraging illegal activity, and violent content. These have no relevance to the discussions we wish to encourage on the BK website. Offending posts are subject to immediate removal.

● Hate speech. While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or medical condition.

● Breaches of personal privacy and the inclusion of personal contact information. Any posts that make specific reference to your own contact information or that of another individual (even with prior permission) is not appropriate. Posts containing the personal information of another individual beside yourself or information shared in confidence between a service provider and a client is also not appropriate for this site and is subject to immediate removal.

● Personal attacks, harassment, and threats of violence against article authors, commenters, and or/other individuals. We also prohibit promoting, planning, or celebrating any of your actions if they have resulted, or could result, in financial harm to others, including theft and vandalism. We take such comments very seriously, and offending posts are subject to immediate removal. BK will also permanently delete your account. In the case of credible threats of real-world violence or harassment against individuals, BK will also notify the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

BK reserves the right to remove a comment or article at any time for any reason. It is at our sole discretion and no one else’s that we decide when a comment or article is against our guidelines. The opinions expressed in comments and articles are those of BK Community members and not of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.