We have to have a few rules to make sure we keep everything in tip-top shape.

No Haters.

No hate here please. Keep your criticism constructive and not personal. Nobody wins with the line, “she smells.” So keep your snarky comments to yourself and think bigger person.

No Spam.

Nobody likes spam. Even the people who send it secretly hate themselves. Spammy content or anything that reads selly – will be removed.

Trolls.

Don’t troll and don’t feed the trolls.

No Porn.

We’re clutching our pearls at the thought. There are like 1.2 billion porn websites on the internet. We’re not one of them. However you can write about sex, but it cannot be pornographic – there’s a difference.

No Attacks.

Don’t attack people, groups or organisations. We just can’t afford the lawsuits.

No Copying.

If you copy someone’s work and pass it off as your own, without crediting the source, we will literally throw you off a cliff.

Don’t Go Changing.

Once you’ve written something and it’s been published you’re not permitted to change or delete it unless you absolutely must – reasons for changes or deletion could be legal, criminal or social but you must contact editorial if you want to make changes.

No payments.

If you have received payment to post on THEGAYUK.com you will be removed from THEGAYUK platform.

Check out the Style Guide.

So that every article adheres to a site-wide style please check out our style guide.

Check out the terms of the community.

Yep, there’s a little legal bit that we need to you to read. You can find it on the Hub forum

Here’s all the legal bits for contributors and writers at THEGAYUK.com

Terms of contribution

1. You agree that works supplied are of your own work.
2. You grant us non-exclusive but transferable rights, for the publishing of your article to sources other than THEGAYUK.com, THEGAYUK Digital Magazine and others which may exist now or in the future.
3. You grant us (https://www.thegayuk.com) exclusivity to the piece for 14 days, with the exception of your own blog or personal website.
4. We will link and credit you on every piece you deliver to THEGAYUK to a website/blog of your choice.
5. You will link to us via your personal website/blog to the article’s unique URL on THEGAYUK website.
6. If the piece is licensed or shared with a competing publication, THEGAYUK must be credited as the first publisher of the piece and hyperlinked.
7. You hereby grant that you have not been paid to produce this content from any 3rd parties or management outside THEGAYUK.com company.
8. If there are any possible conflicts of interest or any reasons why an article or review may bring THEGAYUK into dispute you will state this before uploading. I.e.
   1. the article is about a personal acquaintance or you have or currently work for the public relations for the product or person you are writing about.
9. Uploading of material to THEGAYUK takes place via this link: https://www.thegayuk.com/account or via your own login on THEGAYUK.com website.
10. Before making contact with a 3rd party company for review or demonstration products, please inform the editorial team of your intentions, to ensure that we’re not doubling up on requests and to ensure that products and services provided by 3rd parties are suited to our editorial stance.
11. As a rule, we do not remove content from the site. However, in exceptional circumstances, we will make articles “private” and then trash them after 30 days. If there are any issues which might bring THEGAYUK into dispute we may need to keep the piece for longer.
12. All communications with 3rd parties should be done via THEGAYUK email address provided to you.
    1. If no email has been provided please cc in editorial@thegayuk.com.
13. Recorded materials i.e. Interview recordings are the property of THEGAYUK and must be logged with editorial.
14. You will make every effort to promote your article amongst your own social networks.
15. You have made every effort to ensure that all content you upload to THEGAYUK.com is your own material and any other materials such as images or written content have been granted the correct permission. You accept liability for all material uploaded. For more information on images please see the image sub forum.
16. THEGAYUK reserves the right to use images, title and pull quotes it deems most suitable for your article.
17. You grant us rights to grant permissions for external companies to quote directly from any article or review, this may be limited to a sentence or short paragraph and not an entire article.
18. Any materials sent by THEGAYUK, its affiliates or related 3rd parties for the purposes of review, demonstration or identification remains the property of THEGAYUK and may if necessary be recalled at any time.
19. You also grant us permission to store, publish, use and share electronically your article on our own systems in perpetuity.
    1. You also grant us permission that we may republish, the same, or a version that is slightly modified to fit in the current climate in the future.
20. When sending us an article you will be required to click the T&Cs button – these 20 points are the said T&CS. We reserve the right to change these Terms and Conditions and will notify you if they do change.

Simple terms

No Haters.

No hate here please. Keep your criticism constructive and not personal. Nobody wins with the line, “she smells.” So keep your snarky comments to yourself and think bigger person.

No Spam.

Nobody likes spam. Even the people who send it secretly hate themselves. Spammy content or anything that reads selly – will be removed.

Trolls.

Don’t troll and don’t feed the trolls.

No Porn.

We’re clutching our pearls at the thought. There are like 1.2 billion porn websites on the internet. We’re not one of them. However you can write about sex, but it cannot be pornographic – there’s a difference.

No Attacks.

Don’t attack people, groups or organisations. We just can’t afford the lawsuits.

No Copying.

If you copy someone’s work and pass it off as your own, without crediting the source, we will literally throw you off a cliff.

Don’t Go Changing.

Once you’ve written something and it’s been published you’re not permitted to change or delete it unless you absolutely must – reasons for changes or deletion could be legal, criminal or social but you must contact editorial if you want to make changes.

No payments.

If you have received payment to post on THEGAYUK.com you will be removed from THEGAYUK platform.

Check out the Style Guide.

So that every article adheres to a site-wide style please check out our style guide.

What do you do with my signup information?

We care about your privacy so here’s our pledge to you.

Your details are kept in a high-security database, which requires a two-step authenticator sign in and only the editor has access to your signup information that you provided at the start. We will not share your details outside THEGAYUK.com company.

We will not share your details outside THEGAYUK.com company.

Your sign up email will be shared with Head of Strands (for the strands you signed up for) as a way of contacting you. All other details will be kept private.

You may wish to open a separate email account rather than use your private email address.

Writers’ Privacy Policy

Here’s what we do the data that you provide us when you sign up as a contributor.

Your details are stored on our secure database, which has an authenticator log in process, meaning that it’s incredibly difficult to hack.

We do not share your details with ANYONE outside THEGAYUK.com companies.

We will provide you will an account on THEGAYUK.com, which will only have your name and the public data that you provided us with during the sign up process, eg. your Twitter/Instagram accounts and the short bio that you provided.

Your account will not have your home address or contact number on it. The account’s password that we provide will be an incredibly difficult password to hack. You can replace this, but you are responsible for your account and we suggest that if you change the password that you do so with a difficult to guess/hack password.

We will add your email to our writers’ database so that we may send you information that is integral to the running of THEGAYUK.com.

Our data is stored on secure servers outside of the UK and EU – in Utah, USA. All data transactions that take place on THEGAYUK.com are done under a secure connection.

How do I format my tech review

TITLE

Introduction paragraph – hands on, first impressions. Expectations.

FEATURE 1 paragraph – consider design.

FEATURE 2 paragraph – consider features & performance.

FEATURE 3 paragraph – consider bad points, or anything they could improve.

LOVES

( points on what you love)

LOATHES

(point on stuff you hated)

Conclusion paragraph – consider overall / the bottom line and include reason for rating…

Our Rating: ★★★★★

How do I format my film review?

How do I format my restaurant review?

How do I format my theatre review?

THEGAYUK aims to report on anything and everything that might interest an LGBT+ audience here in the UK and abroad.

Updated 27.11.20

At all times we must protect ourselves from legal action. Therefore you must be careful not to defame or make libellous allegations. You expose yourself and THEGAYUK to legal action and as a non-profit organisation, we do not have the resources to pay for these.

Being Neutral.
We strive to speak for the entire LGBT community and we come in all shapes, sizes, classes, religions, political persuasions and genders, therefore it is important to never exclude a demographic. If you do write a piece specifically about an organisation, you must write about it in the first person. ‘I feel…’ opposed to ‘We feel…’. The statement ‘These views expressed are my own and do not reflect those of THEGAYUK’ must appear somewhere within your copy. It is important that THEGAYUK remains politically impartial.

Legality.
Please read the BBC’s college of journalism guide to defamation and ensure that you understand it. You and TheGayUK are both liable if you submit actionable content. You and the company’s owners could be sued. Therefore please respect that fact before uploading anything that may cause such action. Any article that fails to meet these standards, will be removed without warning.

Defamation is where you write, say or publish something about someone that:
• lowers them in the estimation of right-thinking members of the public and/or • causes them to be shunned or avoided and/or
• disparages them in their business, trade, office or profession and/or
• exposes them to hatred, ridicule or contempt.

You risk defaming someone if you repeat defamatory comments previously published by others – e.g. in newspapers – either by quoting them or using them in an interview or soundbite.

Please visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/law/defamation/ and take the short test to ensure you understand defamation. There is a principle of ‘fair comment’ in English law which provides a defence if your article meets all of the following:

• It is supported by the facts,
• It is honestly held,
• It is on a matter of public interest,
• It is not malicious.

If the editorial team at TheGayUK believes that your work will expose us and you to ANY legal action we will delete and remove the offending article from our systems and services, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.

If you are accused of libel you must amend the offending article, by emailing thehub@thegayuk.comand let us know so we can remove the item immediately. Legal action will be sought for TheGayUK. You may need to seek your own legal counsel.

• Do not Enter into a debate about the allegation. • Alert the editorial team.
• Do not admit or deny ANYTHING.

Google and other search engines cache our pages and if you’ve defamed or libelled someone it can exist forever. It is near impossible to delete a defamatory comment from the web once it’s been cached. It is best to never make the comment in the first place.