FAQ
What is this platform for?
This platform is designed as a central hub to share information and get input and feedback. Participation projects that are currently active are shown on the homepage - each participation project may have a different mode of engagement, whether it’s adding an idea, commenting on a proposal, voting on and prioritising projects, or taking a survey.
How do I participate?
You can always browse public projects, but you’ll need to sign up in order to take an action. This helps to maintain a community feel and ensure the legitimacy of the input.
What Ward do I live in?
When registering, we will ask what ward you live in. You can look this up here: My Council (reading.gov.uk)
What information can people see about me?
Your name, photo and bio, if you’ve added one, are visible. You can always change these in your Settings.
Why can’t I post my input or submit a comment?
Posting, commenting and voting may be enabled only during certain times or phases of a project. In some instances, a project may only be open to contributions from a certain stakeholder group.
If posting is currently enabled for a project, you’ll see a button that prompts you to submit a post. Alternatively, you can browse other active projects for additional engagement opportunities.
How do I edit or delete my input?
If you’ve posted your input but want to make edits or delete it, you can find this option by clicking on the three small dots on the top right of the post.
What are the community guidelines and moderation policies?
Our community guidelines are here to help ensure that the platform is a safe space for everyone to participate. Please ensure your posts are free of:
- Personal attacks, insults, abusive or discriminatory comments
- Offensive or extreme views. That includes content that attack, criticise or negatively focus on an individual or a group of people because of characteristics such as their age, disability, ethnic origin, gender identity, medical condition, nationality, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation
- Marketing or advertising material such a promoting a particular product or service
- Copyrighted material, such as images
- Defamatory or libellous, or contains false or unproven statements
- References to cases where there are active legal proceedings
- Material that may be protected by an injunction or court order
- Material that could be confidential or commercially sensitive
- Statements that could cause personal distress or loss. This includes content that could intrude into someone’s personal grief or shock without their consent.
- Accusations to an identifiable person or organisation of wrongdoing, such as committing a crime
- References to the names of individual officials of public bodies, unless they are senior managers
- Names of family members of elected representatives, e.g. MPs, or of officials of public bodies
- Requests for someone to be given a job, or to lose their job. This includes calling for someone to resign
- Party political material
Any posts or comments that do not adhere to these guidelines may be edited or deleted, or in extreme instances, prevented from being posted. Please review our Terms & Conditions for more information.
How do I report an offensive post?
Click on the three small dots on the top right corner of the post to report it. Please indicate the reason you are reporting the content - this will send a notification for the post to be reviewed.
Why am I having difficulty signing up or logging in?
If you’re unable to sign up, it may be because you’ve already registered with the same email address or previously received an invitation to join the platform. If you see a message that your email address is taken by a pending invite, please check your email and follow the link in the invitation to register your account. If you can’t find the invite, try looking in your spam box or request a new invitation.
How do I reset my password?
You can always request to reset your password from the log in page. If you reset your password, a link will be sent to your email address - follow the instructions to change your password. For security reasons, the link is valid for one hour. If the link has expired, you can simply click on ‘Forgot password?’ in the log in page again to generate a new reset link.
If you didn’t receive the email, check to make sure that it’s not in your spam and that you’re sending the link to the same email address that you signed up with.
What will you do with my data?
Review our privacy policy for more information on data collection and usage. In short, we will never use your data for advertising, marketing or other types of spam.
What emails will I receive?
You may receive emails related to your account and your activity on the platform, for instance, when someone responds to one of your posts. You can control which emails you receive in your Settings. There is a section called “Notifications” where you can turn email notifications on and off.
How do I delete my account?
In your Settings there is the option to delete your account. Input that you’ve posted will remain published, but your name will be removed from the post and replaced with ‘unknown author.’ If you’d like to delete all of your input, please do so before deleting your account.
Do you use AI?
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to help analyse and interpret any free-text feedback that you provide. Typically we will use AI where there are a large number of responses for when speed is of the essence. We will indicate where AI has been used to assist us in the synthesis of views within the body of official output or outcome reports.
No personal information will be processed using AI and there is no automated decision-making. Machine summaries will be checked and cross-referenced by a human against individual contributions for the purposes of maintaining accuracy and reducing bias.
If you choose to use AI in the formation of views that you present to us, we may be able to detect this and we reserve the right to classify these as machine responses which are ineligible for further consideration.