One of the administrators will look at your profile to
make sure you don't have the typical characteristics of a
Facebook commercial spammer. If all is well you're in the group.
Welcome...
We might reject your request to join if your
profile looks like an advert, an event, a cause, a franchise or
a spammer e.g. your profile is devoted to a single issue rather
than about your interests. You may also be rejected if you belong to over
a 1,000 groups or
you have joined 100s of groups within
the last few days or your profile was recently created (less
than a month) or
we can't see any activity on your profile. All profiles less than 5 days old will be ignored.
Please come back later.
Your request to join one of our
groups may take 24 hours to
approve. If
you didn't get in it could be because you look like a
spammer.
If that's the case please leave it a little longer and try again. We are
so sorry if our spam filtering filtered you out too but we hope
you understand we need to do this to keep the groups a pleasant
place to meet.
We may need to contact you about your
post in a group before it is approved. PLEASE allow your user profile to be @mentioned so
we can message you in the group's pinned post. If @tag is
not enabled we will write to you in a facebook message.
Friend Requests:
Please do not send a Facebook friend request to the
administrators. The Natural Homes groups has many tens of
thousands of members. Many new members send friend requests
to the administrators that overwhelm their organic friendships.
If you want to discuss something with an administrator do it via
the group publicly so everyone can benefit from the
conversation.
A general overriding rule is:
be positive about the good things, not negative about
the bad.
New to the group ...
If you have just joined a group and you are a professional in your
field of work please don't just post content from your website or
Facebook page. Start by posting pictures that illustrate your
work, ideally content that shares some aspect of your skills. If
people then ask you questions, by all means answer
with content from your Facebook page or website. Take your time and people will get to know
and respect your knowledge and skills. Once you are a regular
contributor to the group you can, at times, post content from
your website or Facebook page but ALWAYS with an introduction that
encourages a discussion and ideally includes some aspect of
knowledge sharing.
More on this
here and
here.
Posting events to a group ...
We do our best to help you reach our members and audience via the
services we offer. This includes a service for
natural building events, but we're sorry not for off-grid or
permaculture events.
Getting a conversation going ...
To get the best engagement from members of a
group please write an introduction for any picture, video or link you
want to share. Please say more than just a few words, 3 or 4
lines are ideal remembering the purpose of the group is to
both inspire and educate. It's
what our members want. Posts that are introduced always get a
conversation going and conversely posts without an
introduction tend to be ignored. Note: Please
do not just repeat the text of a shared picture, video or
album from your page or profile. Add something extra to the
group. |
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Be considerate and think the best ...
Because you can't see people it's easy to misunderstand their
intent, especially if they aren't using their mother tongue.
Please keep this in mind and respond to defuse what may appear
to be a confrontational discussion. If you slip into a public argument
the administrator will delete the comments and message the
participants asking you to take the exchange out of the group.
Keeping the group civil in this way is a
group decision.
Pictures and Albums ...
If you want to share pictures or albums from your profile please
make sure they are visible to the
public, not just
your friends.
Stick to the scope of the group ...
Each of the groups has a cover picture which if you click, you
will find the scope of the group written in the picture's
description. We have wonderful conversations in the Natural Homes
groups but none of them are about infomercials, philosophy, art, music, politics, religion,
poetry or cute animal pictures. If you want to share things like this
please join groups that specialise in them.
Posts that are out of scope for a group, but within the scope
of one of the other Natural Homes groups, may be approved but you
will be directed via a comment by the administrator to post the
same question in the appropriate group. Commenting will then be
closed on the original post.
Keep the conversation on track ...
When someone starts a discussion you might drift off-topic on a
side issue with other group members. As long as this is brief
that's OK but if it dominates the original discussion then you may
be asked to take the conversation out for
private discussion or, if the side issue is within the group's
scope, you might be asked to start a new post.
Please be sensitive to the nature of the group ...
When you have something you want to share you
may find the content provider uses an image that doesn't fit
the 'natural' scope of the group. This is illustrated by the
picture far right (red cross) of edible flowers (natural)
served on icing sugar coated cup cakes (not natural). |
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If the content you have found has this dilemma
please try to find similar content that uses a more natural
image, as shown above left (green tick). We ask you to make
this effort because every time a non-natural (cup cake) type
picture is posted to the group it triggers a wave of other
non-natural posts that are not in the group's scope. This
takes valuable time from the administrator managing the group.
If you can't find similar content to share then it's OK to use
the non-natural picture source but please, in your comment
with the post, explain the image e.g. "A great collection of
edible flowers but not so natural if you serve them on sugar
coated cup cakes". |
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Please don't post too much too quick ...
It is easy to get carried away posting lots of stuff that
interests you. It probably interests others too, but if you post
too much at the same time people tend to ignore the posts. It is
far better to slow down and spread your posts over several days
or weeks.
Not everything is good ...
Goal... The natural Homes groups support our organisation's goals, to
help people live more natural, sustainable lives. If you post
content that does not support this goal then your contribution is
unlikely to be approved. Please don't interpret this as
censorship, it's just not in scope.
Tools...
The use of power tools and sharp hand tools can sometimes be
represented in inappropriate and dangerous ways. If a picture or
video is posted to the group which encourages people to adopt bad
and possibly dangerous practices it will not be approved.
Research... Generally info-graphics with the phrase "Please share" are
published to popularise a Facebook Page, not tell the truth.
Please don't share sensationalist content unless you have done a
bit of research to determine the validity of the claim.
Copyright... Sadly there are a few social media publishers and websites of
low quality and low integrity that publish content without proper
attribution to the originator and/or are knowingly misleading
and/or breach copyright.
Posts which take members to those publishers will not be approved.
A group administrator will contacted you to explain why.
Our groups are non-commercial and open source ...
All of the information published by Natural Homes is
non-commercial and open
source i.e. the readers do not have to sign up or pay to access
the content. In keeping with this, please do not post content to
the group that contains promotions for 3rd party products or requires members to sign-up to access the
content either through a pay wall or an emailing list.
Commercial products and services...
All the Natural Homes groups are non-commercial. The ONLY
promotions approved are those for the group's members and then
only if the product or service fits the philosophy and scope of
the group. If you want to discuss a commercial product then do so
in generic terms e.g. the properties of its natural ingredients.
Please do not mention brand names, post product videos or links to
suppliers.
Help keep out spammers ...
If you see a comment that is obviously spam please
mark it as such ['Hide' and then 'Report']. All posts in our group
a pre-approved by an administrator so you are unlikely to see a
spam post but if one gets through you will find a down-arrow at the top right of
the post. Click the arrow to get a pop-up menu. The last entry
is 'Report/mark as spam'. This will flag the problem to the next
administrator that visits the group making the spam easier to
find and remove, along with the spammer.
Clean up your Facebook apps ...
Some Facebook users give permission to Facebook applications
(apps) to post content, often inappropriate, on their behalf. If you have given such permission, even
unwittingly to an app which has posted in the group, you will be
removed and blocked immediately. When you realise you have been removed,
please
clear up your app's
permissions and then
write to us
giving your Facebook name. The block will be released and you can
apply to join the group again.
How to follow a post ...
Please do not comment on a post in a group with "F" or
"Following" to trigger notifications. To eliminate these comments
Facebook has provided a service in the post's menu. The post's
menu is found at the top right of
the post indicated by three dots "...". Open the
menu and select,
"Turn on notifications for this post".