O2 Community Guidelines

[Marjo]

Hi there!

If you have just registered on our community, check out our guide on what the O2 Community is all about and how to get started. If you want to join the community, you can register here.

Our community is a great place to get help and advice from other customers as well as have off topic discussions about anything else you might be interested in. To make sure our forum remains an enjoyable, constructive and safe place to spend your time, we have listed some guidelines below to follow.

Community Guidelines

1.  No personal info

Like any other website, the community forums can be viewed by anyone or searched via Google and other search engines. Your O2 community username will be visible to everybody but your real name and email address will only be viewed by the Community Team. For your safety and privacy, please do not post personal details such as phone numbers, address details, email address, Private Message content, BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) PIN, sensitive customer service message content, IP addresses and other account information on the forum for everyone to see. If you see any personal information, please report it using the “Report inappropriate content” button on the post itself.

Your information will be treated in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

This guideline accounts for the details of O2 staff members too. Please do not reference staff members by full name, or divulge any of their contact details without their permission.

About Live Chat (personal conversations): Please don't mention any chat advisors by their name and avoid copy-pasting the whole chat transcripts on here - instead, make a comment on the experience itself. If the transcript is absolutely needed in your feedback, post only the part you need (e.g. a few sentences).

2.  Search first

Use the search function before posting a question to see if you can find the answer to your question from previously-posted threads. We have a guide on the community search function here.

2.1.  If you still can’t find what you’re after, don’t be afraid to post a question. Asking questions is as much a part of contributing to the community as answering them.

3.  Say thank you

You can thank people for their help by giving them “Kudos” – just click on the blue button below the post. You can also post a thank-you reply. If you agree with another member’s point in a discussion, giving them Kudos is a good way of indicating so. However, please do not manipulate its functions by doing such things as making alias accounts to assign Kudos to yourself, or by asking friends/other members to do so in posts. You can however ask members to Kudos any helpful posts in your forum signature, but only in this form.

4.  Respect each other

New members and regular contributors alike - everyone has the right to post their views, as well as ask a question, regardless of their knowledge.

4.1.  Don’t hold other members up for negative judgement or belittle them if they get something wrong; we were all learners once! It’s a great opportunity for you to teach them about the community and the help they are giving.

4.2.  Be pleasant and constructive – no offensive, defamatory or abusive language.

4.3.  No unlawful, libellous, damaging or injurious submissions.

4.4.  No spam (repeated post/views that do not help a member in their thread).

4.5.  Do not post in all CAPS; this is considered yelling. Please keep it down.

4.6.  Public naming and shaming of other members for whatever negative reason is disrespectful. Such posts will be edited or removed.

4.7.  Our Community staff are as much a part of the Community as everyone else, so please extend your respect to them too.

4.8.  Please consider this guideline when you have conversations with each other in Private Messaging as well as on the public forum side.

5.  Pointless posts

Pointless posts are posts that do not offer value or contribute to a discussion. They also deviate from discussions. If a member is asking for advice, before you reply, make sure you read the previous replies first and understand also what the original poster is asking. Try and make sure your replies are helpful and relevant to that thread. If you have a discussion point that is related, try to make sure it is still relevant.

6.  Community self-moderating

If you see something that you think needs to be addressed, feel free to report it so that it can be looked at. This is done when members believe someone isn’t following the guidelines. Members do this by using the “Report Inappropriate Content” link in the bottom-left corner of each post.

6.1. If you have reported something, there is no need to reply on the thread in question that you have done so. The report is enough and the Community Team or our moderators will pick it up.

7.  Stay on topic

To help everyone, please try to stick to the topic, and start a new thread if there is something unrelated you’d like to discuss. If a thread starts to head off-topic, a member of the Community staff may move the comments/thread somewhere more appropriate. Remember also that we have a whole section for off-topic content here in case your topic/comment doesn’t fit into any other category.

8.  Advertising

No advertising of non-O2-related items for sale or external commercial websites/web-pages offering products for sale.

8.1.  Please don’t advertise goods/services for sale. Other websites are specifically set up for this task, are much better at it and have the staff to support disputes. Advertising means posting links to products in threads out of context, as well as creating threads to advertise a specific product.

8.2.  Please do not use this community to advertise or promote other communities or groups, neither publicly or via Private Messages. If in doubt, please contact a member of the Community management team with the full URL you intend to post.

8.3. Please don't post any links to surveys or questionnaire's without the permission of a Community Manager. 

9.  Proprietary rights

Do not submit anything that infringes trademarks, copyrights or any other proprietary rights of any person or company.

10.  Illegal, inaccurate & damaging material

Do not post links to or information about pirated and illegal software. These will be removed.

10.1.  Don’t post information that is inaccurate or intentionally damaging to someone. This includes but is not limited to links or information to websites or servers that contain viruses, inhibitive malware etc.

10.2.  Due to the complexities and potential for causing irreversible damage to your device, we do not allow open discussions of flashing firmware onto devices as this can void your warranty, cause software issues & conflicts, and in some cases could render your device useless. O2 are unable to provide support in any of these cases we’re afraid and we, therefore, don’t allow these discussions on the O2 community.

11.  Impersonating O2 staff and other O2 Community members

Do not impersonate O2 staff or other O2 Community members in any way.

12.  Staff members posting

Some members of the Community are  Virgin Media or O2 staff but post in an exclusively personal capacity. If you are a Virgin Media or O2 staff member, you will need to include the following statement in your signature: “I work for O2/Virgin Media but my comments and opinions posted here are solely my own and do not reflect those of Virgin Media O2.” If you need help with this, send a private message to the the community team.

13.  Usernames

Inappropriate usernames are subject to permanent suspension.

13.1.  The term ‘inappropriate’ is as defined by the Community Management Team.

13.2.  This includes obscene, defamatory or abusive, libellous, damaging, injurious, foul, swearing, racist language, advertising of goods, services and websites.

13.3.  Should a permanent suspension to occur, it will not affect the mobile service you have with the network, however.

13.4 Please do not use the company name of O2 in your username, as well as a username that appears to be critical of other companies. If so, you may be asked to choose an alternative username by the community team.

13.5 Please do not use the company name of O2, or the names of O2 products and services, in your username.

14.  Avatars

Do not use avatars that may be considered inappropriate (reasons such as those listed above).

15.  Post full answers

When responding to a query in the help forum, please ensure that you have your full answer ready before posting on a thread.

Small edits are of course fine. If you are unable to edit your post but want to add some information that will be helpful to others, send a member of the Community team a Private Message and you can discuss it with them.

16.  Breach of guidelines

Any breach of these guidelines may result in editing or removal of comments/threads or may result in a temporary or permanent suspension from the community – however, the Community team will attempt to reconcile any issues through discussion before a suspension is even considered in most cases.

16.1.  O2 may also take legal action wherever appropriate. We’d rather not do that, so please keep to the guidelines.

16.2.  Any offensive content or abuse made towards staff as a result of a temporary suspension or moderation will not be tolerated. It will also affect any chance of a suspended account being allowed back on the community.

16.3.  Creating an alternative account to circumvent moderation activity will not be tolerated.

17.  Disputes

In the event of disputes or clarification on any of the guidelines the Community Management Team’s decision is final.

17.1.  If you wish to escalate any discussion or dispute you may have with a member of our Community team regarding the guidelines and their implementation, please ask for this to be raised with a Community Manager.

17.2.  Please do not discuss moderation that has affected you on the public forum, as this is a matter to be dealt with individually with the Community team via private message.

17.3. If the community team sends you a private message to discuss community conduct, guideline issues or anything else, we'd really like to chat with you and see if we can find some middle-ground. Please respond to private messages from the community team. You may not always agree with our actions, but private messaging is there for us to explainwhy we do things (always for the greater good of the community). However if such private messages are ignored, we cannot discuss/resolve things calmly with you and may need to resort to more drastic actions such as a community suspension. 

18.  Content

The majority of Content posted on the O2 Community is created by members of the public. The views expressed are theirs and unless specifically stated are not ours. We are not responsible for any Content posted by members of the public on the O2 Community or for the availability or Content of any third-party sites that are accessible through the O2 Community. Any links to third-party websites from the O2 Community do not amount to any endorsement of that site by us and any use of that site by you is at your own risk. Any content that needs to be removed as a breach of any guidelines will be done so by the Community staff team.

19.  Accepted Solutions

It is very acceptable to ask a member to accept one of the replies they receive to a question as a solution, but you cannot ask for your own posts to be accepted as a solution.

20.  Updating of the guidelines

Please note these guidelines are subject to updates without notice. We urge members to check these guidelines on a regular basis. For a full set of O2 Community terms and conditions in relation to the main O2 website, please visit this page.

[Glory1]

To belatedly add my own comments on editing a post. I am a fairly fast typist but I also make a number of typos. I read my posts several times to pick up those typos before posting and normally succeed. However, because I occasionally read what should be there rather than what is, I've been known to miss a typo or misspelling. I edit that post to correct the typo or misspelling and as @Cleoriff has said you cannot see anyone else posting after you while your editing your post.

Now I do try to remember to add that the post has been edited to correct a typo or misspelling but I do forget occasionally.

I try to ensure that I have a full and complete reply before posting. But I am human and occasionally, just occasionally, realise that I should have included an additional point or a link that will assist. So again edit my post. I trust this should not cause a problem as I'm not trying, in any way, to outdo anyone else. Simply trying to be as helpful as possible.

[Marjo]

Hi guys, thanks for all your comments and interesting discussion related to editing posts. FYI the guidelines themselves didn't actually change from earlier, I just reposted them under my name as they were in a topic posted by our previous team member who has now left. We'll check out the part about editing posts and will review in case it needs any clarifications. Any questions on any of the other parts please do let us know!

[jimthing0]

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19.  Accepted Solutions

It is very acceptable to ask a member to accept one of the replies they receive to a question as a solution, but you cannot ask for your own posts to be accepted as a solution.

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This doesn't make sense. It very frequently happens that the original thread starter later returns after other posts have been made by other users, and after they've fully investigated the issue in order  to give the best and fullest answer in the thread to their own original question. 

This has a serious side-effect of some worse answer being marked as the solution, just because it happens to not be by the thread starter. Which makes zero sense, and undermines the original poster actually bothering to return and give said answer, if it's going to be ignored as best solution for a worse one. 🙄

[pgn]

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19.  Accepted Solutions

It is very acceptable to ask a member to accept one of the replies they receive to a question as a solution, but you cannot ask for your own posts to be accepted as a solution.

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On the point of "Accepted Solutions", where the original poster, the "OP", of a thread can select what they think is the best answer to their query:

The guidance underlined in Para 19 above can have the effect of a worse answer being marked as the solution - not ideal! That said, where I have, on occasion, posted a question of my own, and then come back to collate combined contributions offered by others into a single coherent solution, either a Board Manager has marked it as the solution or, in some cases, they have suggested that the thread and "Solution" is a good enough resource to be rehashed and converted into a Community Guide. Some of the best Guides on the Forum have started that way.

I have also had an answer to somebody else's query Kudo'd and selected by the OP as the "Solution" resulting in a Notification as shown just below. "Your reply..." only to have it subsequently revoked by a Board Admin/Manager for some unexplained reason in favour of a different response on the thread.

In that case, another answer in the thread becomes the "Solution" - and your Notifications e-mails from the Forum becomes the only way to see what happened (the live Forum Notification as shown above changes so that the original Solution selection "disappears" entirely, replaced by something like the screenshot below).

Finally, we come to Moderator deletions - either a complete thread, a post on a thread, or a part of text in a thread.  The Moderator usually sends a PM to the author of the offending post to indicate what happened, why things were changed - all well and good. 

O2 Advisors, a more recent addition since the post at the top of this thread (and worth their weight in gold of late!), also seem to have the ability to edit a post by any forum member - but it can appear odd in e-mail Notifications when that happens, especially if the editor of the post tags the post author as shown in the screenshot on the left 😂

One query I do have, which is not made clear in the summarised Guidelines from @Marjo above, or in the earlier version made by another former Board Manager @Toby : https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/Welcome-News/Community-Guidelines/td-p/487846 :

• Where a response is marked as a "Solution" by the OP, should a Board Manager change that choice without explanation? 

* Screenshots above shown for illustrative purposes only!

[Cleoriff]

Thanks for your post above @pgn.

I've always understood that once the OP had selected a solution which they felt helped them the most, that solution should NOT be changed (unless of course, the accepted solution gave wrong information)

I have had occasion to check this particular point with every manager since I joined in 2013. Always been told that if the OP gives the solution it should remain as given.

Sadly, I've seen solution changes a few times this year. It needs to stop. It simply isn't fair.

[pgn]

Thanks, @Cleoriff - I actually meant to tag @Breanna, @RafaC and @Martin-O2 to this thread to offer opinion on the bullet point at the end of my post above yours, as it's quite important. Consider it a

memory-jogger, as, well, life etc, y'know 😉

[Cleoriff]

Pleased to see you have tagged the current Managers @pgn. It would be good to have a response asap so we all know where we stand.

I would be quite annoyed if the 'rule'  (or agreement) about an OP giving a solution to a particular member, is now undertaking a change by current managers (or moderators) just to suit others who feel the solution belongs to them.

It makes a mockery of everything I've been told by ALL managers over the past 9 years.

[Martin-O2]

Hey @pgn, @Cleoriff  I’m happy to provide some clarification on solutions here. 

If the OP has picked the solution we will leave it as is in most cases. We would only change a solution the OP has picked on their own topic if it’s factually incorrect. 

When picking a solution we have to bear in mind that other customers with similar questions will se the post so we will make sure the answer solves the issue in question. 

As for notifying someone if their solution has been changed I have no problem starting to do this and will ask the moderation team to do the same when changing a solution. 

I’ll update the community guidelines this week to reflect what I have detailed above. 

I hope this clarifies things but if not please let me know. 

[Cleoriff]

Thanks for the clarification @Martin-O2. It confirms what I have always understood. Pleased you will add it to the existing guidelines. 😊

[pgn]

Thanks, @Martin-O2 👍