Community rules

Talk about books like you'd talk to someone across a table. That's most of it.

Always fine

• Disagreeing about a book, strongly.
• Honest reviews, including bad ones. Criticise the book, not the author.
• Authors talking about their own books, in their book's own thread in Book Talk.
• Spoilers in a book's own discussion thread (that's what it's for). Anywhere else, warn first.

Not fine

• Abuse, harassment, threats, or piling on someone.
• Hate aimed at people for who they are.
• Sexually explicit content, anywhere on the site.
• Spam, including posting the same promotion in lots of places. Authors: one listing per book, and talk about it in its own thread in Book Talk, not in other people's threads.
• Selling services. Bervet isn't a marketplace. No offering or advertising cover design, editing, proofreading, formatting, marketing, ghostwriting, reviews or anything else for hire, in posts, messages, listings or profiles. Recommending a book is fine; touting for work isn't. Posts that look like service offers are held for a moderator automatically.
• Private messages nobody asked for, selling, or asking people for reviews in exchange for anything.
• Posting other people's work, or anyone's personal details.
• Pretending to be someone else, including another author.
• Fake reviews: of your own book, a friend's, or a rival's.

What happens

Use "Report" on anything that breaks these rules. A moderator looks at every report. If three different members report the same listing, review or post, it's hidden until a moderator looks, and if the moderator disagrees it comes straight back. Depending on what it is, we hide it, warn you, suspend your account for a while, or close it. Moderators are held to the same rules, and reports about a moderator go to the people above them.

Private messages

Moderators don't read your messages. We only see a message if someone reports it. You can block anyone, and you can turn messages off in your account.