Social media 'house rules'
The Dunedin City Council (DCC) respects everyone’s right to express their opinions, and we encourage constructive dialogue among members of Dunedin’s community.
What you can expect from us
- We welcome public feedback and queries as comments or messages on our social media channels, and endeavour to respond within 24 hours Monday to Friday. Our channels, including our dcc@dcc.govt.nz email address, are monitored by DCC staff members. Normal monitoring is between 9am-5pm Monday to Friday. This means any feedback or queries outside of this time may have a longer response time. If you require an immediate response, please call our friendly Customer Services team on 03 477 4000.
- As Treaty of Waitangi partners we are proud to use te reo Māori on our social media channels, especially as te reo Māori is one of New Zealand’s official languages. If you see a word you don’t know the meaning of, head to maoridictionary.co.nz.
- We love it when you share your relevant comments, images or videos via our social media platforms. Please be aware that we may reuse the content you share to our channels.
- From time to time we may share, repost, like, mention or comment on content from non DCC pages and profiles on our platforms. This does not constitute an official or paid endorsement by the DCC.
- Social media posts, messages and responses are records and are retained under the Public Records Act. Personal data is subject to our Privacy Statement – www.dunedin.govt.nz/privacy-policy.
- At times we may turn off or limit commenting on posts.
What we expect from you
Real DCC team members monitor and moderate our social media accounts, and we hope to create a community that is built on respect. We have three basic rules that we ask you to keep in mind.
- BE KIND. If you disagree with our post or with another commentor, express yourself politely and respectfully. Do not share or tag us in content, images or links to things that could be considered obscene, offensive, defamatory, threatening, harassing, discriminatory or hateful to another person or organisation. Do not pick fights with other users.
- THIS IS A SPAM FREE ZONE. No repeat comments, unsolicited ads, self-promotion, lengthy and repetitive comments by a single user, vexatious comments or repetitive comments copied and pasted or duplicated by single or multiple users. Our social media pages are not to be used for electioneering – any election campaign related posts will be removed.
- KEEP COMMENTS RELEVANT to the DCC and what’s been posted. Please do not share any of your own or anyone else’s personal or private information. Do not share any misleading or false information.
If your contributions don’t comply with the social media platform's terms, and/or our House Rules, then we reserve the right to remove them. Comments with profanities and comments left by spam bots are automatically hidden.
If you repeatedly break our House Rules we will block you from posting to our social media channels. Users who violate the House Rules will receive two warnings before being blocked. People who make threats of harm or damage may be immediately blocked at the discretion of the DCC.
Thanks for joining our online community.