Community guidelines

WoolMap works because people share what they have learned at the worktable, generously and honestly. These guidelines apply to everything published here: posts, profiles and replies.

The spirit of the place

Write the way you would talk to someone at a knitting circle or a pottery class: be helpful, be specific and credit the people you learned from. Disagreement about technique is welcome. Making someone feel unwelcome is not.

What is not allowed

Moderators may remove anything that breaks these rules, in posts, profiles or replies:

• Illegal content, or content that encourages illegal acts.
• Malware, phishing and deceptive links: links must lead where they say they do and must not harm the people who click them.
• Harassment, hate and threats against any person or group.
• Other people’s private information, such as home addresses, phone numbers or private messages, shared without permission.
• Impersonation of another person, maker, brand or organisation.
• Plagiarism and copyright infringement, including reposting someone else’s pattern, photos or text as your own.
• Sexual content involving minors, in any form. This is removed immediately.

For writers

• Credit designers and sources. If a post builds on someone else’s pattern, name and link it.
• Link freely to your own website, shop and sources; links are ordinary links. Make sure they are honest about where they go.
• You are responsible for what you publish, including photos and quoted material.

Photos, patterns and credit

Craft communities run on shared ideas, so credit matters here more than most places. Use your own photos, or photos you have permission to use. When you adapt a published pattern, say so and link to the designer rather than reproducing the full pattern text. Free patterns you wrote yourself are welcome in full.

Disagreeing well

People knit, stitch and fire glazes in many different ways, and most of them work. If you think a technique is wrong, explain what you would do instead and why. Assume good faith, keep the tone of a workshop rather than a debate, and let a thread end when the useful part is over.

For replies

• Stay on topic. Replies should relate to the post they sit under.
• Be civil. Critique the work, not the person.
• No advertising or repeated links unrelated to the conversation.

Guest replies are reviewed before they appear. Unapproved replies are deleted automatically after 30 days.

How we enforce these guidelines

Moderators may remove posts or replies that break these rules and may close profiles that do so seriously or repeatedly. We look at context: a frank critique of a technique is fine; a pile-on aimed at a person is not.

Reporting

If you see something that breaks these guidelines, tell us through the contact page using the topic “Report a post or comment”, with a link to what you found. For copyright issues, choose “Copyright”.