ireland.com Community: House Rules

Welcome to the ireland.com Community – the heartbeat of ireland.com!

Why the heartbeat? Because our community pages are full of real people sharing real experiences. From travel tips and restaurant recommendations through to information about hidden gems in our beautiful cities, our community works to make sure your next visit to Ireland is the best yet.

And that’s how we want to keep it; and this means setting a few house rules. Of course, our Community is also subject to the ireland.com Terms and Conditions

So, let’s get started…

The Big Rule

Holidays (or Vacations if you like) are about fun, having a wonderful time that you can remember fondly for years afterward. In that spirit, our community’s Big Rule is that we help each other to have the best holiday possible. By being positive and constructive, helpful and friendly, we can start our holiday while we’re still planning – which is just a great way to start, don’t you think?

Now we’ve heard there’s a flip side to this on the Internet. Who’d have thought eh? However, we want our little corner of the internet to be a bright spot in everyone’s day. That means profane language, bullying, discrimination, inappropriate and illegal activity of any kind will not be tolerated within our community. Violating this rule could result in your post being deleted and / or your account being terminated. I know (serious face). Don’t be that person! Holidays are fantastic.

Say hey!

We want this community to grow and thrive, but big communities can be intimidating spaces for new posters. Seasoned Community members: be welcoming to newcomers. New Community members: don’t be afraid to introduce yourself. We’re all friends here.

Be relevant

If you’ve recently travelled the Wild Atlantic Way and wish to share your experiences, then our community is the perfect place for you. If, however, you’d like to talk about the latest movie releases or relative merits of certain credit cards, we can probably direct you to more relevant websites.

DO publicise your own business

Who can point out the fabulous coffee shop or help you find the fella that owns the boat that’ll bring you to the island just off the coast? The absolute best folks for this are Ireland’s tourism people. They know every corner of this island (and the ones just off the coast too).

If you are in a tourism business and would like to help our lovely visitors plan their trip, you are very welcome. Not only that, feel free to post a link to your business too – it’s only fair right?

Just a few guidelines when you’re doing this: Keep it relevant to the conversation you’re in and stay focused on helping the visitor with the best information possible; declare that you are involved in the business you’re talking about or linking to – be honest now; and finally don’t be mean about someone else’s business – we’re all working hard to give people a great time so play nice.

Homework time!

Some questions are more common than others. Before asking the community, we’d recommend using the search button to see if your question has already been covered in an existing post. Don’t see the answer you’re looking for? Then it’s time to dive in and start asking our wonderful, knowledgeable Community members!

Right cause, wrong site

We support and encourage people to participate in fundraising activities for worthy causes – helping others is awesome! However, we do not feel that the ireland.com Community pages are the right platform to advertise these activities. As such, our moderators reserve the right to remove links to any external fundraising sites.

No politics, please

Our purpose is to promote travel and tourism to Ireland, and that’s what people who join the community want to talk about. Let’s save the heavyweight discussions for the other, more politically-focused spaces on the Internet.

Interacting with Tourism Ireland

If we think it will be beneficial, our moderators may occasionally join posts to supply content and information – about Ireland – that is relevant to the discussion. Rest assured we’re not a commercial body; our sole aim is to share information and tips that enhance peoples’ experiences of Ireland.

Do not impersonate others or our employees

The anonymity afforded by the Internet can, at times, be a wonderful thing. However, posting under the guise of another Community member or Tourism Ireland employee will not be tolerated. If you really like the idea of being a Tourism Ireland employee, we suggest you look at our active job listings instead…

Don’t feed the trolls

Just… just don’t. The satisfaction you may feel after responding to an intentionally incendiary post will be short-lived. The best thing to do is ignore them and, where relevant, use the report abuse button to alert us.

If we find the guidelines are being infringed and conversations are suffering or being derailed, we’ll alert the person posting inappropriate comments and, if necessary, intervene to prevent it happening.

That’s not something we want to do, though. If you simply stick to these easy guidelines, we can all look forward to many fun, informative, lively conversations in the future.

Thank you,
Your ireland.com Community Team