Social Media and Communications platform Terms of Use
This page contains community guidelines built on mutual respect between users of the social media accounts of Greater Wellington Regional Council (‘GWRC’) and the communication tools (including forums for posting) on any GWRC platform. It also states the disclaimer, copyright and conditions of use for GWRC’s social media accounts (such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn).
GWRC's social media accounts are managed by GWRC’s communications team.
GWRC reserves the right to vary, suspend or terminate any of its social media accounts (including our Metlink Twitter account) at any time.
We welcome your comments, questions and feedback on GWRC’s social media accounts and GWRC forums, and encourage discussion. We do ask that you are respectful of the community with your comments and views and follow these guidelines.
Please do not share any of your own, or anyone else’s, private information. Social media is a public forum. Please don’t post addresses, phone numbers, email addresses or other online contact details – relating either to you or other individuals. Please don’t share personal information or photos containing other people without their consent.
If you use GWRC social media accounts or any other GWRC communication tools available through a GWRC platform, you agree to use the accounts or communication tools only for lawful and legitimate purposes. You must not:
- Use these for posting or disseminating any material unrelated to the intended use (stay on topic), offers of goods or services for sale, files that may damage any other person's computing devices or software, content that may be offensive to any other users, or material or data in violation of any law (including material or data that is protected by copyright or trade secrets which you do not have the right to use) or that is not accurate
- Take any action that imposes an unreasonable load on the social media account or other platform, including but not limited to "spam" or other unsolicited e-mailing techniques or otherwise attempt to disrupt or interfere with its operation; or
- Use these as an election forum - this includes, but is not limited to, commenting on a candidate and/or campaign for election to GWRC or to any other body, or seeking to influence others to vote or not vote for any particular candidate or party in any election
We reserve the right to remove any communication at any time in our sole discretion. Please report any objectionable information to us at: info@gw.govt.nz. If an individual repeatedly violates this policy, that user may be blocked from posting in the future.
By making any contribution to the GWRC social media accounts or other platforms publicly – including comments, photos or videos – you're granting GWRC permission to reuse this content.
All information provided is subject to change. We do our best to ensure that information provided by GWRC is correct and current at the time of transmission. However, to the fullest extent permitted by law, GWRC does not accept any responsibility, and excludes all liability, for any error, omission or defect, any action taken or omission made, as a result of reliance placed on such information.
Except where stated, the content on GWRC’s social media accounts is the copyright of GWRC or its licensors. Unless otherwise specified, material in which GWRC has copyright is licensed for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. In essence, you are free to copy, distribute and adapt the material, as long as you attribute it to GWRC and abide by the other licence terms. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/(external link).
We may choose to retweet, @mention, post or share information from other organisations or individuals for the interest and information of our followers. External, non-GWRC links do not constitute official endorsement by GWRC, nor any guarantee as to the accuracy of this information.
Being followed or retweeted by GWRC does not imply endorsement of any kind or any guarantee by GWRC as to the accuracy of the information.
Posts by users do not necessarily reflect the views of GWRC. We do not guarantee the accuracy, integrity, or quality of content posted by other users.
@Replies and direct messages
We welcome feedback and ideas from all our followers, and endeavour to join the conversation where possible. However, we are not able to reply individually to all the messages we receive via Twitter.
Metlink Twitter
If you would like to give feedback about a Metlink service, we are happy to receive this through Twitter. We need you to provide us with sufficient information, for example: time, direction of service, bus route/train line, bus number and description of incident. With character limitations, sometimes this can be hard, so you can always email us at info@metlink.org.nz or use our online feedback form. All feedback will be logged and fed through to the appropriate person/operator. If you require a response, please email your complaint and state that you’d like a response, as we may not be able to provide feedback via Twitter.
Following us
If you follow us on Twitter, we will not automatically follow you back. This will allow us to keep our Twitter stream relevant to public transport information (in the case of our Metlink Twitter) and GWRC related activities for our other Twitter stream(s), and help you identify other Twitter users you may want to follow.
Etiquette and abuse
When contacting us via Twitter, remember that there are real people monitoring our channel, reading your tweets and responding to you directly. Please try to be respectful and patient as we try to answer your queries, especially during service disruptions, as we may be trying to deal with a large volume of queries and a fast-changing scenario.
GWRC reserves the right to block, mute and/or report without notice any Twitter accounts that abuse, harass, defame or otherwise disrespect employees of GWRC.
Content on General GWRC Twitter Account
If you follow us, you can expect tweets covering some of the following:
- Civil defence alerts
- Competitions
- Customer service reminders
- Invitations to have your say
- News and events
- Updated digital content
- Metlink and/or public transport
- Job vacancies
Availability
We generally update and monitor our Twitter account during office hours, Monday to Friday.
If you are requesting a service on Twitter we might ask you to contact us via phone or email. This will help us to respond to your request effectively. If you require an immediate response, please call us on 0800 496 734.
The purpose of our Facebook and Instagram pages
We use our Facebook and Instagram pages for:
- Sharing GWRC's latest news and events information
- Getting informal community feedback on our activities
- Building a community of people who care about the region
- Civil defence alerts
- Metlink/public transport updates (Facebook only)
If you are requesting a particular service we might ask you to contact us via phone or email. This will help us to respond to your request effectively. If you require an immediate response, please call us on 0800 496 734.
We won't usually comment on political issues or get involved in debates.
If you have feedback for any of our regional councillors you can contact them via our Council and councillors page(external link).
From time to time we will upload videos to our YouTube channel about our activities.
We welcome your comments and encourage discussion. We ask that you are respectful with your comments and views. We reserve the right to remove comments which are disrespectful, rude, abusive, or considered spam.
We occasionally upload photos from around the region to our Flickr account. If you would like to share a photo with us, please use the tag "Greater Wellington". As indicated above, by making any contribution to the GWRC social media accounts or other platforms publicly – including comments, photos or videos – you're granting GWRC permission to reuse this content.
We use our LinkedIn page to share GWRC’s organisational details, latest news and events information. We welcome your comments but ask that you are respectful. We reserve the right to remove comments that are disrespectful or considered spam.
We also use our LinkedIn page to advertise and promote employment opportunities at GWRC. If you are applying for employment with us please refer to our Application Fact Sheet [PDF, 252 KB] and our Privacy Statement.
Last published: Monday, 29 April 2024 at 5:37 am