hotukdeals Code of Conduct
By participating in the hotukdeals community, you agree to abide by this Code of Conduct. We appreciate your cooperation in creating a vibrant and inclusive environment for all our members.
1. Community Vision
What’s our mission?
At hotukdeals, we strive to create a vibrant and inclusive online community where members can discover, discuss, and share the best deals and shopping experiences.
Our goal is to foster a welcoming environment that promotes collaboration, respect, and kindness among all participants in a safe space. This only works when everyone using the community, both staff and members, works together for the good of our tribe.
You may be a first-time visitor, you may be a seasoned regular or you may fall anywhere in between. Whether you’re here to ask a question, share a deal or simply express yourself constructively and positively. All are welcome.
As a community team, we have a responsibility to all our members and staff to ensure this can happen, and we remain committed to creating rules, guardrails and processes that ensure that can happen.If you’re #oneofus, you’re part of the solution
2. What do we expect of you?
Our member values
Our communities are fast-moving, highly engaged online spaces connecting millions of people. That’s a lot of members and visitors doing hundreds of thousands of things at any moment in time. That’s also a lot of different viewpoints, perceptions and expectations coming together in a virtual space.
Respect and Kindness
We expect all members to treat each other with respect and kindness, fostering a positive and supportive atmosphere. We are an inclusive space but, more than that, we’re all real people behind the avatars with feelings and emotions. Please work with the rest of the community, not against it.
Integrity and Honesty
We encourage all members to consider the impact of their actions when sharing deals, opinions, or information. Imagine you’re offering advice or opinions to a friend or family member. In an era of fake news and misinformation, these behaviours set Pepper communities apart from many other spaces and create trust between members.
Constructive Engagement
We value constructive discussions and encourage members to express their opinions. You have the ability here to:
Let us tackle the issue and spend your time more constructively elsewhere.
Help shape our community’s future
We know that sometimes decisions, responses or changes we make within the community aren’t well received by some members, and sometimes we receive feedback that we ‘don’t listen to the community’ or we’re doing things to deliberately annoy or frustrate.
This is never the case, but we’re not going to be able to do things that keep everyone happy all the time. As our business needs to remain resilient and grow, at times we may have to make decisions that improve the decisions for the majority, not the minority.
However, we’re not immune to criticism and welcome feedback. Please do take the opportunity to do where you can so the team can discuss it and consider the best course of action.
Likewise, keep it civil and accept that in some circumstances whilst we’ve heard you, your personal use case might not be enough for us to change course.
Our promise to you though is we’ll always listen.
If all else fails, be Family Friendly
These are free-to-use communities that require only an email to join and participate. Our teams are committed to managing our spaces fairly, but if you’re here to disrupt, troll or generally cause problems we reserve the right to take action for the good of the community.
3. What should you expect of us?
How we manage our communities
While our goal is to manage the community without excessive moderation, there are challenges associated with maintaining a large and diverse online platform. Balancing the interests and perspectives of our members, addressing conflicts, and upholding our values are ongoing challenges that we strive to tackle with transparency and fairness.
Our aim is always to keep content that contributes to inspirational/interesting discussion live wherever possible, but we have a duty of care to protect the wider community from contributions that add little other than arguments, negativity or seek to cause disruption.
We rely on our community members to report any violations of the Code of Conduct.
If you come across content that you believe is problematic, please use the reporting features provided, and our dedicated community support team will investigate promptly.
I need to report a problem
If you see something you think requires our attention, it’s simple to report it to us. Although it’s often very tempting to try to handle things yourself (especially when a post is triggering or potentially harmful), please use our process and let the team handle it. It’s what we’re trained to do.
I’ve been reported
We follow a specific process to assess each report fairly and with due diligence. Our aim is always to see if a reported post can remain up, but users who don’t follow our rules in the way they are intended can be subject to further sanctions.
These may come in the form of:
We do our best to avoid anything terminal for accounts, but we also need to be clear that our role in this capacity is to protect both the site, the members and the team from content or behaviours that cause problems and unhappiness.
Please note merchants and stores may also be banned from hotukdeals if they provide poor customer service, or attempt to self-promote / incentivise posts on our site.
I’m unhappy with the decision
If you disagree with a community support team decision, please reply to the message which will send a reply to the team and a different member will review your request.
If you’re still unhappy with the decision, you’re able to use the "Help Centre FAQ” link at the bottom of the forum to send a brief description and this will be dealt with by a different team member.
Having this process allows us to be sure we’re consistent and accountable in our decision-making.
4. Unacceptable behaviours
What do we not allow?
We are a inclusive organisation and our aim is to continue to operate safe, fair communities. There are some behaviours, content and interactions that we simply will not tolerate.
These may include:
A note on emojis
Tone and context behind the use of emojis is extremely difficult to moderate. Whilst we hope emojis are used responsibly and for the purpose they exist, we do occasionally receive reports that a user feels another user is applying them ironically, to get a reaction or another form of disruptive behaviour.
We will review the report fairly, as we would another other, but the team will not prioritise these reports if it’s not easy to understand the context. We are unlikely to remove specific emojis, but may choose to take a moderation action if overall behaviour is disruptive or clearly antagonistic.
A note on the reward system
We want to specify that all the initiatives contained in our Hall Of Flame are aimed at recognizing, rewarding, and celebrating the best contributions of our Community.
Behaviors aimed to bypass, cheat, or take advantage of the reward program, are strictly forbidden. In particular:
Our team checks for possible abuse and takes action to avoid and prevent behaviours that can disrupt the community's trust in us.
5. The Community Teams
Who we are and why that’s important
Our proverb: “Supporting the community, one deal at a time to make each one count, and shared problems are halved.”
Our community support teams have multiple responsibilities which help keep our communities vibrant and safe. Our community or country managers work closely with members to address concerns, provide support, and foster positive engagement. They are responsible for promoting the community vision and values, leading their teams and helping to influence strategy.
The wider teams also do everything from actively engaging with members in the community itself, spotting bugs, having ideas to improve the member's experience, supporting product launches, and speaking directly with members amongst others.
That’s on top of the day-to-day moderation activities they all do in monitoring reports and ensuring the smooth functioning of the community by applying the Code of Conduct and resolving disputes. All this happens in a workplace that serves a busy, vibrant and, at times, challenging community that runs 24/7, 365.
We are all real people with real lives who, much like you, are balancing work, and life challenges and genuinely trying to do the best job they can. It’s never in our interest (no matter what members sometimes think) to do things that harm our community; we have performance reviews and objectives aimed at community growth and improving community happiness.
We aren’t robots. We will get some things wrong, we will sometimes have off days and teams can occasionally become stretched due to holidays and illness. That’s simply called humanity!
We accept being challenged, people asking questions and being held to account for the work we do. When we make mistakes, we do our best to reflect and correct them. We don’t accept personal abuse; relentless negativity towards us such as the idea that we don’t listen to members; nor do we accept we should just accept offensive comments without feeling upset because it happens in our job.
Please us with respect and courtesy, and we’ll always endeavour to do the same. You can meet us here : https://www.hotukdeals.com/team
6. Futureproofing
How we adapt, test and grow.
We are open-minded and constantly moving forward, otherwise we cannot make meaningful change happen. Our Code of Conduct should always be something that is responsive to changes in our society, both through world events and the evolution of culture.
Our ‘Unacceptable Behaviours’ section is our current core, our non-negotiable. These are the things we believe should never change and provides the base of our code and where many of our consistent moderation application is from. It’s important though that we create space and expectation that allows us to try things out, learn fast, and make decisions that could alter some of the things we allow (and indeed some of the things we don’t) through our Code of Conduct.
From time to time, you may see us test a new idea or adapt/expand on current guidance to see if we get a better or worse result. One example, and an oft-cited one, is a political discussion on deals threads. Whilst we absolutely don’t allow and don’t want to see vicious hate-mongering in our communities, our blanket ban on all political discussion may be stopping some potentially interesting and educational debate.
The first is a complete no-go, the second might add value and influence a purchasing decision. We want the room and ability to say to members ‘We want to try this and see what happens'.
It also gives our members the responsibility to make it work or confirm our caution in preventing it.
Another example is the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it could be used effectively to help moderation or behaviour education.This is an important part of our Code of Conduct as it ensures we won’t stand still and remain current. At all times we will communicate what we’re planning, carefully monitor the result (with the right to end early if necessary) and share the results.
Privacy Statement
As a member, you are fully responsible for your posts. If you change your mind about a comment you've made on the forum, you are able to delete it within a limited time.
You’re in control of the email address stored and can amend this at any time.
We advise members not to use their real name as their username. Usernames can be changed every six months
We will never share your email address with a third party. If a legal complaint is made about something you wrote on hotukdeals, you will be notified and given the option to delete or defend your comment
You can read our full privacy policy here: https://www.hotukdeals.com/privacy-policy
Thank you
1. Community Vision
What’s our mission?
At hotukdeals, we strive to create a vibrant and inclusive online community where members can discover, discuss, and share the best deals and shopping experiences.
Our goal is to foster a welcoming environment that promotes collaboration, respect, and kindness among all participants in a safe space. This only works when everyone using the community, both staff and members, works together for the good of our tribe.
You may be a first-time visitor, you may be a seasoned regular or you may fall anywhere in between. Whether you’re here to ask a question, share a deal or simply express yourself constructively and positively. All are welcome.
As a community team, we have a responsibility to all our members and staff to ensure this can happen, and we remain committed to creating rules, guardrails and processes that ensure that can happen.If you’re #oneofus, you’re part of the solution
2. What do we expect of you?
Our member values
Our communities are fast-moving, highly engaged online spaces connecting millions of people. That’s a lot of members and visitors doing hundreds of thousands of things at any moment in time. That’s also a lot of different viewpoints, perceptions and expectations coming together in a virtual space.
Respect and Kindness
We expect all members to treat each other with respect and kindness, fostering a positive and supportive atmosphere. We are an inclusive space but, more than that, we’re all real people behind the avatars with feelings and emotions. Please work with the rest of the community, not against it.
Integrity and Honesty
We encourage all members to consider the impact of their actions when sharing deals, opinions, or information. Imagine you’re offering advice or opinions to a friend or family member. In an era of fake news and misinformation, these behaviours set Pepper communities apart from many other spaces and create trust between members.
Constructive Engagement
We value constructive discussions and encourage members to express their opinions. You have the ability here to:
- Post Deals
- Ask questions
- Answer questions
- Vote and influence which deals become hot
- Provide more general commentary
- Share your experience and expertise
Let us tackle the issue and spend your time more constructively elsewhere.
Help shape our community’s future
We know that sometimes decisions, responses or changes we make within the community aren’t well received by some members, and sometimes we receive feedback that we ‘don’t listen to the community’ or we’re doing things to deliberately annoy or frustrate.
This is never the case, but we’re not going to be able to do things that keep everyone happy all the time. As our business needs to remain resilient and grow, at times we may have to make decisions that improve the decisions for the majority, not the minority.
However, we’re not immune to criticism and welcome feedback. Please do take the opportunity to do where you can so the team can discuss it and consider the best course of action.
Likewise, keep it civil and accept that in some circumstances whilst we’ve heard you, your personal use case might not be enough for us to change course.
Our promise to you though is we’ll always listen.
If all else fails, be Family Friendly
These are free-to-use communities that require only an email to join and participate. Our teams are committed to managing our spaces fairly, but if you’re here to disrupt, troll or generally cause problems we reserve the right to take action for the good of the community.
3. What should you expect of us?
How we manage our communities
While our goal is to manage the community without excessive moderation, there are challenges associated with maintaining a large and diverse online platform. Balancing the interests and perspectives of our members, addressing conflicts, and upholding our values are ongoing challenges that we strive to tackle with transparency and fairness.
Our aim is always to keep content that contributes to inspirational/interesting discussion live wherever possible, but we have a duty of care to protect the wider community from contributions that add little other than arguments, negativity or seek to cause disruption.
We rely on our community members to report any violations of the Code of Conduct.
If you come across content that you believe is problematic, please use the reporting features provided, and our dedicated community support team will investigate promptly.
I need to report a problem
If you see something you think requires our attention, it’s simple to report it to us. Although it’s often very tempting to try to handle things yourself (especially when a post is triggering or potentially harmful), please use our process and let the team handle it. It’s what we’re trained to do.
I’ve been reported
We follow a specific process to assess each report fairly and with due diligence. Our aim is always to see if a reported post can remain up, but users who don’t follow our rules in the way they are intended can be subject to further sanctions.
These may come in the form of:
- Requests for clarification
- Requests for additional information
- Warnings
- Temporary suspensions
- Account suspensions
- Feature or service limitations
- Removal of posting privileges
We do our best to avoid anything terminal for accounts, but we also need to be clear that our role in this capacity is to protect both the site, the members and the team from content or behaviours that cause problems and unhappiness.
Please note merchants and stores may also be banned from hotukdeals if they provide poor customer service, or attempt to self-promote / incentivise posts on our site.
I’m unhappy with the decision
If you disagree with a community support team decision, please reply to the message which will send a reply to the team and a different member will review your request.
If you’re still unhappy with the decision, you’re able to use the "Help Centre FAQ” link at the bottom of the forum to send a brief description and this will be dealt with by a different team member.
Having this process allows us to be sure we’re consistent and accountable in our decision-making.
4. Unacceptable behaviours
What do we not allow?
We are a inclusive organisation and our aim is to continue to operate safe, fair communities. There are some behaviours, content and interactions that we simply will not tolerate.
These may include:
- Illegal or encourages illegal behaviour
- Pornography
- Seek to intentionally disturb or upset
- Nasty or malicious posting including swearing
- Intolerance of other people’s beliefs or viewpoints
- Impersonating someone else
- Personal attacks, trolling, or engaging in unproductive arguments will not be tolerated.
- Please note we don’t always consider ‘disagrees with me’ as ‘bullying’. They are often two different things.
- Trolling is also a very subjective area of interpretation. Our default position is always to consider “is this comment adding positive or constructive value to the community?”
- Discrimination, hate speech, harassment, or any form of offensive behaviour
- Racism, Sexism, Ageism, Ableism or any other form of micro-aggression
- Misleading or deceptive practices, including spamming, self-promotion, or astroturfing, are strictly prohibited.
- The publication (whether text or image) of private messages without the consent of the sender
- Contains discussion (threads or comments) relating to politics or religion
- Comments or threads that we feel amount to the objectification of another person - this particularly applies to off-topic posts about images in threads
- Trying to break or interfere with hotukdeals and its usability
- Attempting to derail threads, or voting in an unfair manner
- Creating multiple usernames specifically to avoid user account restrictions or suspensions, or any attempt to ‘game’ our voting, rewards or similar systems.
- Any other malicious use of hotukdeals is strictly prohibited
- Conduct not in the spirit of being part of a money-saving community (gloating about scalping, profiteering etc) - we’re all better than that…
- We encourage only one account per person. If you have lost your login details for your account, please use the ‘contact us’ link in the footer of the page and we will assist.
A note on emojis
Tone and context behind the use of emojis is extremely difficult to moderate. Whilst we hope emojis are used responsibly and for the purpose they exist, we do occasionally receive reports that a user feels another user is applying them ironically, to get a reaction or another form of disruptive behaviour.
We will review the report fairly, as we would another other, but the team will not prioritise these reports if it’s not easy to understand the context. We are unlikely to remove specific emojis, but may choose to take a moderation action if overall behaviour is disruptive or clearly antagonistic.
A note on the reward system
We want to specify that all the initiatives contained in our Hall Of Flame are aimed at recognizing, rewarding, and celebrating the best contributions of our Community.
Behaviors aimed to bypass, cheat, or take advantage of the reward program, are strictly forbidden. In particular:
- Creating multiple accounts to earn additional rewards
- Cold or hot voting for the sole purpose of manipulating the reward program and the integrity of the voting system.
Our team checks for possible abuse and takes action to avoid and prevent behaviours that can disrupt the community's trust in us.
5. The Community Teams
Who we are and why that’s important
Our proverb: “Supporting the community, one deal at a time to make each one count, and shared problems are halved.”
Our community support teams have multiple responsibilities which help keep our communities vibrant and safe. Our community or country managers work closely with members to address concerns, provide support, and foster positive engagement. They are responsible for promoting the community vision and values, leading their teams and helping to influence strategy.
The wider teams also do everything from actively engaging with members in the community itself, spotting bugs, having ideas to improve the member's experience, supporting product launches, and speaking directly with members amongst others.
That’s on top of the day-to-day moderation activities they all do in monitoring reports and ensuring the smooth functioning of the community by applying the Code of Conduct and resolving disputes. All this happens in a workplace that serves a busy, vibrant and, at times, challenging community that runs 24/7, 365.
We are all real people with real lives who, much like you, are balancing work, and life challenges and genuinely trying to do the best job they can. It’s never in our interest (no matter what members sometimes think) to do things that harm our community; we have performance reviews and objectives aimed at community growth and improving community happiness.
We aren’t robots. We will get some things wrong, we will sometimes have off days and teams can occasionally become stretched due to holidays and illness. That’s simply called humanity!
We accept being challenged, people asking questions and being held to account for the work we do. When we make mistakes, we do our best to reflect and correct them. We don’t accept personal abuse; relentless negativity towards us such as the idea that we don’t listen to members; nor do we accept we should just accept offensive comments without feeling upset because it happens in our job.
Please us with respect and courtesy, and we’ll always endeavour to do the same. You can meet us here : https://www.hotukdeals.com/team
6. Futureproofing
How we adapt, test and grow.
We are open-minded and constantly moving forward, otherwise we cannot make meaningful change happen. Our Code of Conduct should always be something that is responsive to changes in our society, both through world events and the evolution of culture.
Our ‘Unacceptable Behaviours’ section is our current core, our non-negotiable. These are the things we believe should never change and provides the base of our code and where many of our consistent moderation application is from. It’s important though that we create space and expectation that allows us to try things out, learn fast, and make decisions that could alter some of the things we allow (and indeed some of the things we don’t) through our Code of Conduct.
From time to time, you may see us test a new idea or adapt/expand on current guidance to see if we get a better or worse result. One example, and an oft-cited one, is a political discussion on deals threads. Whilst we absolutely don’t allow and don’t want to see vicious hate-mongering in our communities, our blanket ban on all political discussion may be stopping some potentially interesting and educational debate.
The first is a complete no-go, the second might add value and influence a purchasing decision. We want the room and ability to say to members ‘We want to try this and see what happens'.
It also gives our members the responsibility to make it work or confirm our caution in preventing it.
Another example is the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it could be used effectively to help moderation or behaviour education.This is an important part of our Code of Conduct as it ensures we won’t stand still and remain current. At all times we will communicate what we’re planning, carefully monitor the result (with the right to end early if necessary) and share the results.
Privacy Statement
As a member, you are fully responsible for your posts. If you change your mind about a comment you've made on the forum, you are able to delete it within a limited time.
You’re in control of the email address stored and can amend this at any time.
We advise members not to use their real name as their username. Usernames can be changed every six months
We will never share your email address with a third party. If a legal complaint is made about something you wrote on hotukdeals, you will be notified and given the option to delete or defend your comment
You can read our full privacy policy here: https://www.hotukdeals.com/privacy-policy
Thank you