Terms and rules
Welcome to The Farming Forum (TFF). This is a meeting place for discussion and the exchange of information on subjects (broadly) relating to agriculture and farming / rural matters.
As a forum member, you can post messages in the forums. It's a very useful resource for any agriculture related questions as there are plenty of helpful members who know a lot about the subjects and are prepared to give advice. And maybe you can help other people by sharing your valuable experiences, too.
Our Rules
We try to maintain a friendly and relaxed atmosphere which is suitable for a wide audience. To this end, we ask that all members read and adhere to the following rules.
- Must not post libellous, insulting, antagonistic, racist, aggressive or otherwise abusive remarks about any individual or company either within forum posts or the Direct Message (Private Conversation) system.
- Must not be deliberately provocative or cause unnecessary arguments or otherwise troll on the forum.
- Must not post swear words in such a way as to circumvent the forum's built in swear word removal system (including signatures).
- Most not post any images or text which are pornographic or otherwise inappropriate for the viewing by younger and older people alike. We operate the same PG rules as facebook and Instagram - all inappropriate content will be removed at the moderators discretion.
- Must not promote websites which contain inappropriate material.
- Must not post promotional material or information about any illegal activities.
- Must not post spam. People posting spam will be instantly and permanently banned, their posts will be deleted and their details will be submitted to our spam prevention service provider so that they will not be able to use those details to re-register with either TFF or any other community using the same service.
- Must not post messages which directly invite members to contact them, visit their website or visit their premises to purchases goods or services. Exceptions to this rule include the 'classifieds' sections and when a member is directly asking about a product or service.
- Must not create the same thread in more than one forum (cross posting). You should pick the single most appropriate forum for your message. Duplicates posts will be deleted without explanation.
- Must not use URL shorteners. URL shortening is unnecessary as the forum will automatically shorten links and it makes it more difficult for members to check the authenticity of a link.
- Must not have an inappropriate login name. We reserve the right to ask you to chose a new name if we believe your name to be provocative.
- Must not have an inappropriate avatar. We reserve the right to ask you to chose a new avatar if we believe it to be provocative.
- Must not register more than once. Members found to be 'talking to themselves' will be publicly embarrassed and posts may be deleted / accounts banned. We have sophisticated systems to identify people doing this.
- Must not re-register once banned. A ban means you are no longer welcome here. Re-registering will lead to a permanent ban of the new account a complaint to your ISP.
- Must not register using 'anonymous' or 'temporary' email addresses. We will automatically delete these accounts without explanation.
- Must have a valid email address associated with your account at all times. If you change your email address, you will need to confirm your new email address before you can post again. All previous email addresses are logged.
Any members who disagree with a moderation decision are requested to email [email protected] or use the contact us form located here: http://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?misc/contact.
In posting in this forum, you understand that your posts become a permanent part of the forum. We do not remove content on request, nor do we grant members the rights to edit, amend or delete their own posts beyond a courtesy edit period for the purposes of spell correction. Members are therefore advised to ensure they are happy before posting and to stress that at all times members will be accountable for content they post in this forum.
Removal of Account
Should you wish to have the personal information with your account removed/forgotten, please send a Direct Message to @system from the account you are referencing with the title "Please De-activate my Account". This step is required so we can verify the correct account. As this process can not be reversed, we also require you to write to us at the address below (so that we can keep the request on file for future auditing) stating the account you want de-activating. Please include a stamped address envelope if you wish to know what information was removed.In the event you simply no longer wish to use the forum please simply log out and don't log on again.
Commercial Content
TFF is a free service for farmers, it is not a free service for businesses wishing to advertise to farmers. Businesses are required to take out an advertising package if they want to post in a commercial manner on TFF. To speak to us about taking out a very good value advertising package they please email Click HereIf a company or a company employee posts commercially on The Farming Forum without a package already agreed, then that company will be billed £99 + vat automatically. That invoice will continue annually where they continue to post commercially.
Please ring us first to discuss any commercial content you want to post.
The Legal Bit
The providers ("we", "us", "our") of the service provided by this web site ("Service") are not responsible for any user-generated content and accounts ("Content"). Content submitted express the views of their author only.
You agree to not use the Service to submit or link to any Content which is defamatory, abusive, hateful, threatening, spam or spam-like, likely to offend, contains adult or objectionable content, contains personal information of others, risks copyright infringement, encourages unlawful activity, or otherwise violates any laws.
All Content you submit or upload may be reviewed by staff members. All Content you submit or upload may be sent to third-party verification services (including, but not limited to, spam prevention services). Do not submit any Content that you consider to be private or confidential. Do not submit any content that you may want to make private again in the future. We do not review any content unless alerted to it.
We reserve the rights to remove or modify any Content submitted for any reason without explanation. Requests for Content to be removed or modified will be undertaken only at our discretion. We reserve the right to take action against any account with the Service at any time. By registering with TFF you consent that all the content you create on the TFF Forums is free of copyright at the point of submission to the TFF Forums and becomes property of Agri Web Media Limited (the owners of the TFF Forums) upon submission to the TFF Forums.
We reserve the right to release any information held about you to a third party should a court order require us to do so.
You are granting us with a non-exclusive, permanent, irrevocable, unlimited license to use, publish, or re-publish your Content in connection with the Service.
These terms may be changed at any time without notice.
If you do not agree with these terms, please do not register or continue to use this Service.
All views expressed on this forum are those of the individual authors and do not represent those of the website or it's operators.
Libel and Defamation
TFF maintains a completely neutral position regarding any disputes. We are not affiliated to, sympathetic to or biased towards any retailer or manufacturer (including any forum sponsors, advertisers or associates). If the forum was not independent they would lose the respect and support of visitors both inside the industry and from the general public. These forums are run as a business but do not represent any related business.
However, at times we do have to intervene to protect the forum from legal proceedings.
Quite simply if someone posts a statement on TFF such as 'Don't buy from supplier X as they are a bunch of lying cowboys', and someone replies 'thanks for the warning, I was going to buy from them but will go elsewhere', then the first post has led to a loss of business from the supplier and is therefore DEFAMATION and ILLEGAL. The supplier could sue the member who wrote the post and sue the forums for publishing it. We are not going to allow ourselves to be put in the position where we could get closed down.
Now in the interest of clarity, let us be a little more specific. If someone has had what they feel to be unsatisfactory service from a supplier - or as often happens, someone is completely mad as hell about the lack of service from a retailer, then what should they do?
Often people feel that 'naming and shaming' in a public forum will force the supplier to react more favourably. TFF is a relatively busy website, and we Google exceptionally well. A thread will normally be on the front page of Google for the relevant search terms within a few days of posting.
"I am customer and am making a potentially damaging post about a supplier"First of all, if anyone is going to make serious accusations about any supplier, they must be ready to give their full name and address to the forums administrators. If requested, this information will be kept in the strictest confidence and not, of course, revealed to the public. We need this information simply to ensure that you are not an unscrupulous competitor of the organisation you are criticising. We will not release this information in any circumstances unless required to do so by a UK Court Order.
Rule 1: Be ready to provide personally identifying information to TFF Administrators.
This information will rarely be requested, but if the thread or post looks to be heading towards legal territory, and we are fending off solicitors letters, we will contact you.
Rule 2: Do not use libellous language within your thread.
Nowhere in the thread must you use language that is libellous. No matter how angry you are, you absolutely must not use language like 'cowboys' or 'robbing xxxx' as this is language is based on emotion and not fact. It is, of course, illegal and we will not tolerate it.
Rule 3: Use appropriate language and tell the truth.
If the post could be damaging to the supplier (and these types of posts almost always are), the accuser must be able, upon request, to provide proof of the accusations. Because if the case goes to court, this proof will be needed. It's easy to exaggerate the events to favour your side of the story, but ultimately this is not the truth.
Rule 3: Be able to backup your statements and accusations with proof.
If a supplier chooses to respond to an accusation, we may decide to close a thread at our discretion once that reply has been published in order to avoid threads descending into arguments. The idea here is that an allegation has been made, a reply has been made, and we've heard both sides of the story - end of story. And lastly if a supplier later resolves the problem to the accuser's satisfaction, then the accuser is obliged to post a follow up message in the same thread to that effect. This is only fair.
Rule 4: Post follow up details in the interests of fairness.
Hopefully people will appreciate where we're coming from in asking you all to follow the above rules. If these were insignificant forums read by just a few people, it wouldn't matter what the hell people posted. But one person can make a lot of noise in these forums and so we have to ensure that damaging remarks about anyone are truthful, justified and substantiated.
"I am a 'supplier' and have a problem with a post that has been made about my company."
We fully understand that sometimes mistakes and misunderstanding happen, and a customer may be blowing something out of proportion. If you genuinely believe that you are in the right, the absolute best thing that you can do is to register as a member yourself (ideally in your companies name) and post your side of the story. Explain exactly what happened, what went wrong and what you have tried to do to fix it. 99 times out of 100, this will result in a good outcome for you, and will switch the thread from a negative one to a positive one. Potential customers like it when they can see that suppliers are aware of their problems and actively try to fix them.
We see this time and time again, and there has never been a circumstance where the company has replied genuinely and their hasn't been a very satisfactory outcome.
However, we appreciate that sometimes you do not wish to reply in person as a company. This immediately sets alarm bells ringing (if you are in the right, why wouldn't you want to put things straight? Why reach straight for the lawyers?) But, if you still want to complain about a post we do have a set procedure that we ask you to follow:
Step 1: Alert us to the problem.
Click on 'report this post' underneath the problem post, use the contact form or send a text only email to [email protected] with a description of the problem, why you think it is wrong and why you feel you cannot possibly respond publicly to it. We will get back to you as soon as possible. Please provide a phone number if you are acting on behalf of a company.
Do not send your complaint as an email attachment / PDF etc. We will not open it and we will not read it. Plain text only please.
Do not send your complaint by post. We will not open it and it will go straight in the bin.
Do not send your complaint to a moderator or administrator on the site as a private conversation. It will not be responded to.
Step 2: We will review the post / thread.
Once we have received your email we will review the thread, take into consideration your concerns, take any necessary action and get back to you. We may require time to contact the posters involved before we can provide a resolution.
Step 3: Follow up
We reserve the right to add a note to the thread explaining that the company / supplier in question has contacted us and asked for the offending post to be removed / edited. We will post a follow up provided by you if you ask us to.
"I am going to involve my solicitor"
We receive solicitors letters regularly, therefore we have plenty of experience at dealing with them.
If you wish to contact us via a solicitor please email your complaint to [email protected]. We will not accept nor acknowledge legal letters sent via any other method of electronic communication.
If you insist upon posting us your letter, please send it to the following address:
The Farming Forum
Agri Web Media Limited
Hammerwich House Farm
Hall Lane
Hammerwich
Staffs
WS7 0JP
United Kingdom
We suggest you also email your complaint for a faster response.
Notes
- We will generally not remove a thread unless we receive a court order to do so.
- We will remove any libellous comments where they are shown to be so.
- We will make it clear on the thread in question that you have contacted us in a legal capacity.
- We will contact the poster involved.
- We will not release the poster's details unless requested to do so by a court order.
- 'Going legal' on us generally does not work in your favour.
Contact Us
TFF is independently owned and run by Agri Web Media Limited.
Registered in England Company Number: 08406424
The Farming Forum
AgriWebMedia
Hammerwich House Farm
Hall Lane
Hammerwich
Burntwood
Staffs
WS7 0JP
United Kingdom
Email: [email protected] Tel: 01543 686 209