A few notes about Chocolate & Zucchini and how it works. If you have questions about any of these, please contact me. I may update these house rules from time to time, so I invite you to check back regularly.
Comments
All comments, positive or negative, are welcome as long as they are respectfully and constructively written. I will however withhold the publication of any comment that is hateful, hurtful, offensive, defamatory, threatening, inflammatory, baiting, or vulgar. I also don’t permit the publication of comments that are self-promotional or spam-like.
All comments are moderated. This gives me a chance to read your comment carefully, check out your own site if you’ve linked to it, and ensure that it complies with the requirements above. This means that your comment might be held for a little while before it shows up on the entry. I strive to get to them within a few hours and thank you for your patience, also reminding you that we may not live in the same time zone.
I do not edit or censor comments. The only times when I may change the text of a comment are (1) to fix a broken or ill-formatted link, (2) to correct an obvious typo, or (3) if the original commenter asks me directly.
Copyright
All photos, content and recipes on Chocolate & Zucchini are protected. Please don’t steal my content. If you’d like to repost one of my photos, you are welcome to provided that (1) you remain within the realm of fair use, and (2) that you give credit to Chocolate & Zucchini and link back to the original post. Failure to do so is a copyright violation.
If you’d like to share one of my recipes, please refrain from copying and pasting the content directly, and instead link back to the original post on my blog. Duplicate content hurts the Google rankings for your site and mine. If you make a variation on, or a substantially different version of, one of my recipes, feel free to share it; a link back would be much appreciated.
Privacy
I don’t sell or give away your personal information to anyone. The only time this policy changes is for delivery addresses for giveaway winners, and only with your written permission by e-mail. Otherwise, your data is your data. Please refer to the site’s Privacy Policy for more details.
Product reviews
Most of the product or restaurant mentions you see on Chocolate & Zucchini are completely uncompensated, and the products and meals have been paid for with my own money.
If I receive a product sample or book for free from a company or publisher, or if I am compensated in any way for including their product or book on my blog, I will disclose this the first time the product or book is mentioned on the blog. If I am invited to attend an event or eat at a restaurant for free or at a reduced price, I will mention it as well.
I do not accept payment to write a biased review of any product, book, restaurant, or other business or experience. All my reviews are truthful and accurate to my own opinion, regardless of how I got the product, book, meal, or experience, and I choose to write about them if and only if I feel they are a good fit for my readers.
Giveaways
Giveaways are sponsored and executed by the companies I partner with. I receive no compensation (other than a free sample in some cases) for hosting a giveaway and only give away products I’ve used and believe in. I’m the middle (wo)man in the giveaway scenario and do not ship or fulfill the prize. Therefore, I can’t be held liable for a missing prize. I will help you all I can, but the best course of action is to talk directly with the giveaway sponsor, with whom I’ll put you in touch.
Affiliate links and ads
Some of the product links you see on the blog, most notably links to Amazon, are affiliate links. This means that if you purchase the product after clicking through on my link, I get a small percentage of the sale with no charge to you. If you prefer not to take part in this model and not to purchase through my referral links, you can use this plugin in Firefox to block my (and other people’s) affiliate links.
I am also compensated for running banner ads on the pages of my site.
This document was last updated on November 24, 2013.
With thanks to Cassie for letting me build on her own “bylaws”.
