Forum Policies

LibriVox is a pretty wide-open sort of project and we try to keep a minimum of rules and regulations to follow, but we do have some that you should keep in mind on our forums and in your PMs:

Be Nice

Excessive and repeated un-niceness may result in your being asked to leave LibriVox.

1. "Un-niceness" includes: personal attacks, abusive language (in the public forums or in PMs), excessive flaming, threats, and other things that would be considered NOT NICE by a reasonable person.
2. "Being asked to leave" means: Violators of the Be Nice policy will be given three formal warnings by PM regarding violations of the "Be Nice" forum policy. The third formal warning will be the last, and subsequent violations will result in a ban.

We Are All Volunteers

Everyone here, everyone, is a volunteer. We all do our best to make this project work. We cannot be perfect, and we cannot get everything right, but we try our hardest. Please respect that. By the way "we" probably includes "you." In considering this, please refer again to rule number 1, which in the end is the most important.

No Unasked-For Criticism

For various reasons, we don't allow negative criticism (unless asked-for) of specific LibriVox recordings, readers or books on the forum. General criticism is fine.

Of course we recognize that the quality of LibriVox recordings varies in many ways. We understand why listeners sometimes wish to review recordings negatively owing to wide variations both in styles of reading and in the audio quality obtained from the reader's equipment. However, LibriVox is a project that could not function without volunteers, and our primary goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

LibriVox is a very personally revealing sort of project. It takes a good deal of courage to put your voice out there in the public domain. People love the books they are recording, and to be told, "Your recording of [your favourite book] was awful! You have a voice like a bullfrog" is hard to take, and would encourage many to stop recording.

'Quality' can be very subjective. For instance:

• People like having things read to them in different ways. Some listeners like it when the reader puts on voices and accents to portray the various characters, while others prefer a 'straight' reading.

• One person may find a particular timbre of voice unattractive, while another loves it.

• Some people dislike accents from other parts of the world, and only like to listen to familiar accents. Or they like to have the accent match the material, e.g. Jane Austen read with a British accent and Joseph Conrad with an American accent.

These are personal preferences to which listeners are perfectly entitled, but allowing negative feedback on the LibriVox site unfortunately would have the effect both of causing personal hurt to the reader and of obstructing our primary goal.

The most important thing that we have learned is that all readers improve with practice. Harsh comments early in their LibriVox life do stop many people recording, and then they will never have the opportunity to improve and to put more recordings of works into the Public Domain.

We do encourage readers to process their recording to improve its audio quality, and we offer plenty of advice on how to do this. Obtaining an inexpensive but less noisy microphone, and using the various post-production processes that are available in free sound editing software can help a lot. But there is much to learn, and if a reader stops recording because of negative feedback, they won't ever learn it.

For more information, see this forum thread.

Off-Topic Discussions May Be Moved to the 'Off Topic' forum section

LibriVox survives because of the great community, but sometimes topic threads veer off track, especially Book project threads. In particular, long debates about politics or metaphysical arguments can derail a project thread. If it seems like such discussions are hurting the project, they will get moved to the off-topic section, where you are free to chatter as much as you like as long as you respect the Be Nice rule above. And note, this principle applies to non-project threads as well: if you are off-topic (even in a an off-topic thread) your discussions may be moved.

Spam and External Links

What does and does not constitute spam or other undesirable content is often in the eye of the beholder. While every effort is made to facilitate free and open communication in the forums, posts may be deleted, modified, or edited at the forum moderators' discretion. Generally, the author of a modified or edited post will be contacted via PM explaining why the post was so changed.
Content which may be deleted, modified, or edited include, but are not limited to:

1. Links or content promoting third-party websites unrelated to LibriVox's areas of interests.
2. Links or content that may cause LibriVox to be in breach of the law. Since LibriVox has no financial or legal resources, it is not in a position to become embroiled in any legal proceedings.
3. Links or content of a commercial nature.
4. Persistent unsolicited posts, PMs or links to relating to: commercial (or non-commercial) products, political sites/opinions, religious opinions etc. which are deemed to detract from the focus of LibriVox.