Community Guidelines

Spock is the first editable search engine for finding people on the web. These guidelines are intended to help you understand how to participate in building the world's best people search. Don't forget that your use of Spock is subject to these guidelines and our Terms of Service.

What Spock Is.

• Spock is a search engine for finding information about people.
• Spock is a global community of users who enrich people search.
• Spock is information about people organized by "relevance."

What Spock Is Not.

• Spock is a not a networking tool or social network.
• Spock is not an email or communication platform.
• Spock is not perfect. If information is incorrect, we invite you to fix it.

General Principals

Information added to Spock should meet three key criteria:

Distinguishing
Information added to a search result should help distinguish one person from another. If information does not help differentiate between two people, it provides very little value to the searcher. For example, the tag "college graduate" when applied to Jenny Smith does not help distinguish a particular Jenny Smith from other Jenny Smiths who are also college graduates. The tag "University of Virginia Graduate", however, helps the searcher quickly identify that this is a particular Jenny Smith.

Objective
Be objective, not subjective. Try to add information that everyone who knows a person would agree is true. For example, attributes such as a person's profession, education level, awards won, or even interests represent information about a person everyone could agree to be true. Adjectives such as hard working, honest, or attractive are subjective in nature and not as valuable, because they only provide meaning in the context of who is saying it.

Respectful
The goal here is to enable search, not make a personal statement about someone. Make sure to stop and think about how your contributions may be viewed by others. Even if a piece of information is true, if it could be perceived as hurtful, defamatory, or simply offensive, it doesn't belong. There is plenty of information that can be used to identify a person without being mean.

What Should You Do When You Join?

Add your real name. Spock is an application for finding real people, not usernames.

Help people find the real you. Add some tags, web links, and even a picture to your own search result.

Find your friends. You can begin by updating information for the people you know best.

Adding Pictures

Use pictures of people. Pictures should help searchers recognize a person.

Don't upload copyrighted content. Keep it legal, if you don't own the photo upload the URL of the picture instead.

Don't upload a picture involving nudity. There are lots of sites on the internet where this is welcomed. Spock isn't one of them.

Adding Tags

Be distinguishing. Make sure tags set a person apart from others with the same name or similar tags.

Be objective. Try to add information that everyone who knows a person would agree is true.

Be respectful. Don't be mean. Ask yourself if you would want something added to your result before you add it to someone else.

Don't add a name as a tag. Adding the name of a friend or relative as a tag for someone can create rather awkward search results.

Adding Relationships

Relationships are a two way street. A relationship means both people know each other. Just because Bill is a fan of Britney Spears, doesn't mean he is related to her. However, Kevin Federline is related to Britney Spears because Britney and Kevin were once married.

Focus on distinguishing relationships, as opposed to contacts. Adding someone's father, mother, their girlfriend, or best friends, or teammates, may help the average searcher recognize a person. Adding every social connection the person has ever made can cloud a search result. Before you add, ask yourself if it helps search.

Adding Web Links

Link to pages that reference a person. Linking to bio pages, social networking profiles, blogs and other pages with rich information about a person help provide a meaningful search experience.

For social networks, add the profile page not the home page. A common mistake that people make is adding the page www.myspace.com as a web link rather than an actual person's myspace page.

Avoid linking to sites that require a subscription. Pages that anyone can see are much more fun.

What Not To Do

Here is how it works: If you add content that is not in the spirit of Spock, the content will be flagged and removed and we will send you a warning. If you continue to add inappropriate content we will terminate your account.

Don't add content that is illegal or prohibited. Don't post information that violates a copyright, trademark, trade secret, or patent. Especially in the case of pictures, make sure you have the right to upload pictures before doing so!

Don't violate the privacy of others. Posting or distributing personal information about others such as phone numbers, email addresses, physical addresses etc. is strictly prohibited. If we catch you doing this we will terminate your account immediately without warning.

Don't harass people. Spock is a search engine, not a place for you to vent your frustrations or push a personal agenda. Don't post information that is threatening, abusive, harassing, or libelous to others. If we receive a valid complaint about harassment, we will terminate your account.

Don't impersonate others. Don't create false or fictional search results on Spock, and more importantly don't impersonate other people or entities. Spock is a search engine for finding real people; we will delete your account if we find you have created a fake search result.

We Would Like to Thank You

Thank you for not only reading, but abiding by our community guidelines. Spock isn't just a site for your use, it's a project that involves every person in the world. Together we can help make finding people on the web easier for everyone.