WasteNot Gardening Policy

Last updated: April 2, 2010

We strive to accept all reasonable Seeds in order to make WasteNot as useful as possible. However, certain legal considerations and Apple's restrictions require us to Garden (a.k.a. moderate) the user content that comes through our system.

We try our best to only weed out the Bad Seeds, i.e. those that we recognize as confusing, offensive, harmful, or incorrect. We also have to reject Seeds that may cause problems for us legally, or violate our agreements with Apple.

As we grow, we will continue to add new guidelines. This page will always contain the most current set of guidelines.

WasteNot Gardening Guidelines:

1) Actionable Content:
Seeds should describe specific actions that people can use in their lives. Seeds that are too vague, abstract, or that do not describe specific actions may not be approved.
2) Relevant Content:
Seeds should describe specific ways that people can either make a positive impact on the Earth or reduce their impact on the environment. Seeds that are not related to the environment may not be approved.
3) Factual Content:
Seeds should be as factual as possible. We recognize that the field of environmental knowledge is rapidly growing and changing, and that some statements of fact may be debatable. We may request additional information before we can approve a Seed.
4) Clear and Coherent Content:
Seeds should be written clearly so that people worldwide can understand why and how to use the ideas in their lives. We may ask for a Seed to be rewritten for clarity before we can approve it.
5) Spelling and Grammar:
Although we try not to make any significant content changes to a Seed, we reserve the right to correct minor spelling and/or grammatical mistakes. We may also ask for a Seed to be rewritten by the author before we can approve it.
6) Apple Restrictions:
Seeds cannot violate any content restrictions that Apple has required us to agree with, or that Apple has demonstrated implicitly through the iPhone app rejections we've heard about. WasteNot is rated 9+ according to Apple's age-rating system, and that places certain limitations on the content we can approve.
7) Sponsorship for URLs in Seeds:
At this time, URL links to external websites can only be added to sponsored Seeds. Normal Seeds cannot contain URLs in their title or description. If you are interested in sponsoring a Seed, or a collection of Seeds in our "Browse Seeds" main list, please contact: Sponsorships@KismetWorldWide.com
8) Seed Usage and Your Username:
All approved Seeds will be available to all WasteNot users in the same way. Your username will always be listed with your Seeds inside of the app. We also reserve the right to distribute your Seeds, through Twitter, Facebook, etc, in ways that we feel positively promote your ideas. We feel this is appropriate because we assume you Planted your Seed to reach as large of an audience as possible. We will not use your name when we distribute Seeds outside of the WasteNot app unless you are WasteNot Partner and you explicitly allow us to do so. To become a WasteNot partner, email: Partnerships@KismetWorldWide.com

We know these guidelines are incomplete and will need to be revised as WasteNot grows and expands to other platforms. We will carefully consider issues not covered by these guidelines as they come up, and we'll update this page to ensure we provide as much transparency in our Gardening process as possible.

If one of our Gardeners must reject your Seed, or requests changes, we encourage you to Plant a new version of your Seed that better matches these Gardening policies.