Community guidelines

Everyone with a respectful interest in Ireland is welcome. You do not need to prove ancestry or be “Irish enough” to participate. These rules apply equally to questions, replies, photographs and profiles.

1. Be respectful. Make room for different identities, traditions and experiences.
2. No harassment, hate, threats or personal attacks.
3. No scams, spam, impersonation or repetitive promotion.
4. Do not publish another person’s private information, contact details, identity documents or sensitive information about living relatives without permission.
5. Respect photo and content ownership. Upload only images you have permission to share.
6. Share personal experiences honestly. Do not present someone else’s story as your own.
7. Keep discussions relevant to the selected board. Use tags for counties, locations and interests.
8. Disclose business relationships when making recommendations.
9. Use broad cities or regions when discussing local connections. Never post your home address, private phone number or precise live location.

Before you post

Verify your account email and accept these guidelines and the site terms. Our five boards cover roots, visiting Ireland, local connections, culture and stories. This release has no general politics board. Relevant historical or cultural conversations follow the same respectful rules.

Travel contributors should say when they visited. Prices, schedules, opening hours and availability change; readers should confirm details directly. Shared surnames and interests do not establish family relationships. Community discussions are personal experiences and questions, not professional legal, immigration or genealogical advice.

Editing and review

You may edit your own posts for 24 hours after creation. Contact moderators for later corrections or privacy concerns. Locked discussions cannot receive member edits or replies. First contributions and suspicious links may await review; the account page shows your pending contributions. Pending content is not public or indexed.

Report a concern

Open “Report this post” beneath a contribution and describe the concern without repeating private information unnecessarily. Reports enter a private moderator queue. Moderators may approve, hide, move, lock or move content to recoverable Trash, and may suspend participation. Moderation actions and reasons are recorded.

Appeals and account requests

Use site support to request human review of a disputed removal or suspension. Include the public discussion URL and a brief explanation. Automated checks can flag content for review; they do not decide anyone’s ancestry or identity.

Optional profiles remain private unless you explicitly choose public fields and opt into discovery. Change visibility and notification preferences, or request account deletion, in your community account. Deletion requests are reviewed by an administrator, including treatment of shared discussions and any applicable retention requirements.

AI answers and your choices

When enabled, Irish.org AI Helper reads public questions and relevant public discussion context, then uses OpenAI to draft specifically related feedback grounded in published Irish.org articles. It cannot browse live schedules or verify bookings, ancestry or personal identity. AI replies are labeled and may contain mistakes.

Private profiles, account emails, private or pending contributions and photographs are not included. Basic email, phone and credential patterns in public text are redacted; do not post sensitive information. You can select human replies only in the editor. Public questions remain subject to the community’s normal moderation process.

The helper gives people a chance to answer first, skips resolved or locked discussions and pauses as human participation grows. Report concerns using the report control for human review. Moderators can hide or remove AI replies and administrators can pause the helper at any time.