Community Guidelines

We welcome reports about:

• Roads, pavements, potholes and road damage
• Street lighting that's out or faulty
• Litter, overflowing bins, fly-tipping and graffiti
• Parking obstructions, abandoned vehicles and blocked access
• Taxi ranks, waiting times and public transport issues
• Animal fouling
• Drainage, flooding and water leaks
• Parks, trees, benches and public spaces
• Damage, hazards and unsafe conditions
• Noise and disturbance
• Pollution and environmental concerns
• Issues in government-rented housing
• Wildlife sightings and concerns

If you're unsure which category fits, choose Other and we'll route it.

Anything that identifies an individual

We may remove, or ask you to amend, reports that include:

• Names, addresses or contact details of private individuals
• Photographs showing recognisable faces
• Vehicle registration plates
• House or flat numbers, where the complaint concerns the people living there
• Any detail that would let a reader identify someone in a community this size

Gibraltar has around thirty thousand residents. A description that would be anonymous in a large city is often as good as a name here. We take that seriously.

Please check your photographs before you send them. If a photograph shows a face or a registration plate, we may remove the image and publish the report without it.

Allegations of illegality against a named business

If you believe a business is operating without a licence, breaching planning conditions or otherwise breaking the law, please do tell us — but we won't publish it.

Instead, we'll pass the details privately to the relevant authority and let you know that we've done so. This protects you as much as it protects us, and it gets the matter in front of someone who can actually act on it.

Complaints about named officials or staff

We don't publish the names of civil servants, departmental staff, contractors or their crews. You're free to say that a department hasn't responded; you're not free to name the individual who took your call.

Content that has no place here

• Abuse, harassment, threats or intimidation
• Discriminatory content of any kind
• Comments about someone's nationality, immigration status, race, religion, sexuality or disability
• Deliberately false or malicious reports
• Advertising, spam or commercial promotion
• Anything unlawful

Emergencies

RockWatch is for non-emergency civic issues only, and it is not monitored around the clock.

If you report something to us that suggests a crime in progress or immediate danger, we won't publish it — we'll direct you to the emergency services.

Housing reports

Housing complaints deserve particular care, because they very often identify the household concerned. Please describe the problem — damp, a broken lift, a communal area left in disrepair — rather than the neighbours. We may amend or decline housing reports on that basis.

RockWatch is run by residents, for residents. It is not aligned with any party, campaign or candidate, and it never will be.

In practice, that means:

• No party politics. Reports and comments naming political parties, politicians, candidates or elections will be removed.
• No political sponsorship. We don't accept advertising or sponsorship from political parties, candidates or campaign groups, and we won't.
• Equal treatment. An issue is handled the same way regardless of who is in government, which constituency it sits in, or who reported it.
• No editorial thumb on the scale. Reports are ordered by date and by community support. We don't promote or bury anything by hand.
• Equal access to our data. Government, opposition, press and public see the same figures. Our statistics are open to everyone on the same terms.
• Extra care at election time. During election periods we moderate political content more strictly.

We would rather be a shared source of facts that everyone can rely on than a voice for any side of an argument.

Review. We moderate reports and comments against these guidelines. Some reports are reviewed before they appear publicly; others are reviewed afterwards, including when another user flags them.

Flagging. Anyone can flag a report using the flag icon on the report page. We look at flagged content as quickly as we can. We're a small volunteer team, so please bear with us.

What we'll do. Depending on the issue, we may amend a report, remove a photograph, decline to publish it, or route it privately to the appropriate authority. Wherever possible we'll amend rather than remove.

If a report concerns you. If a report identifies you or your business, get in touch via the contact form and we'll review it. Where a report is inaccurate or breaches these guidelines, we'll correct or remove it.

Appeals. If we've removed or amended something of yours and you think we've got it wrong, contact us with the report reference (for example, RW-1234) and we'll take another look.

Repeat breaches. Persistent or deliberate breaches may result in an account being suspended.

To flag a report, use the flag icon on any report page. To raise anything else — a privacy concern, a correction, or a report that names you — contact us via the contact form.

If your concern relates to your personal data, please see our Privacy policy.

We'll update these guidelines as RockWatch grows and as we learn from the cases we get wrong. Substantive changes will be noted here with the date.