Version 1.3. Last updated: July 21, 2026. (v1.3: Section 2 gained a clause on contribution marks, given for taking part and never for your opinion, and Section 5 replaced open-ended rejection discretion with a written, content-neutral list of the only reasons we reject a review. v1.2: Section 6.4 amended because the score shown for a spot is now computed by us, blending our own rating with contributor ratings, rather than being a contributor-only average. v1.1: Section 6.1 amended so a star rating with no text publishes immediately, without a byline. v1.0, July 21, 2026: original.)
These Contributor Terms apply to everyone in the United States who submits a review to Paddle to Water. They are in addition to our Terms of Use and Release, our Privacy Policy, and our Disclaimer.
These Contributor Terms govern submitting reviews and other content to Paddle to Water. They are in addition to, and expressly incorporate by reference, the Site’s Terms of Use and Release, its Privacy Policy, and its Disclaimer. If these Contributor Terms conflict with any of those documents: for any claim arising out of your submission of Content, Content published on the Site, or our moderation of Content, these Contributor Terms control; for every other claim, the Terms of Use and Release controls; and nothing in any of these documents narrows the safety disclaimers, the assumption of risk, or the release, all of which continue to apply in full.
You accept these Contributor Terms by checking the acknowledgment box shown before you submit any Content. The box is not checked for you. If you do not check it, your review is not submitted. You can still use the rest of the Site without agreeing; only the review feature requires these terms.
You must be at least 18 years old to submit a review. The Site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we learn a contributor is under 18, we will disable their ability to contribute and remove their Content. A parent or guardian who believes a child under 13 has provided us personal information may contact us at hello@paddletowater.com and we will delete it.
Posting requires signing in. You are responsible for activity under your account. One account per person, and one review per launch spot per account. We may rate-limit, refuse, or remove submissions to prevent fraud, spam, or manipulation.
Real experiences only. Submit reviews only for spots you have genuine, first-hand experience with. Do not post fake reviews, reviews you were paid or rewarded for without disclosing it, or reviews written on behalf of a business. If you have any material connection to a spot or a business named at a spot, including employment, ownership, a family relationship, or free or discounted goods or services, you must disclose it clearly in the review itself.
Marks are for taking part, never for your opinion. We give small marks for contributing, and they are shown only to you. They are awarded on whether you took part, never on your opinion of a spot or how you rated it, in either direction. They have no cash value, they buy nothing, and they do not make your review more or less likely to be published. Marks are not payment, and a review you submit is still your own honest first-hand account.
You keep ownership of your Content. You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, sublicensable, transferable licence to host, store, reproduce, display, publicly perform, distribute, and format your Content for the purposes of operating, promoting, and improving the Site and its services, including the website and the native mobile app.
Formatting only. We do not rewrite your words.(See Section 6 for what is held before publication.) The licence to “format” is limited to non-substantive technical presentation: layout, truncation for previews, character escaping, and safe rendering. Our moderation is binary. We either publish your Content substantially as submitted, or we reject it in whole. If a submission would be publishable except for a discrete problem, such as a third party’s phone number, we will reject it and invite you to resubmit rather than silently changing your words.
For Content we reject or later remove, and for Content removed because you deleted your account, we may retain an archived copy and a record of the moderation decision for fraud prevention, dispute handling, and legal defence, for up to three years, and longer only where a specific legal claim is pending or reasonably anticipated. These retained records are not publicly displayed.
By submitting Content you represent that: you own or have all rights necessary to submit it; it is your genuine, truthful, first-hand opinion or experience, and any statement of fact in it is accurate to the best of your knowledge; it does not defame any person or business, or violate anyone’s privacy, publicity, or intellectual-property rights; it is not fake or undisclosed-paid; and it contains no personal information about third parties beyond what is reasonable to describe a public-facing business.
Reviews must be about the launch spot and your experience of it. Do not post:
Reviews that name a private business. Many spots involve a private business: a marina, a paddle shop, a private dock. You may share honest opinion and an honest, accurate description of your own experience. Opinions are yours to make. False statements of fact presented as true are different, and they can expose both you and us to liability. The practical rule: write what you saw, not what you concluded.“There was an oily sheen on the water by the dock on June 3” is something you witnessed. “This business dumps fuel in the water” is a conclusion about someone else’s conduct that you almost certainly cannot prove. You are solely responsible for the factual claims you make about third parties.
Why we reject a review, and why we do not.Because taking part earns marks (section 2.5), our reasons for rejecting have to be written down rather than left open. We reject a submission only because it: is not based on your own first-hand experience; has an undisclosed material connection; contains abuse, harassment, or slurs; contains another person’s personal information; accuses someone of a crime or a regulatory violation; is off-topic or spam; or is illegible. We do not reject a review for being critical or negative, and a rejection never depends on your rating. We are under no obligation to explain an individual rejection.
Honest reviews of us are welcome. Nothing in these terms restricts or penalises your honest review or assessment of Paddle to Water itself, and we will not seek to enforce any provision as such a restriction.
Anything you write is read by a person before it appears. If your submission contains text, it is held and then either published substantially as written or rejected in whole. It is never published automatically.
A star rating submitted on its own, with no review text, appears immediately, and it is published with no name attached to it. There is nothing written for a person to read. We may remove any rating at any time under Section 6.3. To have your own rating taken down, email hello@paddletowater.com, or delete your account under Section 9.3.
We act as a host and distributor of Content created by users, not as its author or publisher. Reviews reflect the views of the contributors who wrote them, not the views of Paddle to Water or its owner. Our decision to publish, reject, or later remove a review does not make us the author of that Content, and we do not adopt or endorse it. The score shown for a spot is computed by us. It combines our own rating of the spot, weighted as five reviews, with every published contributor rating. It is therefore our statement, not the contributors’, and it is not a statement that a spot is safe. Where a spot has no rating of our own, the number shown is a plain average of contributor ratings.
We respond to notices of claimed copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 512. Designated agent: DMCA Agent, Paddle to Water, hello@paddletowater.com. A mailing address for service is available on request. A notice must include your signature, identification of the work and of the material to be removed, your contact details, a good-faith statement, and a statement under penalty of perjury that you are the owner or authorised to act for them. Knowingly misrepresenting that material is infringing can make you liable for damages under 17 U.S.C. 512(f). If we remove your Content in response to a notice we will make a reasonable effort to notify you, and you may send a counter-notice.
Businesses or individuals who believe a published review contains false factual assertions or unlawful content may contact us at hello@paddletowater.com. Please identify the specific review and the specific statement. We reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to temporarily unpublish content, to ask the contributor to verify a factual claim, to remove content, or to take no action at all. Providing this report path is a voluntary courtesy. It does not create any obligation to remove, review, or investigate any content, and it does not waive any protection available to us, including under 47 U.S.C. 230.
We terminate the contribution privileges of repeat infringers in appropriate circumstances.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, you will indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Paddle to Water and its owner from any third-party claim, demand, loss, liability, or expense, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, arising out of or relating to your Content, your breach of these terms or your representations, or your violation of any law or third-party right in connection with your Content. This does not extend to any claim to the extent it arises from our own gross negligence, recklessness, or wilful misconduct, and does not apply to liability that cannot be shifted under applicable law.
To post a review you sign in, which means we process personal information: your identity-provider profile, your display name, your reviews, and technical and usage data. What we collect and why is described in our Privacy Policy.
Your choices, offered to everyone. Rather than sorting users by state, we offer the same core choices to every US user. You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask us to correct it, and ask us to delete your account and its data. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. Email hello@paddletowater.com from the address on your account. We respond within 45 days, and we will not charge or penalise you for asking.
What deletion actually does. If you ask us to delete your account, we remove your reviews from public display and dissociate them from your account and display name, we delete your account and your saved spots, and, if you ask us to delete everything, we also delete your email and push alert subscriptions. Residual copies may persist in routine backups for a limited period, and we retain the moderation and legal-defence records described above for up to three years. Those records are never publicly displayed.
Reviews are opinions, not safety advice. They are the personal opinions and experiences of individual paddlers. They are not safety instruction, condition reports, or a guarantee that a spot is safe, legal to access, or suitable for you. This restates and does not narrow our Disclaimer and Terms of Use and Release, including that all water activities carry inherent risk of serious injury or death and that you are solely responsible for assessing conditions, access rights, and your own fitness before launching. A favourable review, a high rating, or a high average never means a spot is safe. Conditions change, access changes, and the person who wrote a review is not you and was not there on your day.
Content and the review feature are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, title, non-infringement, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose, to the fullest extent permitted by law.
We do not verify the truth of reviews. We are not liable for reliance on any review, for a review’s effect on any business, or for a dispute between a contributor and a reviewed business.
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, Paddle to Water and its operator shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or any loss of profits or data, arising out of or related to your submission of Content, any Content published on the Site, our moderation, rejection, or removal of Content, or any reliance on Content. In no event shall our aggregate liability for all such claims exceed one hundred U.S. dollars ($100.00). Some jurisdictions do not allow these exclusions; in such jurisdictions our liability shall be limited to the greatest extent permitted by law.
Nothing in this section limits liability for gross negligence, recklessness, wilful misconduct, fraud, or any other liability that cannot be limited under applicable law, including any claim for personal injury or death to the extent applicable law does not permit it to be limited.
This limitation applies to Content-related claims. Claims arising out of your use of the Site generally are governed by the limitation of liability in the Terms of Use and Release. The one hundred dollar limit is a single aggregate limit across all of the Site’s legal documents. It is not cumulative and does not stack.
We may change these terms and will post the changed version with an updated version number and date. For changes that materially affect your rights, including any change to indemnification, liability, or disputes, we will ask you to accept the new version by checking the acknowledgment box again before your next submission. Continued use of the Site alone is not acceptance of a material change. You are bound only by the version you actually accepted at the time you submitted Content.
We may suspend or terminate your ability to contribute at any time. The licence for already-published Content, and the representations, indemnity, liability, and disputes sections, survive termination.
These terms and any dispute arising out of or related to them are governed by the laws of the State of California, without regard to its conflict-of-law principles, except where the law of your home state provides you a protection that cannot be waived by agreement, in which case that protection applies to you. You agree to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the state and federal courts located in San Francisco County, California, except that either party may bring an individual action in a small-claims court of competent jurisdiction, either in San Francisco County or in the county where you reside.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, you agree that any claim must be brought in your individual capacity and not as a plaintiff or class member in any purported class, collective, consolidated, or representative proceeding. If this paragraph is held unenforceable as to you or in your jurisdiction, only this paragraph is severed as to you or in that jurisdiction, and the rest of these terms remain in full force.
Nothing in these terms waives any right you may have to a trial by jury, and nothing shortens any limitations period that would otherwise apply to your claims. We have deliberately left both intact.
If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, it will be enforced to the maximum extent permitted by law, and if it cannot be, it will be severed. The invalidity of a provision as to one user or in one jurisdiction does not affect its validity as to other users or elsewhere, or the validity of the rest of these terms.
For any question about these Contributor Terms, for a privacy or deletion request, or to report a published review, contact us at hello@paddletowater.com. For copyright notices and counter-notices, contact our designated agent: DMCA Agent, Paddle to Water, at the same address. A mailing address for service is available on request.