Review the following carefully. I will be enforcing to the letter from now on, when I am on. This serves to notify my fellow mods as well.
Site User Guidelines:
Our web community actively encourages the following values:
Respect and Compassion
In order to encourage respect and compassion in our web community, we ask that community members refrain from telling others how they should live their lives (e.g., “get rid of that person” or “get off that medication”). We believe that feedback or advice is most helpful if it is offered as a suggestion or through an example of a personal experience. This teaching by personal example is much more respectful to others than direct advice giving.
Trust
We want our web community to be a gathering place for sincere, helpful people whose wisdom you can trust. That is why our staff will routinely remove messages that promote false claims of miraculous cures or other untruths. Since trust is so important, we do not allow members posting with 2 separate identities (posing as 2 different individuals). Any member doing this will be banned from our community.
Specific Guidelines
• No Posts Concerning Imminent Suicide
This support community is an inappropriate resource for those who are imminently at risk of harming themselves or others. These are medical emergencies that require immediate psychiatric care from trained professionals.
Unfortunately, some individuals are chronically suicidal and repeatedly post “farewell” suicide notes to our community. We appreciate that such suicidal posts are a “cry for help”, but these posts about imminent suicide are extremely upsetting for our other members.
Since our members are totally anonymous, we lack the ability to locate the member who posts a suicidal “farewell” letter. Thus the posting of a “farewell” suicide note serves no purpose, other than to seriously upset our entire community.
• Ethical Behavior
Our community believes in “The Golden Rule” (that we should treat others the way we want them to treat us). Thus members writing to condone unethical behavior (e.g., genocide, murder, violence, hatred) will be banned from our community.
• Anonymity
Our members join our community to share with other people living with similar illnesses. Because many of our forums are public, we must keep our identities completely anonymous. In that way, we can discuss the role our significant others play in our lives without publicly embarrassing them. Likewise, we keep anonymous so that teachers, employers, fellow students or coworkers can not “Google” and identify our community posts. To protect your anonymity, members should not communicate with each other off this site. We ask that members not exchange phone numbers or meet in person. Our experience is that these ‘offsite’ relationships can be disastrous (especially when one member becomes pathologically dependent or manipulative towards the other). Basically - be careful. If you ever meet anyone offline - be sure that a friend or family member has full information about the person you are meeting - phone number, email address, and information like that.
• Friendship, Not Romance
This is not a social networking website to meet new romantic partners. In fact, we strongly caution against romances between community members. We ask that member-to-member romantic messages and/or lover’s quarrels not be posted. We believe that it is an invasion of privacy to have our community read member-to-member love letters. There are web sites that focus on dating for the mentally ill - such as http://www.nolongerlonely.com/ that we encourage you to visit if you are looking for romance.
• Members Preying On Other Members
Certain predatory individuals join self-help groups to prey on vulnerable members. These individuals initially “sound good”. They may even read self-help books to improve their false public image of being a compassionate, understanding community member. Their real goal is to meet other members in person to prey on their emotional vulnerabilities in order to get status, money or sex.
To prevent this, we ask that you never reveal your real identity or meet with another member in person. Psychiatrically, it is extremely risky to meet other members in person for the purpose of romance.
• Sobriety and Substance Abuse
We ask that you only post when you are not under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Additionally, discussions of drug and alcohol abuse that is not recovery oriented, is not allowed in these forums. Research shows that drug and alcohol abuse greatly reduce people’s ability to recover from mental illness and we are a recovery-oriented website.
• Democracy
Our community is simply a group of friends giving and getting feedback from each other. We try to run our site democratically. We do have an administrative staff, but they are often busy elsewhere with their duties.
• Our Community Guidelines
Our Community Guidelines are fairly enforced by our administrative staff. Unfortunately, our administrators don’t have the time to read every post. Thus our administrators rely on our members to direct them to those posts which need administrative attention.
• Suggestion, Not Criticism
Our members ask first if their advice is wanted before giving it to another member. This way, members can decide when they are ready to hear advice and feedback. We have learned that feedback or advice is most helpful if it is offered as a suggestion or through an example of a personal experience, but not as a criticism.
• Drama
Our administrative staff will actively discourage “drama” in our community. Please trust our administrator’s judgment in this regard.
• Religious Discussions
We know that many people who have experienced mental illness find comfort and healing in belonging to a religion. Unfortunately, many people with psychotic disorders experience delusions of a religious character, and some have had traumatic experiences with religion or with attempts to heal their illness through religious activities such as exorcism. To facilitate recovery, and to make this a safe place for everyone, we ask that users avoid mentioning their beliefs. We also ask that users not get into discussions about their own or others’ beliefs, or lack of belief, as many would find this hurtful or offensive.
• The Debate About Abortion
Many of our members have strong religious convictions concerning abortion. Thus we ask that our members respect each other’s differing points of view regarding abortion. Specifically, we ask that members not debate the topic of abortion in our communities.
• Banned Activities
It is our policy to warn anyone showing flagrant disrespect e.g., foul language, and to delete their disrespectful posting. If this disrespect persists, the member is banned from the community.
Likewise, we will warn anyone showing religious intolerance , and delete their intolerant posting. If this religious intolerance persists, the member is banned from the community.
No advertisements (for research subjects, support for special projects, or commercial enterprises), or internet links to web sites promoting these activities are allowed. If someone has a research project that they want to publicize - then email the administrator at szwebmaster at yahoo dot com - and if the posting is accepted, one of the moderators will post the message.
Unfortunately, we do not allow links to other, non-English speaking websites (because we can’t determine their content).
• Keeping “On Topic”
We have many forums; each forum discusses a specific topic. In that way, members can join discussions that are specifically relevant to their needs. Sometimes a member accidentally posts something that would be better located in another forum. Our administrative staff will then transfer that post to the more appropriate forum.
We Are Not A Substitute For Professional Care
We encourage you to see your psychiatrist or psychologist or other mental health care person for help if you have having a challenging time.
Due to the extremely large number of users and messages posted - we do not have the moderator “manpower” and “womanpower” to tell every person why their message has been deleted - but it it is, its because one of the moderators felt it violated the spirit or the terms of the guidelines below. We hope we don’t have to do it very frequently - but occasionally we do have to delete messages, and on rare occasion ban the repeat offenders. The administrators tell me that so far we have only banned a few users - of the tens of thousands of visitors - and it is only when someone repeatedly violates the rules and shows lack of respect for the community.
No Swearing
Please refrain from using any vulgar language that would offend someone else. Shortcuts to vulgar language does not constitute no swearing.
No Personal Insults/Abuse
This site is provided to you for free, and you are free to disagree with other posters, but if you stoop to personal abuse or attacks, your post(s) will be deleted. If you ARE insulted then report the post…PLEASE do NOT retaliate. If you do retaliate you are no better then the abuser and you too will treated as an abuser as stated above. Retaliation by anyone against another is in no way showing any respect for yourself, the person who offended you, nor the rest of the readers of the forums.
No Repeat Posts
If no-one answers your question, bump it rather than posting it again and please don’t post the same question in every forum, just the most appropriate one. Reading the same thing over and over again is the best way to annoy people and the worst way to get answers.
No Illegal Suggestions
Please no pointers, how-tos, advocating etc of any illegal activity, including (but not restricted to) getting illegal drugs, telling people to do illegal activities, etc. these are our rules, but there are laws and punishment in ALL countries regarding this issue.
What is PR0N?
Please, no pornographic material nor pointers to it. For those that do not know what PR0N stands for, switch the R and 0 around and you will understand.
Spam/Pimping
This refers to the use of this site as a redirector or gateway to another site for the purpose of collecting click benefits. This also includes, but is not limited to, the following: Sites/Schemes where the affiliate obscures or misleads members and The use of Private Messages, email, signatures, and forum posts, via this forum, where the sole purpose is to solicit membership. (i.e. Usage of member lists and publically accessible personal information contained within these forums). Although there are times when a link to another site is necessary for helping or answering a question, this site reserves the right to determine what is and is not SPAM or PIMPING