Community Rules
We rely on all members to help keep these discussion forums a safe place for people to share and view information. We have developed five community values that should inform your interactions and help guide your posts:
We encourage our members to share their stories and experiences in the spirit of giving and receiving support.
We respect all members and listen without judgment. Others may have a different opinion to yours, and that’s okay. However, abuse is not. If you see abuse, report it to us using the ‘report post’ button on the forums.
We want to empower our members to make decisions that support wellbeing. Don’t hold back in sharing your knowledge – it’s likely someone will find it useful or interesting. When you give information, please provide your sources.
We support our members to talk openly in a safe manner. Remember the forums are public. Don’t post personal information you would not be comfortable sharing with a stranger. We recommend you use only your first name or a pseudonym in your username. Don’t post any information that may identify you or anyone else, such as your address, email address or phone number.
We approach all our discussions with kindness, warmth and always assume the best intentions. Welcome new members, share your tips or show them how to use the website. If you are a new member, make sure to introduce yourself. Our community is waiting for you!
Please also –
- Stay on topic. If something new comes up within a topic that you would like to discuss, let us know and we can create new topics.
- One account per person. Running multiple identities on our forums is not permitted. If you are unable to access your account, please get in touch with us rather than creating a new one.
We need to make sure that material posted in the discussion forums is not potentially harmful. For this reason, we may edit or choose not to publish any post, avatar or display name that:
- Contains disrespectful or derogatory remarks about any other member
- Contains advice or content that we believe is damaging, unhelpful or distressing to others
- Contains inappropriate links
- Contains swearing or offensive language is nonsensical and/or irrelevant
- Promotes personal beliefs in a way that is disrespectful of the choices of others
- Infringes the privacy of individuals or service providers
- Is racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit or suggestive, abusive or otherwise discriminatory or objectionable
- Advertises products, services, events or research
- Makes any reference to specific prescription medication names and/or dosages or seeks medical advice
- Includes personal information such as images clearly displaying your face, full names, phone numbers, locations, postal or email addresses; or encourages the sharing of such details
- Puts overt pressure on other members to respond, including ‘goodbye’ messages
- Makes attempt to facilitate personal offline contact with other members
- Describes or encourages violence or other activity which could endanger the safety or wellbeing of others
- Is a copy of another post or contains the same, or similar, message posted multiple times elsewhere
- Contains references to edits or moderation
- Is more than 2,500 characters in length or submitted in multiple parts to avoid the character limit
- Is made from duplicate accounts.
We will intervene when these Community Rules have been breached. However, much of the responsibility for maintaining our friendly environment lies with you.
If any material you post raises concerns about your safety or the safety of others, we may try to contact you to make sure that you or others are safe. We may also need to pass your contact details on to authorities who can help protect your safety or the safety of others (for example, to the police or a mental health crisis service). Should you wish to query a moderation decision, please get in touch with us privately via email and we will respond on the next business day. You will be advised by email if we are unable to publish your post, or if a post has to be edited or removed from the forums because it breaches our community rules. We take our duty of care in providing a safe environment for all forum members seriously, and this includes recognising when a member may benefit from participating in our forums and when it may be more appropriate to seek support offline. We reserve the right to permanently deactivate the accounts of users who breach our community rules. Threads from users who are no longer on the forums may be archived (locked or unpublished) at the discretion of moderators.
You may request at any time that your membership be cancelled from the Website.
By doing so, you understand and agree that we may retain your personal information for up to six months from the date of your request and that all activity associated with your account that was generated prior to the date of your cancellation request will remain permanently on the Website (for example, your posts in the forums will not be deleted).
