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Community Guidelines: must read!!

Discussion forum for parents in Australia

Community Guidelines: must read!!

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Sophie-RO
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Community Guidelines: must read!!

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Parents Community Guidelines. 

 

Welcome to the ReachOut Parents Forums! This is an anonymous, safe space, open 24/7, for parents and carers of teenagers to chat with each other about all things parenting, and explore issues their teens may be facing in a safe and supportive space. 

 

We have moderators online from 9am–11pm weekdays, 10am–11pm weekends, however these forums are not monitored 24/7 and we cannot guarantee someone will see or reply to anything you post. These forums are for peer support; where parents can talk to and support each other.

 

ReachOut is not a counselling or a crisis service - if you or someone you know is at risk or you want to talk to someone now, go to our Urgent help page.

 

Mandatory reporting: 

 

We respect your privacy and anonymity, however there are times when we are obliged under law to make reports to the relevant authorities. There are two main times when this occurs:

  1. If you are at imminent risk of harm, including suicide, then we will share your IP address and any other information we have about you with emergency services;
  2. ReachOut are mandatory child protection reporters - If you post that anyone you know under the age of 18 is at risk of harm, we may need to escalate to Emergency Services or Department of Family and Community Services.



These guidelines have been developed in consultation with parents, to keep the forums a helpful, constructive and safe space for everyone. 

 

House Rules: 

 

Be respectful: we value diversity!  We want to make sure our forums are a safe and inclusive space for all people regardless of their ethnicity, faith, disability, gender identity, or  sexuality.  Any posts that are discriminatory or aggressive towards another member may be removed. 

 

 Promote positive mental health : ReachOut is an organisation centred around helping young people be mentally healthy and well. Any posts that contain advice that could be harmful to the mental health and wellbeing of  young people or their families may be removed. 

 

Respect cultural diversity There are many different values and beliefs in our community, it's important that you remember that these differences are okay even if you might not always understand them.

 

How to post: Think about what you’re wanting to gain from the forums,write a clear title for your post, and post in the appropriate section of the forums so that you can get the support you need. 

 

Be supportive : please provide support about parenting techniques in a non-judgemental way. We try to be as constructive as possible and focus on people’s strengths. 

 

Don’t promote your faith to other people. It's okay to share your experience with your faith and we recognise that this is very important to a lot of people, it's not okay to push or promote your faith to other people. 

 

Please don’t post any links to external content This includes links to YouTube videos, any external websites, or social media pages. Any content posted for commercial purposes  will also be removed. Please don't cross post identical content across the forums. 

 

Please seek approval for research posts: please don’t post any campaigns, media request, research or assignment surveys/ interviews directly to the forums. You can contact ReachOut staff with your request here



Safety

 

 

Stay anonymous at all times: please don’t post any information that could identify you or anyone you’re posting about, including school names/ teachers,  or link to personal information like blogs or social media accounts. Please respect other people’s anonymity, even if you think you may know them in real life. 

 

ReachOut cannot provide crisis support: call 000 if you or your young person is at immediate risk of harming themselves or others. You can also click the Urgent help link (top right of your screen) to access services that can help you or your teenager.

 If you’re experiencing abuse it’s really important that you seek additional help. Check out this page: Getting Help If You've Been Abused.

 

Steer clear of posting professional advice to other members: this includes legal, medical, or financial advice, such as suggesting a medical diagnosis. Although you may want to help another member you can’t be aware of their full set of circumstances, and what you say could have dangerous consequences. 

 

Please don’t post any specifics about medications (for example dosage) or names of medications, or advice about changing or stopping medication. 

 

Please don’t post explicit details about eating disorders (including methods of disordered eating, details of body weight and measurements), self harm methods, methods of suicide, or abuse. This information can be harmful or triggering to others who have experienced trauma. Please talk about these topics using general terms such as “self-harm”, “eating disorder”, and “assault”. 

 

Content/Trigger warnings: if you're posting about a topic that may be distressing to people reading the post, please include a Content warning (CW), so that people can decide if they want to read the post. For example, your post may read CW: Mentions suicidal thoughts.  ReachOut staff may edit posts to include content warnings at our discretion, to make sure the community stays safe for everyone. 

 

Don’t post obscene, explicit, or inappropriate content: this includes screen names, images, videos and links to sites. 

 

Never break the law in any way and don’t encourage others to break the law. This includes discussing illegal actions, taking someone’s intellectual property, or breaking copyright laws by posting what isn’t yours (including pictures & videos). Don’t post content that would harm the reputation of a business, organisation or person - this may be defamatory.

 

Don’t target, “troll” or personally attack other members. Respectful disagreement and discussion is okay, any kind of abuse is not. 

 

Report content. As members of the ReachOut.com community, please tell us if there’s content that may be causing a problem- you can contact us at forums@reachout.com. Please also use the report button if you are worried about someone. You can help keep your community a safe space.

 

How ReachOut helps to keep the community safe

 

  • ReachOut staff or Moderators may edit or remove any posts that do not meet our guidelines without notice.
  • ReachOut staff and Moderators may ask you to step off the forums to seek professional, medical or crisis supports. We are a peer support service and do not offer clinical services or crisis support- there may be times we refer you to clinical/crisis services for further support.
  • Should guidelines continue to be broken, we may put in place time restrictions, pauses or bans on your account at the discretion of the ReachOut staff. ReachOut staff may contact you by email to communicate this decision, provide referrals to appropriate services and encourage you to stick to the community guidelines.
  • Some guideline breaches may lead to an automatic ban. This includes:
    • Spamming, trolling, inciting hatred or discrimination
    • Bullying or threatening violence. 
    •  Posting with commercial interests 
    •  Posting for purposes not related to the values of our forums, 
    • Evading site controls
  • Posts may be moved to new threads or between boards at the discretion of ReachOut staff 

Accepted Solutions
Founding member
waldo_pepper
Solution

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

Mitzi, I agree with your suggested change to Cultural Diversity guidelines.

View solution in original post


All Replies
Contributor
Sophie-RO

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

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Super frequent scribe
Maggiemay

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

Hi.  These guidelines are excellent.  Can you please confirm if there is supposed to be further information under the Respect culteral diversity heading?  

Contributor
Mitzi

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

Hello Soph and comrade parents!

 

  1. In the Always:

 

  • - Can we make Contact us  a mailto: hyperlink rather than email address in parentheses?
  • - Ensure your posts are age appropriate should be: 12-18 y-o (not 14)

 

2. In the Never: 

  • Post with commercial  ... should be: proselytise (spelling)
  • Last line on evading - are we keeping those terms i.e. ModSquad?

 

3. Am I correct in assuming that we will merge post 1 and post 2 and eventually get something we love?

 

4. Confirmation success page:

 

I would have inserted a screenshot here but I see I can't just browse to the image on my desktop - is that on purpose?  Anyway -  sp. should be: Awesome!

 

5. My Settings

 

Please change default date setting to DD-MM-YYYY as it is currently set to US style and many parents will not know how to change it.

 

It's great to be (a)live.

 

Contributor
Sophie-RO

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

Thanks @Maggiemay & @Mitzi! I'll make these changes today! Smiley Happy

Prolific scribe
Ben-RO

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

Changes made! I am following up on the date default now. Thanks so much for your excellent editing assistance @Mitzi and @Maggiemay

 

I want to draw your attention to the update i have made to the Cultural diversity Guideline.

 

It now reads: Respect cultural diversity There are many different values and beliefs in our community, it's important that you remember that these differences are okay even if you might not always understand them.

 

Perhaps it's a little too blunt?

 

Let me know your thoughts and any ideas for changes too!

 

 

 

Contributor
Mitzi

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

I don't think it's too blunt, However I would change the last sentence as I have a problem with "these differences are okay". 

 

Some are not OK according to Australian and international human rights law.

 

Why don't we just say:

 

Respect cultural diversity There are many different values and beliefs in our community, it's important that you remember that the people who join this Forum may say things you disagree with -- but we all share one common goal: we are trying to support our teenagers and find solutions. Because we love them. 

Contributor
Mitzi

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

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Still not sure why we have two posts with different versions.

 

Just to confirm: is the first Community Guidelines: must read!! copied from the existing young people's site as reference only? (If so, I take it we should bother to edit/comment on it?)

 

Is the second post of Community Guidelines: must read!  the evolving version and that's the only one we should edit/comment?

 

Then we have a third variant in About us last updated 21/4/16.

 

 

 

 

Prolific scribe
Ben-RO

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

I'll check in with @Sophie-RO, at this stage i believe the plan is to have both, the first, simpler set there so you can gain an understanding of the expectations of the community at a glance. The second post offering more detailed explanations for those that want to delve a little.

 

I like the updated guideline. I'd like to know if anyone else here has any thoughts?

 

 

Active scribe
Jacew

Re: Community Guidelines: must read!!

Thanks Ben