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Recovery Guidelines
The purpose of the forums that the Recovery Team ministers is to help members to recover or cope with from various physical and mental health disorders, to cope and work through problems and to deal with various behaviors that they wish to stop engaging in (such as substance abuse or self-injury). In addition, our forums also have areas specific to dealing with the traumas of grief, caring for loved ones with chronic health problems, sexual abuse, victims of crime and leaving the sex industry.
Other areas of Christian Forums address ethical debates or focus on natural health remedies or spiritual warfare. It is important that we keep our focus on helping people who are hurting and need us to reach out to them in a supportive and loving fashion. When regular members start to debate with one another it can cause ill feelings and this would distract from the main goal of Recovery forums: the ministering to people who are hurting. When we focus on spiritual warfare we can come across as judgmental and that can cause more pain for people already hurting. Natural health remedies can be very useful. However, there is another area of CF that is for that topic. We are all equals here and it is unfair for us to diagnose or act as if we can prescribe things to one another. This could interfere with the professional care someone is receiving as well.
To help you understand recovery formats, the following examples or tips are often used are great to use within your posts if you desire. These suggestions are not rules but rather helpful tips and ideas for posting in the areas of the recovery team:
- Address the opening post to stay on topic; not another post you disagree with that may begin a debate.
- Set aside personal beliefs and just be encouraging.
- Friendly chat about healthy activities that build management skills for stress relief.
- Sharing something about yourself.
- Discussing sensitive topics with the mindset that you may be talking to a vulnerable person; so re-read your post to ensure you are respectful, and clear.
- Post a prayer.
- Remember the members can't see you; just the words you post. Try to convey what you write with respect.
No Threats and/or Endorsement of Suicide or Self-Injury
You will not make threats or post intentions to commit suicide or injure yourself in any way; or endorse these behaviors. While Christian Forums staff and members can provide some support, they cannot offer professional counseling. If you are having thoughts or impulses of this nature, please contact your local mental health care provider or emergency services immediately.
The reason we have this rule is because members get very distraught and upset when they read a threat of suicide. We have in the past had copycat posts of a similar nature and people who were not thinking of hurting themselves start to think about it based on reading such things. To keep everyone safe, staff will remove these posts. We reach out to the members who post these things in love and support and have never issued staff actions.
Promotion and/or Endorsement of Certain Topics Prohibited
Endorsement means to support the topic listed, for example to state or imply that there is nothing wrong with doing these behaviors covered by the topic. It is also defined as encouragement of the progress, growth in it, or acceptance of it. Promotion means the encouragement of the acceptance but more so the progress and growth of behaviors covered by these topics.
No endorsement and/or promotion of these topics in recovery:
- Drug use
- Gambling
- Polygamy
- Extramarital or premarital sexual activity (Recovery has included masturbation here.)
- Homosexuality
- Transsexuality
- Abortion
- Illegal behavior
- Cigarette smoking in the stop smoking forum
- inappropriate contentography
- Self-Injury
- Eating Disorders
No Professional Advice or Diagnosis
You will not direct, imply, or suggest that others should follow your advice by implying/stating you are an authority or professional psychiatrist, psychologist, counselor, physician, etc. This includes, but is not limited to 'advising others to disregard doctors' orders regarding medical diagnosis and/or treatment' or 'natural remedy/supplement promotion'. You are also not allowed to say or imply that mental or physical illness is demonic possession.
Note: This is applicable to all members, not just those who are saying that they are a professional.
This rule is here to help keep our forum areas safe. We have had members in the past who have lied and claimed to be professionals and gave very dangerous advice. We have had people claim they were counselors who have in private messages and IM's caused incredible harm to members and their families. In addition members have been really hurt by implications that they are demons or are possessed when they have come into our forums to ask for help and support.
Spiritual Warfare, Ethical or Moral issues in threads or posts
Threads or posts that contain moral or ethical debates, and/or spiritual warfare discussion are not allowed in recovery. This includes but is not limited to suggesting that people are lacking in faith or is less of a Christian in any manner due to having a condition (includes mental illness, physical illness, disability, addiction, etc).
No Flaming or Insulting
Members are to treat each other with love, mercy and grace and not to use our forum area to insult others or hurt others. Sometimes when we ask for advice we may hear things we do not like. Staff tries very hard to make sure that posts do not cause members to feel harmed by participating in our forums.
No Off-Topic
You will not 'de-rail' or 'hijack' threads by making posts unrelated to the original post or other posts in the thread. You will not create threads unrelated to the topic of a forum or subforum. Debating is off topic in all of Recovery Forums.
It is off topic to post things that are not about asking for help with recovery or coping or giving advice within someone's thread.
No Vulgar Language, Blasphemy or Bypassing the Forum Filters
No vulgar language or bypassing the forum filters. Vulgar language will be defined as ... Bypassing the system filters includes:
- Posting profanity (this includes using languages other than English);
- Posting URLs or links posted before you have made 15 posts; and
- Posting Images before you have made 100 posts.
You will not use the names or titles of God or Jesus (in any language) as expletives or interjections.
You will not refer to God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Spirit in a demeaning, degrading, or insulting way.
Obscene, Vulgar, Racist, Sexually Explicit or Illegal Posts and Links Prohibited
You will not make posts, attach or link to images, or post links to web pages that are obscene, vulgar, racist, graphically violent, sexually explicit graphic, or illegal.
No Spamming
These following bullet points are all defined as spamming:
- No identical or nearly identical posts
- You will not post external links for the purpose of promoting traffic to that site. This includes any external URL contained in automatically generated sections of posts such as signatures, avatars, and custom user titles.
- You will not post any messages anywhere on this site that are primarily for the promotion or advertising of any website, email address, business, MLM (Multi Level Marketing or pyramid schemes), activity, church, ministry, prophetic services or any other entities or services from which the member will receive any financial or pecuniary gain. This prohibition includes begging or soliciting donations or financial support (charitable or otherwise, for any reason) anywhere on the site including in e-mails, posts, and PMs.
- Any link that staff decides is promoting a website for a purpose that isn't needed or helpful. (Can include spamming different links from a website)
No Promotion of Other Religions
You will not use any aspect of CF to promote a religion, belief, faith or doctrine other than Christianity. A post that merely provides information about a non Christian belief is allowed for informational purposes only (with references provided) and without promotion. Promotion is defined as encouragement of the progress, growth, or acceptance of something including advertising and publicity. For the purposes of this rule, atheism and witchcraft/psychics are to be considered faiths.
This includes endorsement of reincarnation or going to a psychic. It also includes discouraging Christian growth or the use of the Christian faith in helping in the recovery process.
No Harassment of Other Members
You will not harass or abuse other members in threads, private messages, via rep comments or blessing comments, in custom titles, signatures, avatars or profiles. This includes stalking other members, both online and in real life. This includes making bad faith "spite reports" of another member's posts.
No Violation of the Privacy of Other Members
You will not violate the privacy of other members by posting identifiable personal information about them; e.g. full names, addresses, email addresses or telephone numbers. You will not repost the contents of private messages or emails without the prior permission of the sender. You will also not post your own identifiable personal information such as address, email address, or telephone number in the open forums.
No Defamation of Members or Non-Members
You will not deliberately make posts you know are untrue about any other person, whether or not that person is a member.
No saying someone is not a Christian if they use a Christian faith icon
You will not state or imply that somebody is not Christian if they use a Christian faith icon.
Breaches of Rules
Members or staff can report posts for suspected rule violations. Due to some nature of the Recovery forums, our reports are private and not viewable by members.
Reports are worked by the Recovery Staff team. At least two or three staff must be in agreement that a post violates a rule before official staff action is taken. The exception to this is the following: removal of an offensive or possible triggering post or thread temporarily during staff review, removal of contact information like email addresses from public view (staff edit), or if the report is about a member making a request to close their own thread or delete something they wrote.
If the member breaches a Forum Rule, the member will be sent a PM. The PM may be a counseling PM, a (RFE) request for edit, a (SEN) staff edit notification, or a (SD) staff deletion. The PM should contain the option of discussion the rule violation with Staff via pm's however these pm's will be posted in the report so that all staff on the team can learn from the situation and can give express concerns or opinions. If the member continues to breach the rules, a member may be suspended or banned after all other avenues have been exhausted. The member should be warned that if his/her behavior does not change that banning/suspension is imminent.
If there is need to promote peace and enforce a short time-out period, a 24-48 hour suspension may be mandated at staff discretion but should have other staff input and a report must document this for accountability sake.
Trolling
If there is obvious trolling (posting of abuse or offensive images, offensive username/ avatar/ email address), an immediate permanent emergency ban is mandated if the member has under 100 posts. This can be performed by any staff. If the member has over 100 posts, a permanent normal ban is mandated, but can only be issued by a Supermoderator with consensus of the forum Moderators. The member should be informed that they have the right to appeal a ban/suspension and what the method is for pursuing an appeal. He/she should also be informed that permanently normal banned members may be unbanned after one year without appeal.
Appeals
Appeals against suspensions, bans and Forum Specific Bans (FSBs) can be made by a member through the Staff Feedback Form found on the Staff Team Listings page here. Appeals will go to the Team Leader of the staff member being appealed against.
Thread Closures
No thread will be closed without a report made for staff review and for staff accountability except when the member who created the thread makes the request that it be closed or deleted.
Threads can be closed for any of the following reasons.
.......Cleaning (target 48 hours or less for completion)
.......Review (target 48 hours or less for completion)
.......Too many broken rules (Mod Hat should specify which rules were violated - permanent closure)
.......Request of the OP (Mod Hat should specify that other members may repost the OP if they wish to continue the discussion - permanent closure)
.......Permanent thread closures should be used as a last resort, only after other avenues have been exhausted.
Wiki: Recovery Guidelines - Snapshot taken August 1, 2007 at 10:36pm AEST +10.
