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Policies, Rules & Posting Tips Empty Policies, Rules & Posting Tips

Mon Feb 05, 2018 12:10 pm
Policies, Rules & Posting Tips
ScaredSober.com Forums Policies

1. Users must register in order to participate. Only one account is allowed per user.

2. Users must provide and maintain a valid email address.

3. We will prominently display guidelines for forum etiquette and violation enforcement procedures.

4. The official language of the main forum is English, in the interest of reaching the widest audience.

5. The Scared Sober Forums provide an essential community for our members. For the good of all, we ask you to adopt our principles and to act within our guidelines.

Article Comments

All comments posted in the article section are subject to the posting guidelines outlined below. The editorial staff appreciates feedback and resists censorship as much as possible, but does still retain editorial control over the articles and comments about them.


ScaredSober.com Forums Guidelines

1. These forums are the property of ScaredSober.com, Scared Sober.com reserves the right to revision of guidelines at any time. This forum is provided as a "free" service to embody a community of members sharing their processes from an addiction through recovery. This venue is our responsibility. Membership is a privilege, and we reserve the right to reject member posts or to cancel member privileges at any time at our sole discretion.

2. We do not endorse any particular group name or affiliate our forums with any organization. Mention of a particulars group name is only used to help members assemble their topics and posts in an orderly manner.

3. Though we may substitute certain words and phrases deemed universally offensive, we protect freedom of speech. These forums are regulated and if you find that disturbing, you may wish to reconsider participation. However, with the intention of maintaining civil dialogue in the forum, some violations of conduct, described in the section below, still apply and will be enforced.

4. The forum moderators may reject posts based on their interpretation of these guidelines and specifically the violations listed in the section below. The infringing member may be warned, suspended, subjected to post moderation or have his/her membership permanently revoked, depending on the severity of the violation(s), as deemed by their discretion. Repetitive violation or disregard of our warnings may result in stricter civil and legal actions. Membership will be revoked if private messages from moderators or administrators are ignored.

5. It is our intent to protect the real-world identity and privacy of those who wish to maintain online anonymity.

6. There are laws, both civil and criminal, against certain forms of speech, if so proven in court, such as libel, defamation of character, harassment and threats. We do not assess these matters of law. However, it is the prerogative of any member to pursue legal action. All members should realize there may be serious consequences for illegal behavior.

7. Any ISP rules apply to all e-mail, chat and instant messaging even if they are in response to posts or discussions on our boards. All members are personally responsible for whatever they say in private communications such as e-mail, chat and instant messaging may find unwanted or offensive material actionable.

8. Members open links or URL's in posts at their own risk. However, links posted that are in violation of any of our rules may also be subject to censure.

9. Ignorance of these guidelines is not an acceptable excuse for violations.


ScaredSober.com Forums General Principles


Tolerance: Please respect the rights of others to hold beliefs and perspectives, which differ from yours. Our Scared Sober Forum members are of many nationalities, ages, and cultures. Healthy, vigorous debate will further our goals, but only when guided by the tolerance that springs from mutual embrace of mission.

Intellectual Freedom: Embrace diversity of practice. It is impossible to understand an action without first understanding the actor and their environment. Know that varied environments call for varied response. Your way may not be the best way.

Freedom of Speech: We resist censorship in favor of free speech. Within our forums, we support the broadest range of perspectives and expression, for it is the unification of diversity to cause that gives strength to our community. We are committed to equal opportunity. Influence and responsibility here are inseparable, and both spring solely from a demonstrated commitment to furthering the topics discussed in our forums. Bear in mind, however, that some language and conduct is still considered inappropriate.

Responsible Behavior: Your attendance here carries a responsibility. Ours is a mission of mind and perspective, and consequently, attention is our most precious resource. Do not waste what attention you may attract, nor seek to attract it with wasteful actions. Remember that personal worldview is a most powerful motivator; never treat another's lightly.



ScaredSober.com Forums Violations (Don'ts)


1. No Advertising: No advertising or links to advertising or "Spam" is permitted (including signatures, member titles, images, or profile information). Advertising, defined as the buying, selling or trading of any commercial or personal product or service, or the solicitation of money, such as for investments, charities, or private gatherings.

Do not post links for the purpose of selling, soliciting or promoting by someone that has ownership or other "vested interest" to the web site involved, including efforts to promote other online forums, blogs, or web sites. This includes posting messages for the sole purpose of promoting personal agendas that are not appropriate in the opinion of forum moderators. We do not allow links to other blogs or forums in posts anywhere on the forum.

A link to your personal page is allowed in your profile as your homepage. Commercial links are not allowed as your homepage. Links must be appropriate and abide by the forum rules or they will be removed.

Posts and links about fundraising (including nonprofit fundraisers) are NOT permitted. Please do not post casting calls for Radio or TV appearances. Please do not post asking for information for research, surveys, or school projects.

Links to informational, inspirational, and educational sites not related to products or services are permitted when they are posted by someone without any "vested interest" AND whose purpose is NOT to solicit, advertise, promote, fundraise, etc. This includes links to outside agendas that are outside the scope of our main purpose, which is recovery from addicitions and recovery for friends and family members.

Links, broken links, counters or trackers are not allowed in signatures, member titles, avatar images, profile picture, or any other image. Do not post images with scripts or codes linked from another site (clickable images). All links that violate forum rules will be removed without notice.

2. Outside Agendas: No posts of an overtly political or religious nature OR posts promoting advocacy of particular personal, medical, legal, religious, political, or non-profit causes. The forums are intended for offering mutual personal support related to recovery from addiction or recovery for family and friends. This is our primary purpose. Debating controversial subjects should be taken elsewhere. Limited references are allowed, but the forums should not be used to convert others. Do not post content or links or materials to and from sites that flame someone's person, religious beliefs, race, national background, sexual orientation, or recovery program/method. It is inappropriate to promote the use of alcohol or drugs on our addiction recovery forums.

3. Breaching of privacy: Solicitation of names and addresses or other personal information for commercial purposes or, in the case of minors, for any purpose. Revealing personal information, including e-mail addresses, about other members that would identify them in the real world and which they have not otherwise made public online. This includes posting the contents of emails, private messages, private phone conversations, private letters, and/or any other private information that has not been shared on the forums by the member/non-member personally.

Do not post offline personal contact information (ie. your home address, phone numbers, email address etc.) and do not ask for personal information from others. Modify your member profile in the Control Panel at the top left corner of the forum to set privacy settings for your account. Use of full names (your first and last name) is allowed but strongly discouraged. This is to protect your security and identity.

4. No Flaming: Posting of any content with the intention of disrupting the forum or inflaming members-be it on someone's person, religious beliefs, race, national background, sexual orientation, or recovery program. This includes flaming, flame baiting, registration of multiple accounts or impersonation of another member. Do not Harass, threaten, embarrass or cause distress or discomfort upon another Online Forum participant. This includes flaming on our forums or other public forums.

No posts that attack, insult, "flame", defame, or abuse members or non-members. Respect other members of the community and don’t belittle, make fun of, or insult another member or non-member. Decisions about health and recovery are highly personal, individual choices. "Flaming" and insults, however, will not be tolerated. Agree to disagree. This applies to both the forums and chat.

It is also our policy not to allow threads that are purely to announce that you are unhappy here and "leaving the site'" or to post threads discussing why someone left or was banned. Such posts often detract from our purpose of providing support in recovery. Posts of this nature may be removed and continued posting of this nature could jeopardize your membership. If you wish to “leave” SS or just take a break from the site you are welcome to notify your friends via the Private Message feature.

Ignore bothersome members. If there is someone on the forum that bothers you, select the Ignore option on the drop down menu under their name on the post. You won't see any posts from this member again.

5. Flooding: Any action apparently intended to consume board space or to hamper other member postings, including the posting of essentially identical threads into different forums or identical replies into different threads. This is called cross posting and is not allowed. Duplicate threads and posts will be removed without notice.

6. No Posts encrypted to prevent other members from reading them.

7. No Materials that violate the law such as copyright infringements.

8. No posts seeking to circumvent these guidelines.

9. If it shouldn't be viewed by minors, then it shouldn’t be posted to the forums or chat rooms. This is a public, family-friendly forum. In addition, if something would not be considered “work safe” (to a boss or co-worker), then it shouldn’t be posted.
It is against the rules to circumvent the automatic censor, including the chat filter.
The filter is used to help prevent inappropriate or vulgar content from being posted on the forums or into chat. Please do not attempt to bypass this filter by using symbols, !@#$%^&*(), spaces, or any other methods of attempting to reveal a word that would otherwise be blocked by the filtering system.


10. Medical Advice: No Posts giving medical advice, medication advice, or psychiatric advice. Do not use the forum to give or ask for professional medical or psychiatric advice. If you are a medical professional, please remember the forums and chat are for peer support only and not to be used for distributing professional medical advice and/or using the forum to represent your professional services. Medical and Psychiatric advice includes giving a diagnosis, treatment plan, medication advice and dosage suggestions, over the counter and natural home remedies that should be approved by medical professionals. Detox can be dangerous and life threatening at times. Please consult with your physician.

11. Chat Conduct: The forum rules also apply to the chat room. The chat chairs have authority during their chat meeting times in the meeting room. Please respect their decisions during chat meetings and do not disrupt the meetings. If you have a problem contact a chat moderator or forum leader. If you do not wish to attend the chat meeting please move to another room to continue open chat.

Chat is not regularly monitored. No member has any authority over open chat when a meeting is not in progress. If someone in chat is violating the forum rules please contact a forum leader to assist you.

Instant private messages in chat are not private and can be read if we review the chat transcripts. There is no way around that. If you want your private messages to remain private please use the private message system on the forums to communicate with each other. The forum private messages are private. The only way we can access them is to sign into your account by changing your password. This only happens on very rare occasions after banning a member or troll when we feel there may be a real threat to other members or the forums.

If a member reports a private message on the forums a copy will be read by administrators. Please only report private messages that contain spam or a serious threat to the members or forums.

12. Do not disrespect forum leaders, moderators, forum greeters, and chat chairs. Be respectful in both the forums, chat, and any private communications. These members are volunteers that donate many, many hours of their own time to help in the forums and chat rooms. Violations of this rule will not be tolerated.

If you see a problem report it to us immediately and let us review the problem and take the appropriate actions.

If you feel that a decision has been made arbitrarily you may contact an Administrator privately for clarification. It is against the forum rules to ignore private messages from Forum leaders or Administrators. Publicly denouncing the actions of one of our volunteers can lead to having your membership permanently revoked.

13. ***Please do NOT post suicide notes, or anything which could sound like you might kill or seriously harm yourself!
This can be incredibly damaging to members and guests ... and we are *not* trained in counseling to deal with such things.
If you post such a note it will be deleted from the forum.
If you DO feel suicidal, please, please contact a real life counselor or support helpline.
Please visit a hospital emergency room for immediate assistance.***

***Please be aware that any posts that contain serious threats of suicide or serious threats to harm another person may be reported to the proper authorities. Reasonably suspected child abuse may also be reported. Some of our volunteers on the forums are mandated by law to report suspected child abuse and must report according to the laws of their state***

14. Members are responsible for their own actions, what they post and who they share their information with, here and outside of SS. They are reminded that anyone can read here, people don't have to join SS in order to read what is written. Only under rare circumstances will Administrators here edit what has been written as it is not fair to other members who have taken the time and thought to respond and for the smooth continuity of running these forums.




Blog Guidelines

1 No posts with unauthorized commercial communications or links to commercial sites or products.(such as spam).
2 Do not post links for the purpose of selling, soliciting or promoting by someone that has ownership or other "vested interest" to the web site involved, including efforts to promote other online forums, blogs, or web sites by web site owners.
3 No post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence. This includes serious threats of suicide.
4 No use of ScaredSober blogs to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
5 No Materials that violate the law such as copyright infringements.
6 No posts that bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
7 No Posts encrypted to prevent other members from reading them.


General Posting Tips

Make sure you are posting in the correct forum. If you're not sure where to post, please introduce yourself on the newcomers forum and ask for directions..

Please don't write all in UPPERCASE - Please write using uppercase and lowercase letters. Topic titles and whole messages that are all in UPPERCASE are considered to be the written version of SHOUTING, and are harder to read than normally-written text.

Please break up your posts with paragraphs. Typing a 400 word run-on sentence is very difficult to read. Your posts are important and members will likely skip over what you have to say if your posts are hard to read.

Please don't post private information - Use caution when posting your phone number, address, photo and other personal information. These forums are read by tens of thousands of people around the world.

Remember that it's hard to interpret the meaning of posts correctly when all you have is the written word without voice tones and facial expressions. If something offends you it's a good idea to give yourself 30 minutes to calm down before replying.

If you feel your message has been unreasonably deleted, or if you wish to complain about a post that you find offensive then please get in touch with the moderators through a private message. Don't try to handle the situation yourself. It often makes the situation worse
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