Community Ethos & Forum Rules

Welcome to the Diabetes.co.uk Forum - the world's largest diabetes community. This is a compassionate, inclusive environment and below are the Forum Ethos and Rules. Please take a few minutes to have a read!

Forum Mission Statement/Objective

The Diabetes Forum helps people improve their understanding and management of diabetes - regardless of type. By connecting people and engaging with each other, people's' health outcomes get better.

A. General Forum Information

1. The Diabetes Forum is our Member interaction area, where questions are asked and exchanges of views take place. Please ask questions, provide answers, start debates and challenge where appropriate - but please be compassionate, considerate and kind towards others. Civil debate is healthy, but rudeness, bullying and/or Member belittling is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.

2. Come to the Forum with an open mind and read the posts. If you do not agree with something then ignore it or ask constructive questions.

3. Respect others’ differences. Do not disparage because they do not share your opinion or way of doing things. If you find an error then correct it constructively. State your source for the correction so there is no doubt about it.

4. Diabetes (regardless of type) is a sensitive topic as almost anything affects blood glucose levels.

5. All Members are equal, with all views equally valuable. It is important, for the Forum to work best, that Members are polite to each other when exchanging views, even when debating views that differ.

6. This is a Forum of many different personalities – if you disagree with someone then start a constructive debate or use the Private Message (PM) system to have a conversation. It is unhelpful to have to read miles of disagreeing posts, and can deflect from the purpose of the thread (i.e. thread derailing).

7. Be mindful of Members’ varying levels of experience and knowledge when imparting your own views.

8. If you have questions about diabetes, then ask on the open Forum. There is a huge amount of experience amongst Members, utilise it! Using Private Messages only get you one answer/opinion and on the open forum there may be more variety.

9. To aid the smooth running of the Forum, there is a team of Moderators and Administrators. Moderators participate in thread topics and offer support, but where required, can step in to resolve issues. Click here to read more about contacting a moderator (link to a thread on how to contact mods, all the current mods and admins)

10. Where a Moderator is unable to deal with an issue, they will escalate it to a higher level.

11. Important: Members are generally not Health Care Professionals, and those who are participate on the Forum as Members, not Health Care Professionals. Members are unable to diagnose any condition, or instruct in the alteration of medication, irrespective of personal or professional standing or experience.

B. How our Forum works

1. The Forum has a number of Sub-Fora, reflecting the various types of diabetes, for parents, ways of diet and so on, to aid navigation and enable maximum visibility to topics interesting to individual Members.

2. When starting a new thread, please try to select the most appropriate sub-forum. If your thread is considered to be in the wrong sub-forum it may be moved, by a Moderator.

3. Diet is a relevant, but sensitive topic and should be treated as such. Please be considerate to other people’s dietary choices.

4. There is rarely one way of dealing with diabetes. Be tolerant and courteous to those preferring to adopt a different approach.

5. Different types of diabetes require very different management techniques and/or medications. Be mindful of this when considering responding to a topic.

6. Type 1s may post on Type 2 topics, and vice versa (and applicable to other diabetes types and groups), where they have something relevant and helpful to contribute. When cross-posting, particular care must be given to ensure your content is relevant to the topic and original poster (OP). This is particularly important when dealing with newly diagnosed individuals who may be unable to differentiate for themselves. The concerns of people with Type 1 diabetes may be very different to people with Type 2 diabetes.

7. You must not direct specific advice relating to changing or altering medication to people who have a different type of diabetes to you as this can be confusing and dangerous. By all means meet and greet, give encouragement, share relevant experiences, but you must not contribute opinions, or directions on medication.

8. Cross posting T2 to T1, vice versa (and other groups) will be very strictly moderated. Irrelevant post will be liable to edit or deletion, with an explanatory message sent to the poster.

9. Posters whose posts are serially edited or removed, will be subject to warnings and/or a ban from the relevant thread or entire Forum.

10. A zero tolerance policy to harmful or wholly inappropriate posts will be applied.

11. Posting web links is permitted, but such links must be relevant to both the Forum, its ethos and the thread title and content. Links deemed irrelevant may be removed.

12. Advertising via the Forum is not allowed.

13. Remember: We do not give medical advice. If you give advice then it is through your own experience or a link to a reputable site external to the forum.

C. What happens when things go wrong?

1. From to time, things go wrong and Moderation may become necessary. Examples of Moderation includes posts being edited, or deleted, and/or where necessary a Member conduct warning issued.

2. Threads going off-topic are likely to be edited, removed or locked to further replies. Please keep threads on-topic. If you have additional questions, start a new thread - you can tag the user you want to talk to.

3. Posts edited or deleted will be replaced with the text: 'Message edited/deleted by moderator', and include a brief explanation.

4. If you have forgotten your password, please use the password reset feature http://www.diabetes.co.uk/login/forgottenpassword.html. Do not create another account.

5. One account per user is permitted. Multiple accounts from the same Member will be closed.

6. A Member found to be using another account to circumvent a ban, will have all of their accounts banned permanently.

7. Moderator decisions are final.

8. Where considered necessary, matters may be discussed via PM or email to [email protected] .

9. Members will be suspended for personal attacks.

10. Creating forum content, with the intent of criticising Moderators will not be tolerated.

11. Administrators reserve the right to ban or infract for any reason at their discretion. These Rules and associated penalties only apply when the Administration team can reasonably judge that a Member does not deserve some other, perhaps more severe form of punishment for any unconscionable act they might make on the forums.

12. Further examples where Moderation is likely to take place:

• Making negative generalisations about diabetes types.
• Setting up an ‘us against them’ mentality. This is not acceptable and any such behaviour could be considered worth of a suspension or ban.
• Entering a discussion to belittle or discredit someone.
• ‘Carbs/fat/statins/x medication is bad’ – Members are free to express their opinion of certain diets, but personally negative statements should not be made about those that follow the diet/medication regime.
• Posting medically dangerous information. (eg. Telling users to alter medication dosage, ignore their healthcare professional).
• Thread hijacking.
• Using our Forum as a method to solicit users without seeking prior approval from the Moderators.
• Disclosing personal information of others without their permission.
• Publicly disclosing content from private messages without the sender's consent.
• Discrimination, whether racial, religious, homophobic or any other considered unlawful or not in the spirit or ethos of this Forum.

13. Any threads containing suggestions that are unreasonable or impossible to implement will be locked.

14. Where Moderator intervention occurs, Members will receive a notification, including a reason for the intervention.

15. Where necessary a warning may be escalated:

• A user who receives 3 warnings will receive a temporary 5 day ban.
• A user who receives 5 warnings will receive a temporary 14 day ban.
• Users are permanently banned after multiple temporary bans when necessary.
• Users issued a final warning will be permanently banned after any further warnings.

16. Moderator discretion will be used in cases of particularly bad behaviour.

17. Bullying of any kind will *not* be tolerated on the forum.

18. Users will be banned immediately for the following:

• Creating accounts purely for advertising products or websites, trolling or spamming.
• Posting grotesque and/or offensive content.
• Posting infected files/malware including keyloggers, viruses, trojans etc.
• Using the Diabetes.co.uk forum to solicit members.

D. And finally...

1. You are welcome to publicly suggest ways we can improve the forum in the General Chat forum.

2. Any complaints or queries about the forum must be directed via email to [email protected] - any threads or posts of such a nature are subject to be closed and/or deleted without warning or explanation.

Thank you for reading!