Thank you for your feedback.

However, I can't help but wonder if you believe that everyone would offer "supportive criticism" in the exact same manner and with similar intentions as you? In our experience in running this and other online communities for over 25 years, I've found such distinctions to be hard to determine among members.

In short, if I don't know what context and with what intent you, personally, are offering such criticism, I can't just whether it is "supportive" or just inappropriate. And in order to do that -- understand each person's context and intent -- would mean I and every other community support team member would have to personally get to know each and every one of our 400,000+ members.

This is a wonderful goal. But as you can imagine, it is a bit of an unrealistic one as well, in that I don't think we could have such a one-on-one, personal relationship and understanding with each and every member (or even just the ones who post regularly, which still number in the thousands in any given month).

So in place of trying to gain such an understanding, we have to develop a set of guidelines that make it more likely a person might gain some support from our community, no matter where that person is in their own personal recovery journey. And that journey may be very different from person to person -- we have little way of knowing ahead of time, before feedback or "dissent" is offered.

Those are some of the reasons we err on the side of encouraging only supportive comments. Having said that, I know many members who have found ways to offer a different viewpoint (maybe even one that isn't popular), in a way that isn't just going along with some behavior they see as unhealthy.

So while in general, I agree that folks should be able to offer their opinion in a manner that may even disagree with an OP, it needs to be done in a way that values the OP's current experiences, coping resources, treatment resources, complex interpersonal relationships, personal history, and more. And that takes a lot of understanding, time, and thoughtfulness on the part of someone who wants to offer such "supportive criticism." It can be done -- has been done here -- and can continue to be done.

But it's a delicate thing and must be done tactfully. Unfortunately and all too often, some don't understand this important aspect of it.

Hope that helps give some perspective on where we're coming from with all of this, and I look forward to continuing the conversation about this topic.