[DocJohn]

Forums Mission Statement

The purpose of the My Support Forums community is simple -- to offer emotional support and information for mental health, self-improvement, and relationship issues. In that vein, you should be civil and treat others as you expect to be treated here.

Specific Terms of Use for these Forums

While the administrators and moderators of this forum will attempt to remove or edit any generally objectionable material as quickly as possible, it is impossible to review every message. Therefore you acknowledge that all posts made to these forums express the views and opinions of the author and not My Support Forums, the administrators, or moderators (except for posts by these people) and hence they will not be held liable.

You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-oriented or any other material that may violate any applicable laws. Doing so may lead to you being immediately and permanently banned (and your service provider being informed). You agree that the community support team (administrators and moderators of this forum) have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic at any time should they see fit. As a member, you agree to any information you have entered above being stored in a database. This information will not be disclosed to any third party without your prior authorized consent.

These forums are primarily for mutual emotional support and information sharing. Advertisements, announcements, research requests or any type of research on the content of these forums are strictly prohibited. Unless otherwise noted, copyrights of individual messages are owned and retained by their original poster. Unauthorized use or reproduction of any material found on these forums is strictly prohibited without prior authorization of the copyright holder.

A valid email address is required to complete your registration. Only one member account per individual. People registering more than one account may lose all accounts on the forum, and all forum access.

Inappropriate Content

This is, first and foremost, a self-help support community. That means if your message (post or PM) isn't about offering support to another person or asking for it, it's potentially not appropriate for our community. Specifically prohibited from our community:

• Advertisements of any sort
• Announcements of one's own Web site, new resource, or book
• Announcements for research projects
• Soliciting others to join another online community
• Flames or messages meant to intimidate or harass others
• Threatening or profane messages
• Messages discussing a private message (PM) from others
• All administrative issues
• Copyrighted materials that you do not own the rights to
• Messages containing suicidal threats or suicidal actions
• Messages containing or condoning illegal acts
• Limit your direct discussion of politics and religion, as people usually hold pretty strong opinions about these topics (you can discuss spirituality in the Sanctuary for Spiritual Support)
• Triggering material without the use of the Trigger Icon
• Anything that violates the Terms of Use for this site
• Pedophiles, rapists, and others that have abused another individual physically, psychologically, emotionally or sexually (generally real or acted-upon) are not welcome here because our focus is on support for victims of such abuse; the two are not compatible with one another. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis.
• Members should generally not speak for, or about (especially in a negative manner), other current or past members. If a member wants to say something, they are welcomed to do so themselves. If a past member who's left on their own accord wants to say something, they're welcomed to start a new account.
• Interpersonal differences with other members should always be handled in private (e.g., via PM) -- not in chat, and not in a thread.
• Specific numbers should not be used in talking about weight gain/loss, BMI, or body measurements in the Eating Disorders forum.
• All goodbye posts. Instead, PM your friends privately if you choose to leave the community.

Remember that these are Guidelines, not rules, so exceptions can and will be made from time to time for specific circumstances, as determined by the Community Support Team on a case-by-case basis.

Videos should be posted in the videos forum.

Members who have other members on their Ignore list should not start community/group/game/party/holiday threads, because it would limit who could post to such a thread; such members should ask a community support team member to start the thread instead.

All community guidelines apply to all parts of our community, including the chat rooms.

For links to other websites, the following guidelines apply:

• Links in your profile are fine. Link to almost anything you want in your profile page, as long as it doesn't violate our sexual, illegal activities, or profanity guidelines.
• Links on a post to anything online are okay, as long as it's your personal site, photos, a research article, an article or resource you personally have found useful or helpful, a helpful tip, etc. We don't want to see people abusing this by saying, "Hey, I just updated my site" and posting about it every week.
• Please refrain from posting links to other communities solely in order to solicit other members to that community.
• Please refrain from posting links without accompanying text (e.g., a personally-written 5-10 sentence description, summary or opinion about the link). We are first and foremost a discussion support forum, and links posted without any accompanying text are not conducive to discussion or support.

For signatures:

• Links in your signature are okay, as long as they are to your personal site, a charity, a helpful resource or article you'd like others to know about, a project or non-profit effort. Generally, no self-promotional links are allowed in one's signature; exceptions, however, may be made on a case by case basis.
• Pictures in signatures should be no bigger than 30 Kb in size AND 400 x 150 pixels in dimension (60,000 pixels in total dimension size). Your signature picture can be of different dimensions than 400px x 150px, as long as its total size is less than 60,000 pixels.

For custom member titles (after you've reached 2,000 posts), you cannot use:

• Any existing forum titles based upon post levels
• Anything profane, sexual, political or religious in nature
• Anything suggesting you are a professional therapist or doctor
• Anything suggesting you are a member of the community support team
• Anything suggesting you are a member of the My Support Forums community support team or staff (formally or informally)

(If you abuse the custom titles, you will get one warning; then the custom titles privilege will be removed.)

When in doubt about appropriate content, contact any moderator before posting questionable material.

Use of Intellectual Property

All users, visitors and members who access this forum agree not to copy and paste, quote, print-out, distribute, or otherwise use a member's postings or other contributions to the community on another website, blog, or service without first obtaining the expressed written consent and permission of the author to do so via a PM or email.

Photo Gallery

Our photo gallery is for use by registered members. Members are free to post any photograph or image that they have the intellectual property rights to. That means that members should refrain from posting copyrighted material (unless they are the author of the material) or any photo featuring individuals who have not given their expressed permission. No lewd, pornographic or obscene images are permitted. Any photo or graphic in the photo gallery found to be violating this guideline will be removed and the member warned.

Chat System

As a part of our community, we operate a real-time chat system for our members. All Community Guidelines apply while in chat. Please use the self-care tools -- such as placing other members on Ignore whom you don't get along with -- while in chat. Also, please note that because we are an all-ages community, there is no explicit sex talk allowed in our chat system. ("Mild flirting and non-explicit innuendo remains okay, as long as it is conducted in the Adult Room. No graphic discussion of sex or sexual acts is allowed in any of our chat rooms.")

Please be aware that we do not offer 24/7 customer support anywhere in our community. If you have a problem or concern while in chat, please contact a moderator or administrator with the name of the room you were in while the incident occurred, the members involved, the date and time of the incident, and we will investigate the issue further.

Forums are Research-Free

We prohibit any non-naturalistic research being conducted on the forums. At no time shall members' individual posts be quoted or used in the write-up of any research. You are welcomed to help other members research topics and provide research that is potentially helpful to others.

How do I add formatting or images to my post?

Please see the section in the FAQ on HTML markup tags allowed in posts:

Help / FAQ Section

Who owns what I write here?

You do! Each author is the sole owner of his or her own posts. No one is allowed to reproduce your post under U.S. copyright provisions unless you give explicit permission for them to do so, or they are making use of part of your post under the 'fair use' provisions of copyright case law. You give My Support Forums a license to reproduce your post on our site, as per our Terms of Use.

Can I delete my own posts?

Yes, within the first 4 hours of posting, you may delete your own post. After that time, please contact a moderator or administrator to have your post removed. Because we have no way of mass-deleting posts from any given member, we ask members to not request more than 5 posts deletions for their account. We can make exceptions to this limit on a case-by-case basis. You can learn more about deleting posts here as well as information about removing your entire account.

Can I post other people's images and photos I found on the Internet here?

Generally, photographs and images on other sites are copyrighted and cannot be used in the forums without the express permission of the author. Please do not post images or photos from other websites without first obtaining the author's permission. Any such copyrighted material will be removed without notice.

What's your privacy policy?

Our privacy statement is available.

You should be aware that we allow Google and other search engines to index our community, in order to help others who are searching for a safe and supportive online self-help support community for mental health issues find us. Please do not post identifying information here that you wouldn't want to be seen by those who know you in your life.

Who are the moderators here and how do I contact one?
Please feel free to contact any of the moderators (listed at the bottom of the forum's index page) if you need assistance or have questions or concerns regarding specific posts. There are two ways to contact a moderator. The first is if you're reading a thread and see a post of questionable content, you can click on the Report Post icon () of the post in question and that will automatically alert the moderators to the questionable content. They will then review it and make a decision on whether the post is appropriate or not. The other way to contact a moderator is to privately message (PM) them directly. You can do this by clicking on a moderator's name in a thread. Refusing to cooperate with the request or directive of a moderator or administrator may result in your suspension from the community.

Notes:
7/15/13 Update: Clarified speaking for or about other members; Interpersonal differences
7/8/2014 Update: Added no goodbye posts; chat note; video note
9/17/16 Update: Chat system; Post deletions and 5 post deletion limit
1/1/18 Update: Members using ignore list starting community/group/game threads
2/23/20 update: Name change
3/10/22 update: Fixed broken links

[DocJohn]

This is the current list of active moderators and administrators here.