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These are the terms of use that you as a member agree to uphold as a member of the Mothering Dot Community:
Mothering.com is the website of natural family living and advocates natural solutions to parenting challenges. We host discussion of nighttime parenting, loving discipline, gentle weaning, natural birth, homebirth, successful breastfeeding, alternative and complementary home remedies, informed consent and many other topics from a natural point of view. We are not interested, however, in hosting discussions on the merits of crying it out, harsh sleep training, physical punishment, formula feeding, elective cesarean section, routine infant medical circumcision, or mandatory vaccinations. We do not tolerate any type of discrimination in the discussions, including but not limited to racism, heterosexism, classism, sizeism, religious bigotry, or discrimination toward the disabled. We will not host discussions that involve explicit sexual references and are cautious about discussions on volatile topics such as abortion, religion and race. We do not host abortion debate. See statement of purpose below:
MDC serves an online community of parents, families, and parent, child and family advocates considering, learning, practicing, and advocating attachment parenting and natural family living. Our discussions concern the real world of mothering and are first and foremost, for support, information, and community. Mothering invites you to read and participate in the discussions. In doing so we ask that you agree to respect and uphold the integrity of this community. Through your direct or indirect participation here you agree to make a personal effort to maintain a comfortable and respectful atmosphere for our guests and members. Please avoid negative characterizations and generalizations about others to respect the diversity of our online community.
Membership
Membership is free. Some special features are available for a fee. You are permitted only one registration and one identity. Due to free email accounts prone to filtering out and bouncing our automated email notifications, we ask that you apply with an ISP-based email address. Members who register with free email accounts that bounce emails from our system may lose their email notification privilege.
Protecting children's privacy is especially important to Mothering.com. It is our policy to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and all other applicable laws. Due to the adult focus of our board and in order to protect children's privacy and personal information, members must be eighteen (18) years of age or older to register and participate at our website.
- Do not post in a disrespectful, defamatory, adversarial, baiting, harassing, offensive, insultingly sarcastic or otherwise improper manner, toward a member or other individual, including casting of suspicion upon a person, invasion of privacy, humiliation, demeaning criticism, name-calling, personal attack or in any way which violates the law.
- Do not post profane or sexually explicit text or link to sexually graphic images. Discussions of a sexual nature should be within the realm of topics inherent to Mothering discussions such as sex after delivery, sex and the family bed, etc.
- Do not post copyrighted material without permission. See copyright guidelines.
- Advertising in discussion threads is strictly prohibited. Do not post to advertise your product, business, website or blog or in any other manner from which you would financially benefit. Advertising in signatures is only permitted with a Signature Advertising Package. Blogs linked in signatures may not contain advertising/promotion without a Signature Advertising Package. Information about acceptable board advertising may be obtained by contacting advertising@mothering.com. MDC sales and fundraising information may be posted by administrators, moderators and designated members. Members may not use their business or product names as a username.
- Do not use any of MDC's features and resources to harass, attack or contact a member in an inappropriate manner. Do not use a Private Message (PM) or email to deliver advertisements or business/product information and offers to our members without first having been asked for such information by them. This would be regarded as spam and may result in administrative action being taken against your account. If you receive a private message that is objectionable, please forward the private message to an administrator. Staff cannot access private messages, and we rely on members to report any PM issues.
- Do not post to invite MDC members to other communities, blogs or message boards for adversarial purposes or link to discussion about MDC at another site. Do not negatively discuss other communities or discussions elsewhere (this includes blog comments), regardless of whether or not you link to that discussion or community. This is to maintain and respect the integrity of our own and other communities.
- Concerns, constructive criticism and questions of clarification regarding the User Agreement or moderator and administrator actions are best addressed directly to the moderator or administrator by private message or personal e-mail. Please do not post on the board to debate, criticize, argue or challenge the MDC User Agreement, the moderators, administrators, or their actions. If private messages or emails are not successful, see Recourse for further steps.
- Do not post or start a thread to discuss member behavior or statements of members made in other threads or to criticize another discussion on the boards. Do not post to a thread to take direct issue with a member. If you feel a member has posted or behaved inappropriately in a discussion, communicate directly with the member, moderator or administrator privately and refrain from potentially defaming discussion in a thread.
- Follow the rules and guidelines specific to individual forums. These will be posted at the top of the forum.
- Posts are an integral part of the discussion threads of mothering.com and you may not delete your posts. Though you are free to edit your posts, please contact a moderator or administrator for assistance rather than deleting posts.
- Mothering reserves the right to change this User Agreement as necessary to meet any future needs that may arise. It is our customary procedure to submit revised rules and guidelines to the membership for a 30-day comment period prior to adoption.
- Given these guidelines, we encourage friendly debate, socializing, and good humor. Thank you for becoming part of our online community.
Violations of Discussion Guidelines and Rules
- Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately by using the report button marked by the "!" in every post, email or private message. If upon review we determine that removal is necessary, we will make every effort to remove objectionable messages within a reasonable time frame. If you feel another member is behaving in a manner that is in violation of these rules, do not take matters into your own hands. Let us try to resolve the situation. Simply alert the moderator of the forum or the Board Administrator.
- Upon finding a post in violation of the Discussion Guidelines and Rules, a moderator will lock the thread as a preventative measure, or remove the thread or post(s) from the public forum, posting a note of temporary closure: "This thread has been temporarily locked/removed due to User Agreement violations." The thread will be reviewed, and if possible, the violations will be addressed and the thread returned for discussion.
- The moderator will then issue a reminder or alert via our automated system to the member who violated the Discussion Guidelines and Rules by PM and may ask the member to reword the post.
- Moderators and administrators will only edit the content of a post to remove a quoted User Agreement violation or copyright violation. A member's own words will never be altered.
- Should the violation be severe or the member be unwilling to reword the post, the moderator may elect to remove the contents of the post and forward the situation to an administrator for review.
- Once a violation in a thread has been addressed and returned for discussion, the moderator will post a notice that further violations within the thread could result in closure and or removal.
- In the event of another violation, the moderator will notify the thread of closure and close or remove the thread.
- The moderator will inform the administrator of the incident.
- MDC's alert notification system is automated. Alerts are issued by a moderator. Warnings are issued by an administrator. Each moderator alert equals one point. An administrative warning will equal three points. Warnings will be issued at the discretion of the administrators. If a member reaches 9 points, the software will automatically suspend the account for a period of 30 days. After a suspension, if a member receives an additional 9 points, the membership will be removed. Suspension may be from a specific forum or all of MDC.
- The opinions offered at Mothering.com and MotheringDotCommunity are for informational purposes only and are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking care because of something you have read here. Discussion should focus on requests for information, personal experience a nd support rather than requests for a diagnosis, prognosis or personalized treatment plan that could be construed as medical advice.
- We reserve the right to delete any message or to remove the registration and membership of any individual at any time.
Recourse
If you object to a board policy, an alert, warning, ban or suspension:
- Email or discuss the situation with the moderator.
- Email or discuss the situation with the board administrator.
- Submit a request for review to The Kitchen Table. The Kitchen Table is an advisory board comprised of a rotating membership of two moderators and three board members, usually the top board posters; members are appointed by the publisher. The Kitchen Table provides a place to bring complaints and resolve conflicts. It also offers advice to the publisher and board administration.
- If you do not receive a prompt reply from The Kitchen Table email the Web Editor or Publisher.
Disclaimer
Considering the real time nature of the board, it is impossible for us to review all messages or confirm the validity of information posted. Please remember that we do not actively monitor the contents of all posted messages and are not responsible for any messages posted. The messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of Mothering Magazine, MotheringDotCommunity, or any entity associated with this bulletin board.
The content of MotheringDotCommunity forums, including all member posts, is copyright protected. By posting to MotheringDotCommunity you grant Proprietary Rights ownership of your posts to Mothering Magazine. As a member you remain solely responsible for the content of your messages and behavior, and you agree to indemnify and hold harmless Mothering Magazine, Inc., MotheringDotCommunity, vBulletin, Inc. and their agents with respect to any claim based upon messages. Please be cautious in posting information of a personal nature or anything that might create legal concerns for you or others.
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