The philosophy behind Nappycino...

[Eilleen]

okay, sucky title but I am slightly brain dead today...

Anyway, with so many new members around, we thought it might be time to explain how we try to moderate this forum. We think that this forum moderates very differently from other boards out there.

We at NC aim to foster a community where all members are safe to express opinions without fear of judgment, ridicule etc, and where we do not believe in censoring specific topics... PROVIDED that all posts are in line with our philosophy of open communication and treat our members with respect, dignity and the right to have different opinions to those of our own. We believe that any topic can be discussed as long as everyone is respectful.

This means that we mods are NOT here to stop disagreements - yes, disagreements are uncomfortable but they are part of life. Disagreements can even be useful - but only when its done in a respectful manner.

The other underlying concept behind our moderating is common sense. We do not believe that we have to define every single scenario in our guidelines. In the early years of the board we made that mistake and everyone (including me) just ended up playing semantics and common sense flew out of the window. We have learned a lot from those times. It is common sense that tells us when we have crossed the line between venting and threatening. It is common sense that tells us when its not a good idea to say something about someone.

And finally, we believe that as adults, we are all capable of self-regulating what we read and say on the boards. Us mods are not here to regulate what you see on the boards.

And now some tips that I have used myself during my time on this forum (I hope its of use to people here)...

- when I am finding that I am not able to be respectful in my replies to disagreements, I have walked away and gotten myself a drink. I try not to post until I am able to get past the anger and reply in a respectful way.

- the "IGNORE" function is a great way to self-regulate what you read (if you can't stop yourself from clicking). Using the ignore function means that you will not be able to read the text from a particular person. You can turn the ignore on or off whenever you want. (Note you get to the ignore function by going to your User CP and look at the links on the left side - it should be near the bottom)

- the "Report" icon - ie the exclamation mark on the top right side of every post - is a good way to alert all moderators of a post that you think is against our guidelines.

Anyway, I hope this clarifies how we do things in NC. I know that for some people our approach is very different to other forums out there and we felt that stating how we do things is a good way for people to get to know the norms of this board.

If you want to read further on how we do things, check out this post: What we do...and don't do

Thanks for reading!