GCM Posting Guidelines and Rules
Our message board is for all mothers-to-be, mothers, and grandmothers. It's a wonderful place of encouragement, and we invite you to come and be part of it! We welcome those who are new to the board with open arms.
Before you begin posting, please read our Statement of Beliefs so you can get a feel for what we believe. One of the primary focuses of our board is to provide a safe haven for like-minded mothers, and we stand confidently firm in our support of these beliefs. As such, please do not post things to the board that are purposefully or argumentatively contrary to our statement of beliefs.
You are still very welcome to join the GCM community even if you don't agree with all the points in the GCM statement of beliefs. We'd love to get to know you and to encourage you as we seek together to grow in gentleness and love for our children, our husbands, and, most importantly, our Lord.
To those who are reading this prior to filling out your application to join the GCM community: Please note that lying on your application will be grounds for immediate banning.
Before posting, please also take the time to read our Netiquette Guide.
Specific Rules
Beyond the broad rule of not posting things which are against the GCM Statement of Beliefs, here are some specifics.
1. No posts promoting or supportive of punishments, including spanking and traditional timeouts, or other punitive ideas.
2. No posts promoting or supportive of crying it out. CIO is when you leave your child unattended to cry themself to sleep. Babies cry and that is too be expected, but on this board we do not support leaving a crying baby by themself. There are formal and informal methods of CIO, and neither are endorsed here
3. No profanity or obscenity (including abbreviations and combinations of asterisks, exclamation points, etc., put together in order to stand for an unnamed profanity or obscenity) -- it will be edited out or censored.
4. Any personal disagreements including discussions about actions taken by board admins and mods should not be done on the boards. If you need to discuss it, then please directly contact the person who you disagree with. Do not bring other people into it. This follows the Biblical outline for how to deal with conflict. (MT 18:15 "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you.")
5. No name-calling, fighting with, or harassing other members. Also, no name-calling family members.
6. No trolling, spamming, or flaming. SPAM and commercial postings will be deleted including links to websites that pay you for directing people to their site. A text link to your website in your signature line is fine.
7. Post posts only once. No cross-posting (x-posting) the same post in mulitiple forums. Also, no making posts directing others to a thread you started in another forum -- that is considered to be a x-post. When a post is x-posted, one of the x-posts will be removed and x-posted threads will be combined if approriate.
8. Start threads in the proper forum. For example, posts about breastfeeding go in the Breastfeeding forum, posts about food prep go in the Cookbook forum, posts about your toddler go in the Little Explorers forum, etc. Which forum is the best fit can be subjective, so do the best you can, and an admin or mod will move it if we feel that it might fit better in another foum.
9. No using the boards to promote personal crusades or preoccupations. We're not here to help you pursue specific agendas or win any converts. Single-issue preaching is not allowed.
10. If you announce on the board that you are leaving (or if you ask to have your account removed), your "good-bye" thread (if you have one) will be locked, and your account will be deactivated within 24 hours. If your account is deactivated, you may ask to have it reactivated, but please note that when an account is deactivated membership to MBA forums will be removed, and access will be restored at the discrection of the administration.
11. No posting copyrighted materials to the board -- brief excerpts allowed, except do not post posts from other message boards, from mailing lists, from blogs, or from Facebook pages (see copyright policy below).
12. No copying/pasting any thread or part thereof from our board to anywhere off our board.
13. No soliciting copies of copyrighted videos/DVDs or other media.
14. No letting anyone else, including your husband, post to the board with your account or use your account for any reason.
15. No posting personal addresses or phone numbers to the board.
16. Should you wish to post photographs of your children to the board, please do so only in non-public forums. (Public forums are those which can be seen by non-members and are labeld "*public*"; all the others are considered "non-public.")
17. No hotlinking.
18. No posting without approval regarding anything that requires exchange of addresses between members including but not limited to requests for pen pals or to items for sale, swap, or free.
19. No posting live links to sites that violate our statement of parenting beliefs (example: sites that promote CIO or punitive parenting). You can easily break such links by adding a space after www. -- example http://www. gentlechristianmothers.com/mb. Please Note: Posting live links to all other sites (that are appropriate to be linked-to on GCM), including those that violate our statement of faith, is acceptable.
20. Out of respect for other online communities and to stay true to the purpose of GCM, no linking to other message boards or encouraging GCM members to participate in debates or controversial discussions elsewhere online, including blogs and social networking sites (such as Facebook).
21. Discussions outside of the GCM Statement of Beliefs should not be carried out via GCM's PM system, and please do not solicit emails on topics that contradict the Statement of Beliefs.
22. No sharing Personal Messages (PM's) with another person without the author's permission unless there is a need to report it for violating board guidelines.
23. No posts harshly dissecting parenting moments of others since we desire to humbly cultivate a heart attitude of grace and not judgment towards other mamas. We all struggle at times as parents and have much to learn, and GCM's focus is to provide tools and information for each of us to parent more effectively. Posts voicing some frustration regarding choices made by others can be okay, but it needs to be within the overall context of seeking understanding or ideas for better responses in the future.
24. To help other members feel welcome to respond in threads, avoid putting a member's name in your subject line when seeking feedback from a specific member. Instead consider either PMing her with your question or (if you also want input from others) posting and then PMing her letting her know about your post and that you would value her response.
25. No posting in support of alcoholism or illegal drug use. We reserve the right to remove posts or close discussions that we feel are questionable or promoting the use of illegal substances or abuse of alcohol.
Please keep in mind these standards when posting:
"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest,
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue,
and if there be any praise, think on these things." ~ Phil 4:8
Policy for Posting Copyrighted Materials to the Board
Please do not post copyrighted material--this includes articles, poems, etc--to the board unless one or more of the following is true (and if any of these are the case, please note so along with the material you are posting):
1) you own the copyright
2) it clearly states that it is public domain
3) it says it may be freely copied
4) you have permission from the copyright holder to post it to the board. If you have received permission to print/reproduce it, please include that in your post.
If one of the above is not true, you may post an excerpt from the material. Please follow these guidelines:
1) Your excerpt should be approximately 100 words or less (please post a shorter excerpt if it is a poem or short article) .
2) When posting excerpts from materials online, please include a link to where it can be read online.
Do not post posts from other message boards, mailing lists, blogs, or from Facebook pages.
Rules for Signature Lines
1. You may put emoticons in your signature line.
2. You may put up to three small blinkies in your signature line (choose blinkies no bigger than approximately 150 width and 24 height).
3. You may put one ticker or Counter Box™ in your signature line. "Ticker pictures" (images attached to tickers) are allowed.
4. You may put an imood graphic in your signature line.
5. You may put an audioscrobbler graphic in your signature line.
6. You may add a graphic of your name -- no bigger than 150 pixels wide x 45 pixels high -- in your signature line.
7. Please do not put any other graphics in your signature line besides those mentioned above.
8. You may put a link (text only -- not using a graphic) to your website, including personal WAHM websites, in your signature line, but we ask that you not put partnered revenue-linked sites in your signature line. We reserve the right to remove or ask you to remove it if it is a link to a site that promotes things which are against our statement of beliefs.
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