Keeping Forums Welcoming and Supportive: Forum Guidelines Update
Hi everyone, I hope you all are well. A big thank you to everyone who contributes to a supportive forum environment. We appreciate you! Before making this announcement, I want to share some context. As you know we are a community that is open to learning and growing. We welcome constructive feedback and we celebrate the positive feedback. We have grown a lot over the years and we have noticed an increase in forum posts that do not offer helpful feedback and actually take away from the welcoming and supportive forum environment and that is not okay.
In order to offer helpful constructive feedback please follow this model:
1. Identify the problem or concern.
2. Write it out.
3. Ensure you're not framing any personal opinions as concrete facts, making blanket statements or catastrophizing.
4. Ask what are the emotions that I'm evoking with this feedback?
5. Ask yourself – how would I feel if someone wrote this to me?
6. If you feel good about it, then post it. If you don't feel good about it, then revise it so that you would feel good about it.
Be sure to include solutions along with the feedback you are providing. Ask yourself, 'Okay, if I were to solve this problem, what would I do?" Try to sketch it out in as much detail as you can. Use the following headings:
Problem - please state clearly
Solution - usually the opposite of the problem
Hypothesis 1 - a concrete way we can implement a solution to try to address the problem.
Hypothesis 2 - a second concrete way we can implement a solution to address the problem.
This is how it would look for quality:
Problem: Some listeners do a poor job of listening as evidenced by leaving chats, taking too long to respond, or not being empathetic.
Solution: Help these listeners do a better job by fully engaging in chats, responding quickly, and being empathic.
Hypothesis 1 - mandatory practice chat box that addresses these issues.
Hypothesis 2 - listener tips that address these issues.
How will we know if the above is working? We should see an increase in 4 and 5 star ratings, positive reviews, and increased positive conversations.
Interested in learning more about the problem/solution model? Learn more here
Following the above-mentioned model allows you to provide helpful feedback that leads to further improvement of our beloved community. You are welcome to provide feedback through this form, you can also post feedback in this forum section.
In order to maintain a therapeutic space, moving forward we will be deleting forum posts (this includes forums that come under sub-communities) that take away from a supportive forum environment. If a forum post is not helpful nor positive then it will be deleted. In such a case, you will be informed of the deletion and if it is in violation of our behaviour point system then you will be assigned behavior point(s).
A simple way to ensure that your posts are in line with our guidelines is to answer the following questions:
What kind of impact is this going to have on the community?
Is it neutral, positive, helpful, does it build people up?
Does it create health or compassion?
Please refer to our forum guidelines here.
We are a community that strives for growth and collaboration. We appreciate each and every one of you. This update is to maintain a space where we can come together as a community and continue to work towards our mission.