- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I was reminded of a thread that we used to have as a ‘sticky’ penned by our old Admin @Northerner - and it felt like a timely reminder today.
If you can be anything, be kind.
If you can be anything, be kind.
Many people who come here may be using a forum for the first time, and often that can leave them unprepared if they encounter responses to their posts that they may find jarring or unsympathetic. Like any group of people anywhere, members are very diverse in character, and it's often not easy to spot nuances in language and presentation through text-only messages - there are no visual clues, or aural ones, so you just have to go on content and any prior experience of a particular person's writing style to determine if they are 'joking' or not. It's an age-old problem, and the chances of misinterpreting things are generally higher the greater emotional state the person reading may be.
Because of this I would like to ask that members bear these facts in mind, in posting, reading and responding - try and always put yourself in the other person's shoes, and if it conjures up any doubts about what you want to say, and how, then try and think of how you might reword things.
Remember always that this is a support forum and by that very fact people posting may be nervous, frightened, confused - or of course, confident, no-nonsense and brash. As I said, it takes all sorts, but try always to be first and foremost supportive 🙂 Above all, no personal insults or inflammatory statements - nothing wrong with rational, passionate debate, but not directed at individuals, such posts will be removed by the moderators. 😱
If you find that you don't like a particular member's style then I would urge you to use the 'Ignore' option on your profile settings: you can input member names and then no longer see content from that member.
Hope this helps! 🙂
NB See also: Courtesy guidelines, and forum rules