2.0: RULES ABOUT POSTING
2.1: Your responsibilities
By joining the forum you have a responsibility not to post any content or material which breach our user guidelines or terms and rules. Our guidelines and terms apply to material which is shared both publicly AND privately.
2.2: Language. No-one should:
2.2.1: Use sexually explicit or inappropriate language.
2.2.2: Curse, swear or use obscenities towards others.
2.2.3: Make degrading, derogatory or disparaging remarks about any person or group.
2.2.4: Post defamatory, libelous, slanderous remarks towards any person, group, organisation or company.
2.2.5: Use an inappropriate or offensive username, avatar and/or signature.
2.3: Behaviour. No-one should:
2.3.1: Post personal attacks or be aggressive, threatening, abusive or intimidating towards any person.
2.3.2: Abuse or invade another’s privacy, or cause annoyance, inconvenience or unnecessary anxiety.
2.3.3: Post material to harass, upset, embarrass, alarm or annoy any other person.
2.3.4: Act with the intention to cause conflict or division within the community, inclusive of posting inflammatory messages or with intent to provoke emotional responses from others.
2.3.5: Promote discrimination or victimise, harass, degrade or intimidate an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, political orientation, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or disability (inclusive of diabetes type).
2.3.6: Point 2.3.5 includes innuendos and passive language likely to lead to offense.
Diabetes UK will not tolerate any unwanted conduct or behaviour that is deemed to be bullying and harassment. This includes, but is not limited to, protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 – age, gender reassignment, being married or in a civil partnership, being pregnant or on maternity leave, disability, race including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation, as well as other characteristics such as socio-economic background and diabetes type’
2.3.7: Post material that is likely to deceive or falsely mislead any person.
2.3.8: Post content which threatens, promotes, or instigates violence or death to others.
2.3.9: Promote, incite, solicit, or provide information about any illegal activity.
2.3.10: Promote, incite or solicit one's own business, products or services, or any activities in which you would financially profit from, in both public and private messages.
2.3.11: Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person, group or organisation.
2.3.12: Use the forum to damage or obtain unauthorised access to any data, or other information, of any third party.
2.3.13: Be made in breach of any legal duty owed to a third party, such as contractual duty or a duty of confidence (for example if you have signed a disclosure agreement).
2.4: Content. No-one should:
2.4.1: Promote sexually explicit material
2.4.2: Post or share material which is obscene, offensive, hateful or inflammatory.
2.4.3: Post sensitive or confidential information or encourage other users to post sensitive or confidential information.
2.4.4: Publicly post content regarding to or in reference of specific moderator actions.
2.4.5: Specifically name individual healthcare professionals or other professionals eg. Your employer or child’s teacher
2.4.6: Give explicit medical advice, a diagnosis or advice that advocates a treatment definitively.
2.4.7: Endorse or promote alternative treatments, therapies or "cures" that are likely to be seen as misleading or to encourage others to pursue potentially dangerous changes to their treatment regime.
2.4.8: Post declaring an intention or threat to leave the forum.
2.4.9: Infringe on any patent, trademark, copyright, database right, right of publicity, or other intellectual property right of any party.
2.4.10: Ask the community to contribute to a fundraising event, in both public and private messages, including the sharing of JustGiving, Crowdfunder, GoFundMe or similar. No fundraising posts should be shared, including any fundraising for Diabetes UK.
2.5: Petitions:
2.5.1: Petitions must be diabetes related and not contain any identifiable information, in order to protect the identity and safety of any parties involved.
2.5.2: All posts linking to signing a petition will be reviewed by the moderators and therefore may be quarantined whilst the review takes place. If a petition does not meet our criteria the post will remain in quarantine.
2.5.3: Diabetes UK accepts no responsibility for how your information may be used as a result of signing any petitions. Anyone signing a petition recognises this is not affiliated, advocated, or endorsed by Diabetes UK.
2.6: Spam. No-one should:
2.6.1: Deliberately post the same content in two or more locations.
2.6.2: Advertise or post direct links for the purpose of promotion or marketing of a product or service.
2.6.3: Post content containing software viruses, computer codes, files or programs to disrupt, damage, or limit the functioning of any software, hardware, or telecommunications equipment.
2.6.4: Deliberately creating threads and posting x amount of times in a short space of time
2.7: Pictures. No-one should:
2.7.1: Use animated images or GIFs which could cause offense to others
2.7.2: Post offensive language through images or profile pictures
2.7.3: Post sexual content through images or profiles pictures that may be unsafe or upsetting to people in the Diabetes Online Community
2.7.4: Post or share images (including profile pictures) about things that could upset others on the forum
Please follow the guidance of the Equality ACT 2010
We do our best to keep you feeling safe and supported. In order to do this, any posts which don’t follow our courtesy guidelines or rules about posting may be edited, moved or deleted by the moderator team.
This applies to all content posted by users including thread posts, replies, signatures, avatars, profile posts, private messages and report messages.
There will not always be a moderator online, so in order that we become aware of all concerns, we ask our members to be vigilant and to escalate all concerns using the ‘Report’ button which is present on every message. This aids our moderators in acting quickly and efficiently to resolve violations once they are available. This action is completely anonymous to other forum members and any such activity will be kept strictly confidential by Diabetes UK.
2.8: Medical advice
2.8.1: You should only relate to your own experiences. Never tell other members to adjust medication without them first speaking to a member of their healthcare team.
2.8.2: Posts should never be considered as a substitute for a medical diagnosis, treatment or medical advice.
If you require emergency medical advice or assistance please call 999 If it’s less urgent then please call the 24 hour NHS 111 service on 111 if you’re in England. If you’re in Wales please contact NHS Direct Wales on 0845 4647, and if you are in Scotland you can call NHS24 on 08454 24 24 24. Alternatively speak to your GP or healthcare team.
2.9: Posting a research survey or questionnaire
2.9.1: We’re an active and engaged community. Academic institutions, researcher bodies or healthcare professionals may make a request to post research surveys, which may lead to positive change in the treatment, prevention or cure of diabetes.
2.9.2: All surveys must provide an ‘Ethics Committee Approval’. This must be a letter of confirmation from your institutions Ethics Committee, to confirm that your research study is ethical. Once you have approval, you can request permission to post your research via the ‘
Contact Us’ page or by emailing
support.forum@diabetes.org.uk .
2.9.3: Any surveys or questionnaires that have not provided Ethics Committee Approval will be removed until approval has been given.
2.9.4: They must follow the guidelines below:
- Researchers/students may only post their survey/study once
- May not spam their survey in different areas of the forum
- May not private message users to participate in their study unless the user contacts them for more information/clarity
- Can only respond to users in their created thread
2.9.5: Members of the community should be respectful to researchers / students who post their survey.
