Secular Forum Rules
 

It took me years to successfully open and maintain a secular forum and even longer to allow civil discussions on RR. The debates were so bad at one point I had to close down the forum. The rules are in place to protect your forum. Mocking other programs is not permitted and 12 step topics are not permitted.

Thank you MG

Sometimes it's a bit hard to be sure you don't let the stuff your trying to work thorugh cross the line. But I know I try to be careful about not crossing the lines. We have to take care to not be antagonistic. Those feelings arise from time to time.

Something that helps me is private messaging others who I meet here. I appreciate what you have done and what is necessary to keep things within a working format. I think for some of us there are some issues with how some other programs slam us. So we need to be the grown up and not feed into it..

Again, my thanks for all you have done. If you ever wonder if you make a difference...you do.

Nands

The blogs are more lenient on rules than the forums.
If it falls within the guidelines you can have a conversation on a blog.
I've been trying to figure out how to have a group blog, but no luck yet.

Blog Guidelines

1 No posts with unauthorized commercial communications or links to commercial sites or products.(such as spam).
2 Do not post links for the purpose of selling, soliciting or promoting by someone that has ownership or other "vested interest" to the web site involved, including efforts to promote other online forums, blogs, or web sites by web site owners.
3 No post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence. This includes serious threats of suicide.
4 No use of SoberRecovery blogs to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
5 No Materials that violate the law such as copyright infringements.
6 No posts that bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
7 No Posts encrypted to prevent other members from reading them.

Thanks, MG.

And no bad-mouthing mayonnaise eaters, either, judging from the disappearance of the thread I started yesterday. Hmmmm. That was intended as satire of cross-program sniping...

For the record, I have always believed that anyone who loves mayonnaise should go ahead and enjoy it alongside the recovery program of their choice. :)

MG, I am very grateful for your work in creating the secular connections forums, and am glad to see the focus kept on alternatives to 12 steps.

bump

:)

Thank you.

Thank you Morning Glory!

I don't really see why there has to be debates between secular and spiritual approaches at all. I have been in recovery about a decade now, and I really think the debates do nothing but start a recovery gang-war, and for no reason. I mean, i will tell everyone straight up I am here because I am a person in recovery from alcoholism: I am an individual, not a representative of either secular or spiritual groups; I am merely trying to recover and help others do the same, and I will do so through any tools that I have learned, whether they originated from a secular or spiritual group means nothing to me, what matters is if the concept works, helps keep me sober, and helps give me a better life than what I had when using. All the tools I use can be explained in secular or spiritual language, they are pragmatic concepts to use in my life and the language isn't the most important part of the concept, the substance of the concept is. just my thoughts, cuz i really find the debates worthless. Thanks MG!

We debate because we are passionate about our position, forgetting sometimes that, if everyone is shouting out their position, nobody gets heard at all.

Respect for others' positions gets lost in the fray -- that's why moderators were born.

If the words "I", "me", "my", and "mine" could be banned from everyone's posts, perhaps we would move a little closer to a forum that no longer needs moderation.

and you and your too :)

I got a chuckle out of this irony - not sure if this pun was intended or not.

Amen!

Thanks FT! That was very good for me to hear about thinking me and mine

Seriously! Try and see how many posts one can find on SR that do NOT contain those words. Including those of this poster! Perhaps especially those of this poster!

Note the paucity of said pronouns in this post....

But what about a person's experience, if we start spouting from our opinions then a person can be misled, but if we say "I did" something or "my experience" is such and such then surely this is the best way of people sharing!!

My fellow mod DesertEyes has a great post on pronouns

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...d-pronoun.html

D

Awesome read, Dee. Thanks for sharing that link!

While my comments were intended to be tongue in cheek, I have made the observation that I am frequently so eager to give my opinion, my whole post ends up being about me, myself, and I, and not about the poster. I do not think I am the only one who does it. After making that observation about myself, I began to look around at how often others do the same. Ever since then, I try to make sure I address what the poster needs first, then add my experience if I think I can help.

Just sayin'....

Dee, that was pointed out to me in a meeting way back some months. Good advice. I had to consciously think about not saying 'you'. Still struggle with it.