As a member of the Midwives Alliance online community, please help us to follow these rules in order to keep the community alive, the content friendly and relevant. These rules are intended to reduce the number of hazardous or off-topic threads that tend to clutter up message forums and make a community unsafe. This clears the way for easier and faster navigation of the remaining interesting and useful content. We have identified some behaviors that are detrimental to the community goals and do not benefit other forum members. The following is a rundown of unacceptable behavior the moderators will be watching for. Breaking some of these rules may result in deletion of threads and/or blocking users by the moderators. If you have a concern or suggestion about these community rules, send a message to CommunityModerator@mana.org.

No personal attacks will be allowed. You're welcome to respectfully disagree with another member's opinion but attacking (flaming) and insulting another member is not acceptable. The Midwives Alliance online community is intended to be a safe harbor from that type of content. Intentionally starting flame wars could cause your community privileges to be revoked.

No discriminatory comments are allowed. Friends of all colors, ethnicities, religions, sexual preference, gender, ability, shape and size are welcome on the Midwives Alliance online community. Attacks or slurs will get you blocked.

No inflammatory politics. We prefer that members not get too involved in polarizing political discussions because they often result in flaring tempers and flame wars that can tear a community apart. This would include subjects such as abortion, presidential politics, population control, unassisted birth, circumcision, immunization, etc. This is not to suggest that these topics are not worthy of debate and discussion, but they have been known to destroy communities because of the difficulty of effective moderation in the online environment. If things are getting out of hand, the moderator will stop the discussion.

No foul or abusive language will be tolerated. Period. It has no place in our community. Attempts to disguise abuse or bypass the language filters will not be tolerated. If you disagree with us and don’t think we should be restricting your language, then we respectfully ask that you simply do not become a member of our community.

No MANA Bashing. This is the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) online community for Midwives Alliance supporters and those who wish to gather evidence-based information about midwifery. We wish to offer a safe space for all who want to discuss midwifery. It will naturally have a pro-MANA bias. It's simple. If you don't like the Midwives Alliance, then don't participate in our community. We will not tolerate disruptive activities that alienate or threaten our community members, be they in the form of attacks against MANA or members of the MANA community or off-topic and inflammatory comments.

No medical advice. MANA will not provide medical advice online. If you have a health care question or concern, please contact your personal health care provider.

No personal health care information. We will never share the health care information of a client of one of MANA's members nor will we tolerate sharing of personal health information by anyone bound by HIPAA rules.

No complaining, moaning, or whining when you’ve broken the rules. Members will be banned, blocked, threads removed, and so on based on the clearly defined rules. Publicly bemoaning the operation of the community and the way the rules are enforced will not put you in good favor with the moderators. If you have a legitimate concern or suggestion send a message to CommunityModerator@mana.org.

No advertising or spamming. It is our goal to keep the online community free from advertising and spam. We do not allow companies or individuals to actively market products, services, or websites to community members. This includes placing product URLs into posts. If you have a product that would benefit our members, please send a message to CommunityModerator@mana.org.

Linking to online retailers for commercial purposes. Posting links to online retailers is permitted ONLY as a means of identifying a product or part so users can better understand which part(s) you use or recommend. Links to promotions or contests are not permitted. If you have a product that would benefit our members, please send a message to CommunityModerator@mana.org.

No sexual references. There's no question the Internet is full of degrading sexual material and comments. This includes sexual innuendoes. If you're interested in that kind of material, go someplace else. It will not be tolerated here.

No dangerous or harmful posts. Posts that encourage members to participate in activities that we deem to be harmful or dangerous to members will be deleted (i.e. lighting things on fire, jumping cars over people etc.). Posts with links to sites with similar content will also be deleted. The posting member will be warned and could be blocked depending on the content.

Additional blog comment policies:

For a comment to be published, it must include your first and last name, and may be verified via e-mail. As with most comment systems, your e-mail will be required for you to leave a post. Your e-mail will not be published on the MANA site and will be kept private - we request it so that we can contact you if necessary. (If there are special circumstances in which you’d like to keep your name private, please leave a comment explaining the situation and we’ll discuss privately. When that happens, we’ll agree on a solution and let the group know our joint thinking.)

All comments must be relevant to the post or topic. If we have already answered a question you posted, we may refer you to previous responses and/or not publish your comment. If your comment does not directly correspond with the post it will not be posted.

Please honor and recognize that MANA is a volunteer-driven organization. We do our best to moderate comments quickly, but may not always be able to publish comments as fast as we’d like.