Forum and Chat Room Guidelines
These guidelines have been written and voted on by a Group Conscience.

There are two separate registrations for the Forums and the Chat room. The Forums (message board) registration will require email verification and approval from a moderator before the posts are available to you. This is to protect the privacy and anonymity of our members. Once you have been approved for the Forums, you can access the chat room which will ask you to register and ask you for email verification but there is no waiting period for approval from a moderator. The meeting schedule is posted in the Forums and on the Forum Calendar. If you have any difficulty or questions, you may email moderators@onlinecoda.net. 

Please read our guidelines below before entering our site: 

1. NO SOLICITATION- Any type of solicitation will be deleted. A warning will be given to the member to not post solicitation again and if not agreed upon, the member will be banned. Any pornography sites posted will be immediately deleted and the member will be banned with no warning.

2. EMAIL USERS and EMAIL VERIFICATION - Some members choose to allow their email to be accessed through their member profile. This is to be used only for CoDA issues. Please do not spam the member list this is a violation of boundaries. The moderators reserve the right to maintain a list of all the email users of the site. This list will be kept confidential and used by the moderators to send out updates, announcements, membership updates etc. All members who join must have a verifiable email address to remain a member and be able to post to the message boards. If you sign up with an email address that is not verifiable then you will not be granted access to the message boards. During the time of your membership if it is found that your email address is no longer active then your membership will be removed. You will be allowed to rejoin at any time using a verifiable email address.

3. BE RESPECTFUL- You must be respectful of other members in chat and on the message boards. Name calling, or profanity directed toward a person will not be tolerated. Blatantly offensive posts will be reposted on the "deleted messages" forum with an explanation of why they were inappropriate. Blatantly offensive posts consist of direct name calling, profanity, yelling or anything that may be considered not conducive to the recovery of the group as a whole and/or other members feeling safe. All moderators will be expected to monitor the board for such offensive posts and it will be up to their discretion what seems offensive and reposted on the deleted messages board. The person posting the offensive post will also be contacted via private message or via email (with cc to all the moderators) to be given a chance to remove his/her own post or address the issue.

4. CROSSTALK AND GIVING ADVICE- In Codependents Anonymous we share our personal recovery, experience, strength and hope. We avoid giving advice. The only suggestions and advice accepted would be to direct the person to attend f2f meetings, working the steps, or if the person directly asks for an opinion. Issues concerning "crosstalk" are not automatically considered "blatantly offensive" and do NOT fall into the category of being deleted from the message board. Crosstalk guidelines can be interpreted differently by different individuals. Forms of crosstalk may include: criticizing, controlling, dominating, minimizing another person's feelings or experiences, giving advice or unsolicited feedback, referring to a person by name. Crosstalk issues should be addressed first between the 2 individuals and if not resolved in a peaceful manner then should be referred to the moderators to be discussed in a group conscience manner via email:moderators@onlinecoda.net

5. POSTING LINKS- Posting of links on the message board or in the chat room to other personal recovery sites is not allowed through a group conscience decision. We feel this distracts from our focus here and is against CoDA traditions.

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