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About MLTN > Member Forum > MLTN Member Forum – Guidelines for Participation

MLTN Member Forum – Guidelines for Participation

May 1, 2019

The MLTN Member Forum is the online community where members of the Maine Land Trust Network can share ideas, insights, and recommendations.

Here are the guidelines for participation.

Members Only

You must join the MLTN Member Forum in order to post a message to its members. Subscriptions are free. Please include your name, affiliation, location and email address on all messages.

You will not share email addresses with anyone outside the Forum. You will only invite others to join by pointing them to the sign-up form.

Appropriate Topics

Respect for differing opinions, courtesy and politeness are required of all participants.

This forum is intended to be used only for discussion of land conservation and land trust organizational questions. Commercial uses (advertising of products or services) and event or program announcements are prohibited.

Job openings should not be posted but should be submitted for posting on the Maine Land Trust Network website by emailing them to . Qualified individuals may post offers to volunteer for or intern with a land trust ONCE. Repeat postings of the same offer will result in the email address being blocked.

Message Audience

The MLTN Member Forum is not private communication in any sense. There are many subscribers and when you hit reply your message is sent to ALL OF THEM. If you don’t want it to be public, don’t post it on the Forum (or in any email for that matter).

Attachments and Size Limits

Attachments are discouraged and may not be archived with their corresponding message. Messages larger than 1 MB may be removed.

Here are some additional recommendations for participation.

This is a Respectful Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this member forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules, merely guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a clean and well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for conversation by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling
  • Ad hominem attacks
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
  • Knee-jerk contradictions

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority to make sure this forum is a respectful place. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police. However, you have responsibilities, too.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just send a message to Donna Bissett at . If enough complaints accrue, action will be taken.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of the New York Times. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not use someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images). Links to resources on the web, however, are exactly what the Web is for.

Powered by You

This site is operated for you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the site feedback category and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a topic, contact us at .