Board etiquette poll - finale - maybe

[soultrane]

Thank you ladies for taking the time to think about this stuff and voting on the other threads! Once everyone has had a chance to vote on each thread, I'll volunteer to draft an etiquette post that we can sticky so we have a set of board expectations. 

Based on the vote so far, the majority of posters are okay with including BFPs in the check-in each week, a la CAL, but we do have some posters who are not comfortable seeing them there, which is completely understandable. PiradicalMaid had a great suggestion of hiding them behind a spoiler tag so posters would have to deliberately choose to read them, which I think could be a great compromise. Scrolling past something isn't always as easy as it sounds, so this would allow any of us to scroll past the spoiler without seeing a thing, unless we chose to look.

I don't want to make any assumptions for the group though so let's vote on the final options. 

Our options are to:

• Not allow BFPs to be announced
• Include BFPs in the check-in, hidden behind a spoiler tag
• Include BFPs in the check-in, no spoiler tag

Once again, if we do decide to include them, the expectation is that no congratulatory posts or mention of the BFP would happen anywhere other than the OP of the check-in so we'll all be responsible for ensuring that this remains a safe space for one another. 

[PiradicalMaid]

Thanks again, soultrane, for all your work on creating and maintaining a safer space (and for the shoutout)!

[PiradicalMaid]

Jun 15, 2015 20:04:59 GMT -5 unringthebell said:

Would there be a spoiler tag each week even if there weren't BFP? Otherwise isn't it the same as a warning in a post? I'm fine either way but I feel like people who didn't want them might be turned off by this poll KWIM? Before it was said if anyone was uncomfortable we wouldn't have them. Some people voted that they wouldn't post anymore and now we have another poll?

I you soultrane so I hesitated to post this, but I feel like I should speak up for anyone who might not be comfortable. I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable.

I'll just let you know my perspective, which is that the thought was some people may have said they don't want them included, but would be ok with a spoiler. My guess is if that's *not* the case, then we will still not have them, because we don't want to lose anyone. I may be misunderstanding, though, so thank you for bringing it up.

I can imagine that it might be hard for folks who do not want them to voice that and we definitely need to keep it part of the conversation, so I'm glad you brought it up.

[soultrane]

unringthebell, that is a completely fair question and PiradicalMaid already answered exactly why I added this. Having an alternate option on the table may have changed some people's minds so I thought that the fairest way to handle having a new option on the table was to allow everyone to voice their opinion again so we know definitively where people stand on this. I'm trying to be pro-active, but I can see how the follow-up poll could be viewed as insensitive so I apologize for that.

That said, I'm now wondering if we should be having a different conversation entirely. Currently, we welcome TTC talk here (it's even included in our board description) so I think that some of us equate this community to CAL. Perhaps we shouldn't though and this board should be more closely aligned with the Pregnancy Loss board. Ideally, TTC will conclude with a BFP so I imagine that the posters who don't want to see the BFPs are also probably uncomfortable with TTC talk.

My goal here is to better define what is acceptable and not acceptable within our community because there's a lot of ambiguity and uncertainty. This ambiguity leaves us vulnerable right now because there's currently nothing that is stopping someone from coming in and posting a BFP, which would be a heck of a lot more difficult to handle for some of us than seeing a spoiler tag in the check-in sometimes.

Because of the TTC talk, I think that a lot of us equate this board to CAL, but perhaps we should define this community more similarly to the Pregnancy Loss board. I think the bottom line is that as a group we need to better define who we are as a community so that we can guarantee that we're creating a safe space for those who are here.

[jmc11511]

I'd like to chime in if I may. Honestly, I think we may be thinking to much about this. In my own experience, some days BFPs don't bother me, sometimes they are hard to stomach. For that reason, just to be sensitive to those who may be having a rough day for any reason, a spoiler or a warning or whatever associated with a BFP would be my preference. As far as no TTC talk (if that's even what was implied, it's still early here), I don't think that's a necessary rule. All of us understand the emotional roller coaster that is TTC a rainbow while also parenting a living child. In my admittedly limited experience of other loss boards, there isn't really a place to freely talk about that. PAL is about the only spot, but for me, it was hard to be inundated with lots of newborn or baby pictures being posted and lots of people who had just had their rainbow. Don't get me wrong, PAL has been really supportive and I do participate there sometimes. For the most part, and I could be off on this, the people here have all had pretty recent losses. We all know we have living children, but we are sort of coming off of a loss rather than already having had a rainbow following a loss. Does that make sense? I just would hate to lose the only place where I can talk about TTC and talk about my son and all of the emotions that go with both of those things. Just my two cents.

[soultrane]

jmc11511, I agree. I love that I have a place that I can talk freely about my loss, DS, and TTC and I would hate to lose that. I also know how supportive this board has been to me, and I want to maintain that level of support. I just think that as a community, we need to figure out some way to help each other make the transition to other boards when the time comes in order to avoid potentially upsetting situations. Maybe that time is when a poster is ready to TTC, or when she gets a BFP, or maybe we are open to posters staying here indefinitely regardless of their TTC status.

If it helps to explain why I got so poll-happy over the weekend, I'll share what all started me thinking about this stuff again. A couple of weeks ago I realized that I hadn't seen a poster in a few days and I wanted to send her a PM to make sure she was okay. I stalked her recent posts to see if I had just missed her posts somehow and found that she had gotten a BFP. I was thrilled for her, but on a different day I could have had a different reaction to seeing that post and I would hate for someone who was having a really bad day to stumble across it accidentally. My thought was that if we added BFPs somewhere on the board, it would be a 'safer' way to learn that info, ya know? So anyway, that's what made me realize that we need to talk through how we want to handle these things as a community and come to some sort of a consensus. Or maybe I'm the only one here who is looking at recent posts to check on people, and now you all know I'm a creeper.

I sincerely want to protect everyone here, whether their loss is brand new, or they've had some time pass and are TTC, or if they are fortunate enough to have a BFP - or any combination of the above and they're just having a super shitty day and need us. I think that we are an amazingly supportive group so I hope that we can continue to have a productive conversation about how to handle this stuff. And also, because this is how I feel about all of this:

[boobacat]

soultrane thank you for organizing this and the discussion. I'm always on mobile so I can't really see the polls, or I haven't figured it out anyway. I truly don't care, whatever the majority feels works for me.

[boobacat]

Jun 16, 2015 15:24:10 GMT -5 unringthebell said:

boobacat have you tried scrolling up? I'm always mobile too and sometimes it takes me to the first post not the poll so I have to scroll up to see the poll.

Ok- now I feel like a moron because I still can't see it. I'll keep trying. Not my first time at failing

Also to clarify- I reread my post- it's not that I don't care, I just don't have a strong opinion. I realized that sounded kinda bitchy.

[soultrane]

Sorry ladies! I started this conversation and then went ghost. Work has been nuts this week so I apologize for not being around to respond.

unringthebell, I included the 'no spoiler' option simply because it was an option that was included in the original poll. I'll admit, I didn't think anyone would choose it either based on prior conversations we've had here, but I chose to leave it as an option because I didn't want to assume that everyone was on board with the spoiler tag suggestion. Some ladies may have chosen that option because that's what they would personally be comfortable with, and I don't think it's necessarily fair to equate that with them being unsupportive without knowing why they voted that way. They simply may have just been voting based on their own comfort level, and not about what they feel will be most comfortable for the group, ya know? Or maybe we do have regular posters who think that not allowing BFPs or hiding them behind a spoiler is overkill, and haven't felt comfortable sharing their opinion before now because they knew it would be unpopular. If that's the case, then that just emphasizes why it's important to have this conversation, so that everyone knows what is considered acceptable here and don't just follow their own set of rules.

Thank you to everyone who is talking about this though. It's not always easy to put this stuff out there, and it's certainly not easy to argue your point if you're on one side of the issue or the other, but it's so important to have these conversations so we have some sort of expectations in place to protect our group. So what are everyone's thoughts on moving forward? Table this again for now and let things happen organically? Err on the side of caution (no grads posting, no BFPs) and then revisit later on if we feel it's needed?