Fat Forum Guidelines

[Ijustwannateach]

1. This forum is to help our members who feel they are overweight or have other related health problems to share information, discuss diet, exercise, and health; and provide each other with support. Off-topic threads will be moved to various other forums, as appropriate. As this is a general health issue, some latitude will be accorded threads even if they are not specifically Thai-related, although threads which give specific support to our Thai-resident members are very much desired.

2. All of the Thaivisa Forum Rules apply to this subforum. They are already in force, and these guidelines will also be in force immediately.

3. Please be aware that anything that appears to be name-calling, condescending behavior, or baiting towards members because of their health status will not be tolerated on this subforum. Furthermore, if information posted on this subforum becomes the basis for abuse in other areas of the forum, discipline may also be applied. This is to give members a sense of safety in posting.

4. The subforum is primarily intended to be a support forum, not a soapbox for debate. One thread has been opened for "philosophical debate" on the causes of obesity, weight gain, and related topics. Please keep argument or contentious discussion related to such matters in that thread. In other threads, please stick to the topic. You may agree or disagree that different methods of weight loss or theories of obesity apply or do not apply to you personally, but it is the position of this subforum that different individuals may have very different experiences of being overweight and have different genetic makeups, which means that various regimes of weight loss may or may not work for them. Aggressive hijacking of threads regarding one type of weight loss with other programmes will not be tolerated.

5. Please remember that the information on this forum is public. Members should take care when posting identifying material such as their medical history.

6. Since this subforum is new these guidelines are in flux. Moderators may find that an individual situation falls outside these guidelines and act on their own initiative; in those cases the moderators' decisions are final. I will post any changes in a unpinned "guidelines changed" thread.

7. Thaivisa has a strong anti-spam policy. However, in this subforum, it may be advisable to post convenient links to health-information sites. If this becomes a problem the guidelines will simply be revised to forbid them; in the meantime, please keep links in the pinned "links" thread (you can refer to their presence in that thread in your messages on other threads). Furthermore, links which look like connections to information (BMI index calculator, caloric content of food, exercise regimes) are desirable; links which connect only to commercial solicitations will be removed. As usual, links to genuine news articles with SHORT quoted sections may be used in the body of most threads.

If you have any questions about these guidelines or other issues of behavior on the subforum, please do not hesitate to PM me. Please remember that discussion of moderation (under which these guidelines fall) is not permitted on the forum.

"Steven"