Moderation

The Ambassador corps works as a team to manage the community boards. Ambassadors are nominated by the staff based on their knowledge and skills and also for their level of respect amongst the general membership. Their primary duties are three-fold:

Welcoming new members is important as many are left unanswered by members who become focused on posters that they know. We want to find those newbies, especially those who write less-than-compelling introductions, and help them get a conversation going with the community. We also want to be role models and show other members how to reach out to newbies; at times recruiting their help via PM. The Internet information on BPD is often depressing and hopeless, as well as being filled with anger and negativity. We want our message to be one of hope and motivation; that members have the ability to make their life better.

Mentoring/centering: Emotional balance / emotional intelligence is very important in this community. Our healing model depends on the more experienced members mentoring the newer members. We, as the mentors in this support group, bring knowledge, centering, perspective, hope and an understanding of the many differences and nuances of healing and growth. We are the voice of sensibility.

As Ambassadors, we do not want to dive into the emotional soup with a distressed member. A common example is the member who truly loves their partner and comes here "trash-talking". If we pile onto that emotional soup, when the newbie returns to baseline (in a day, week), they often look elsewhere for a more balanced support..

Moderating threads: Ambassadors work as a team to re-title threads to improve readership, lock threads that have reached 25 - 30 post limit, move threads posted on the wrong boards, pull spam, act as first responders on suicide or domestic violence posts, and identify problem members or threads for staff intervention. All moderation is initially done by two-man teams, a requesting ambassador and the staff trainer. Requests are posted in logs at the top of the Ambassador Board. When an Ambassador has demostrated proficiency in moderation skills, they are given the tools to moderate by themselves and without a trainer.

Ambassadors moderate threads, not members (the moderators manage members). As a group, we're not here to plot how to counsel a specific member, but rather "how to make threads more meaningful/healthy". It's a subtle, but important distinction. We want to gently counterbalance the "urban myths", the group co-ruminations (e.g., is your BPD a vampire, too), debates/arguments, and the emotional pile ups.

Resources

Community Guidelines - They are important so please ensure that you read them and familiarize yourself with them. These cover, Message board membership requirements, Registration, Messageboard Guidelines