Welcome to Fenopause!

[laurashapiro.livejournal.com]

A joint statement from katallison, ladyjax, laurashapiro, and prillalar, your moderators:

We are startled, delighted, and somewhat overwhelmed by the size of the response to this proposal. The comments and suggestions that many of you have contributed show that, in addition to a lot of interest, you have highly diverse opinions and perspectives on at least two key topics:

-- what should be the focus of this community; and
-- whether there should be an age restriction.

Notably, the voting on both these topics is pretty much split down the middle, with people showing near-equal interest in the physical/personal aspects of aging and the fannish aspects, and a near-equal divide on whether to have an age restriction on membership.

We've spent some time thinking and talking about all this, and have come to a few conclusions.

1. No matter what we do, we are not going to make everyone happy. (Which--I mean, we knew this already, but its truth has been freshly and emphatically brought home to us.)


2. It really matters to us, as moderators, to try to structure this community in a way that aligns with our core values.


3. On balance, we value openness and inclusion over restrictiveness, and would prefer to admit and keep people in the community on the basis of their behavior, rather than on variables like age or sex.


4. We are interested in discussions of all aspects of aging: physical, psychological, social, spiritual, fannish, etc.


5. Though the aging process affects people differently at different points in the life span, we believe that people at those various points will have things to contribute and gain by talking with each other about that process.

Thus, we have decided that fenopause will be open to all, without age restriction.

That said, we will do our best to make fenopause a comfortable, protected environment for its members. Here's how the community will work:

• Posts and comments after this initial public post will only be viewable by members, and only members will have posting/commenting access.


• Membership will be moderated. New members will need to be approved by the moderators before they can join. If we know you, and know your online behavior to be respectful, we will approve your membership. If we don't know you, we'll be checking out your LJ to see how you interact with others before we allow you to join. If we don't know you and your journal is friends-only, we'll ask you to have another member vouch for you. We'll also be on the lookout for journals that were just created that day, a frequent indicator of an incipient troll.


• We will commit to riding herd pretty tightly on the community's guidelines, which follow below (some of the following adapted from debunkingwhite). We will not, at least at the outset, screen posts and comments until this review has occurred. But we'll be monitoring the community very closely and will respond quickly to posts and comments that violate these guidelines.


• Ageism, racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism/homophobia, transphobia, ablism, anti-semitism, sizism, and other oppressive belief systems will not be tolerated in this community.


• Personal attacks will not be tolerated. You may disagree with someone and discuss that disagreement as much and for as long as you like, but if your post or comment includes personal insults or name-calling it will be deleted. Persistent flaming will get you banned.


• In the interest of safe space we ask that, should disagreement arise, members refrain from dragging those disagreements into new posts; please keep them within the original comment thread.


• As noted, the default setting is that posts and comments will be viewable only by members. Quoting entries or comments posted in this community in another forum is a bannable offense.


• "On-topic" is rather broadly defined in this community, but the moderators reserve the right to delete posts that are clearly unrelated to the core theme of age and aging, or those that are engaging in flim-flam ("So, John Winchester's pretty hot for an old guy, right? OK, now let's talk about SAM AND DEAN SAM AND DEAN SAM AND DEAN SAM AND DEAN SAM AND DEAN SAM AND DEAN !!!111!")


• In short: Don't be a jerk. The moderators are the final arbiters of what constitutes jerkhood.

And finally, in recognition of the fact that structuring the community this way may increase our moderating workload, we are delighted to welcome prillalar and ladyjax to our ranks as moderators.

We welcome your questions, and we look forward to talking with you soon! Click here to join the community.