Our mission in the Puttyverse is to foster a space where multipotentialites support, learn from, inspire, encourage, and collaborate with one another. To that end, the Puttyverse team works hard to ensure that our goals and actions are aligned.
These guidelines should not only help you understand how to behave within the community but also help you understand what to expect from others.
Thanks for helping us continue to make the Puttyverse an amazing, multipod-affirming space! We love this community and care deeply about protecting what makes it so special.
Create a supportive and inclusive environment
The topics discussed here matter to us. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said or don’t find a topic relevant to you.
Community members (a.k.a. puttypeep) often open up and share personal stories, challenges, goals, etc. Help us foster authentic dialogue across differences in culture, experience, and opinion by responding with sensitivity and curiosity.
Speak from your own experience
When engaging in the community, use “I” statements as much as possible and avoid making generalizations or assumptions about other people and their experiences (e.g., “You think …” or “People like you believe …”).
Be helpful and improve the discussion
Help us make the Puttyverse a constructive space by always trying to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you’re not sure your comments add to the conversation, consider what you want to say and try again later.
Include context when you share something
Don’t just embed a photo, video, or share a link to an article without providing any context. That often teaches people to ignore you instead of give you their full attention. Tell us why a resource or reply matters to you and offer a short description, so that other members know what they’re about to see, watch, or read. We have some great tips on this topic.
Also weigh the balance between a topic title that’s intriguing and one that doesn’t require someone to click through to understand what it’s about. A title of “I took a walk … “ might get people curious enough to click, but they might decide to ignore your future shares if the title and content don’t match.
Be kind and respectful, even when you disagree
It’s fine to disagree with something another puttypeep said or did. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. As the saying goes, anyone you’re interacting with may be fighting a battle you know nothing about.
Please avoid:
- Name-calling.
- Ad hominem attacks.
- Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content.
- Excessive sarcasm. It’s often lost in translation and can often backfire.
- Knee-jerk contradiction.
Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.
Always be civil
Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness or insensitivity. So:
- Don’t post anything that most people would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech. For example, sexually explicit content or dehumanizing a person or group based on their identity is never OK.
- Respect each other. Don’t harass, grief, gaslight, impersonate, or expose 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 words were featured on the front page of Wikipedia.
Respect the confidentiality of what’s shared
Don’t name, tag/mention, or otherwise identify members in spaces outside the Puttyverse without their permission. And don’t quote or reproduce anything outside the Puttyverse without the creator’s permission.
Promote awesome things in the right places
We’ve said everything we need to say about this in our FAQ: “How, when, or where can I promote myself, friends, or other puttypeep?” Check it out here.
Keep it tidy
Make the effort to put things in the right place so we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:
- Don’t cross-post the same topic in multiple places unless you have a Puttyteam member’s OK.
- Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic and start a new topic that references another one.
- Move one-to-one back and forth from public threads to private messages.
- Rather than replying with a “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Reactions button in the forum.
- Be a bridge and @ mention any other puttypeep you’re talking about in the forum. For example, if you’re mentioning Joel Zaslofsky, you can write “@JoelZaslofsky” instead of “Joel” so he gets notified there’s a conversation that references him. It’s both courteous and inclusive.
Don’t post misinformation, conspiracy theories, propaganda, or anything that could contribute to radicalization
We don’t like censoring anyone, but the Puttyverse prioritizes anything that’s demonstrably true over dubious claims without sources or that can’t be easily fact-checked. Online misinformation can cause real harm and we won’t let the Puttyverse amplify it.
Don’t violate any intellectual property laws (or any laws at all)
Post your own content, provide references, attribution, and credit where appropriate, and don’t share or upload anything you aren’t legally allowed to share.
You're free to come and go as you like
This applies to the community as a whole and pretty much anything within it.
For example, you have permission to:
- Quietly observe in the background.
- Join an event, decide it’s not for you or you don’t want to stay until the end, and leave.
- Cancel your subscription and come back at a later date. The current record for a puttypeep doing this is seven times!
If you’re not finding the kind of conversations, groups, events, or activities you want to participate in, create them yourself
The Puttyverse is, always has been, and always will be a co-created community. The majority of our events, groups, and conversations only exist because some awesome puttypeep said “this idea would be neat, so I’ll take the lead, help facilitate, or make it happen!”
The Puttyteam is here to empower and support your great initiatives. So if you don’t see something in the community that you think should exist – or exists but doesn’t work for your lifestyle, time zone, or personal approach – we encourage you to take the lead and create it yourself!
Learn more about how to:
Not sure where your idea fits? Feel free to reach out to someone on our Puttyteam and we’ll be happy to help.
If you’re feeling lost, worried, or otherwise need help navigating the community, reach out to the Puttyteam: we love helping!
There’s a lot going on in the Puttyverse. That’s what happens when you have a community of hundreds of multipotentialites that’s been growing and evolving since 2012! There are many cool things for you to explore in the ‘verse, but it’s also easy to get overwhelmed.
If you’re feeling lost, confused, shy, or just aren’t sure how to get involved, please reach out to our Puttyteam!
We really, really mean it. Send us an email or book a free call with one of us. We absolutely love helping puttypeep get oriented and make the most of their Puttyverse experience. (Seriously, you won’t be bothering us at all. We love helping and we’re here for you!)
If you see a problem, flag it
When you see problematic behavior, even if it seems trivial, please flag it. Seriously. Don’t worry about adding work for your Puttyteam or what we’ll think of you for flagging something. We won’t judge you.
Flagging draws the Puttyteam’s attention to the content, which we’ll consider in light of these community guidelines.
The person you’re flagging won’t know you flagged their content and neither will the rest of the community. We won’t reveal who flagged something regardless of the decision we make about the flag.
In general, someone on our Puttyteam will review and act on a flag within 24 hours. And you can get a sense of what it’s like for us to review flags on this Discourse forum thread.
If you have a conflict, disagreement, or misunderstanding, and feel comfortable reaching out to the other person, try resolving directly
We’re fans of direct conflict resolution between two adults and things like nonviolent communication. You can often defuse or resolve an issue faster and better than our Puttyteam can.
However, sometimes it’s most appropriate for someone else to step in. So contact [email protected] with any interpersonal issues, what you’ve already done, and what steps you’d like us to take.
Consequences (dun dun dunnnnn)
Okay, really, no scary sound effects should be necessary here… 😀
If you intentionally or accidentally do something that the Puttyteam thinks violates these guidelines, then we may take any of the following actions, depending on what’s appropriate given the circumstances:
- Reach out to discuss the problem.
- Hide, archive, edit, or remove content.
- Close further replies on a forum thread.
- Edit the category of a post or add/edit forum tags on an existing post.
- Bring two or more puttypeep together to try to resolve any conflict, misunderstanding, or grievance directly.
- Temporarily or permanently remove a member from the community.
- Cancel an account.
We have to keep the best interests of the entire community in mind at all times. So we might take additional steps that aren’t listed above if necessary. Nobody is above consequences, not even our Puttyteam (we’re human and we make mistakes, too).
We’re all in this together!
That’s not just a cliche in our community. This site is operated by your friendly Puttyverse team and constantly aided by you, our wonderful puttypeep.
If you have any questions about how things should work here or how we can better live out our community values, let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by flagging it, please contact us via the team page.