This article forms part of the Stitch Community Guidelines. If you haven’t read the overview of the Community Guidelines yet, please do so before reading this article. In particular, please make sure you are familiar with the community definitions of what constitutes encouraged, discouraged, and prohibited behavior in the community, as well as how Stitch’s member feedback system works to promote constructive behavior across the community.
An overview of the guidelines can be found here.
Overview
As outlined in the Stitch Community Guidelines, there are three categories of behavior the community has defined to help maintain a positive and welcoming community at all times:
Behavior the community actively encourages, such as being kind, welcoming, friendly, or supportive
Behavior the community actively discourages, such as being disrespectful, being unkind, or creating conflict with other members
Behavior the community absolutely prohibits, such as racism, sexism, and abuse
This article provides the full list of prohibited, discouraged, and encouraged behavior in the Stitch Community.
Prohibited behaviors
This section lists the behaviors that are not permitted in the Stitch Community.
Please note that Stitch reserves the right to remove any member from the community, regardless of whether their behavior fits one of the descriptions in this section, if their behavior is detrimental to the wellbeing of other members of the community, or the community more generally.
Prohibited behaviors on Stitch include:
Hate speech / racism
Hate speech includes any comments which express prejudice against a particular group based on protected characteristics: race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and serious disease or disability.
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment includes derogatory statements, comments (positive or negative) of a sexual nature, or solicitation of other members. It does not include open, frank, and mature discussions about sex or sexuality.
It is very important for all members to understand the sorts of behavior that constitutes sexual harassment or stalking, so we've written an article with more background here.
Bullying, abuse & demeaning behavior
Stitch prohibits any content deemed to be bullying, abusive, or demeaning towards other members of the Stitch Community. It can include name-calling, labeling, lengthy rants or diatribes, and comments which are explicitly critical of another member or members as individuals. It does not include comments which respectfully disagree with the ideas or positions of others.
Intellectual property violation
Intellectual property violation includes any material posted which engages in copyright infringement, trademark infringement, or other breaches of intellectual property.
Commercial activity
Any content or activity that is commercial or profit-making in nature is prohibited from the community unless officially approved by Stitch. Approved commercial activity can only be conducted by “Partner” accounts.
Fraudulent, deceptive, or criminal activity
Any behavior deemed to be fraudulent, deceptive, or potentially criminal is prohibited from Stitch and will result in immediate account termination.
Intentionally disruptive / spam
Disruptive content includes content that is excessively repetitive, or intentionally disruptive to the community, or deemed as spam. This includes cross-posting similar messages across multiple Stitch Groups or Discussions.
Harmful health misinformation
Stitch prohibits any health-related content that is potentially harmful to the wellbeing of members of the community, and which has been actively disproved or is not supported by the World Health Organization, national health bodies, or peer-reviewed research. It includes false, unproven, or harmful remedies, or false or unproven claims about the impact of vaccines or other important health measures.
Stitch is dedicated to the well-being of its members and we take this issue very seriously. If you are in any doubt whatsoever about the reliability of any health-related content, post either privately or not at all.
Provoking or perpetuating conflict
Stitch prohibits comments which are designed to either provoke conflict, or perpetuate previous conflicts. It includes intentionally negatively provocative comments, as well as references to past disagreements or arguments in other Groups or Discussions.
Publishing personal contact information
In order to support member safety and privacy, members are prohibited from posting personal contact details — such as email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, or full names — of themselves or any other members in the public areas of Stitch.
Discouraged behaviors
This section lists the behaviors that are discouraged in the Stitch Community, either online or in person.
Being unkind, unfriendly, or unwelcoming
Behaving in a way that appears unkind, unwelcoming, or without compassion
Being disrespectful
Behaving in a way that is disrespectful to another member or group of members
Being offensive or insensitive to others
As a consequence of Stitch’s requirement to show respect to other members, members are discouraged from being offensive or insensitive to other members. This can include off-color jokes or culturally insensitive comments, for example.
Being domineering
Members are discouraged from posting comments or behaving in ways that may be perceived as domineering or overbearing in tone
Not complying with Group expectations
Some Stitch Groups have specific guidelines for the sort of content allowed in group discussions. (The "General Discussion" group, for example, does not permit content which is divisive in nature). Comments which don't comply with the rules established by the group owner can be downvoted using this category
Being rude, annoying, pushy, or invasive
Members are discouraged from any behavior which has a negative impact on other members, such as being rude, annoying, pushy, or invasive
Passive-aggressiveness
Members are discouraged from behaving in a passive-aggressive manner towards other members, for example complaining in online forums about the quality of the conversation.
Unnecessarily taking offence
Members are discouraged from taking offence when it’s clear when no offence was intended. This applies most often to online discussion, where outraged reactions to innocent comments can easily become a source of conflict.
Inappropriate or disruptive behavior
Members are discouraged from making comments in an online discussion or behaving in ways that are not appropriate to the conversation purpose or unnecessarily disruptive
Encouraged behaviors
The behaviors that the Stitch Community encourages are essentially a description of what the community stands for. It makes us enormously proud that these are the behaviors that the vast majority of Stitch members (over 99.5%) exhibit on a regular basis.
These behaviors are so common amongst Stitch members, in fact, that the Stitch team usually simply refers to them as “Stitch behaviors”. Unlike the prohibited & discouraged behaviors listed above, they don’t need much explanation or description.
They include:
Being respectful
Being kind
Being welcoming
Being friendly & welcoming
Being supportive
Being fun & interesting
Being patient & understanding
Helping resolve conflict
Promoting good behavior in others
Enriching other members’ experience
As long as you try to exhibit one or more of these behaviors in most of your interactions with other Stitch members, you're doing your bit to make the community great!