Before you begin posting on the NOM discussion group, it will be helpful to review some of our expectations and suggestions for participants. These mainly fall into the categories of courtesy and anonymity.
Courtesy
On some message boards frequented by people who are coming to doubt the church, or are on their way out of it, it’s common to use harsh and/or coarse language about the church and its faithful members. On NOM we don’t permit this sort of “trash-talking” for a number of reasons:
- First, we have people visit who are in the initial stages of questioning church teachings. If they see a lot of sneering at LDS ideas or shocking language they are likely to dismiss us as just another “anti” group, and fail to benefit from some of the things they could learn here.
- Second, some of our members feel obliged or choose to continue in church activity, most often due to family concerns. One thing they don’t need is to read all the time about how horrible the church is.
- Third, although people are welcome to express their dissatisfaction with many aspects of church teaching and practice, speaking of these things in cruel and insulting ways doesn’t seem to us a helpful way to deal with these areas of discomfort. Instead, we try to understand why things are the way they are, and then find approaches that will allow us to believe and behave in ways we find more satisfying.
Anonymity
Some people are understandably concerned that others who read this discussion group will guess at their real-life identity, and that this could cause potential problems with family members or even the institutional church. For those of you who feel that this could be a problem, we encourage you to use a screen name that doesn’t reveal anything about who you are, and to not give out identifying information in posted messages. Please note that by default your personal profile will be public; we strongly recommend that you use the option to hide your profile information when you register for the group.