Welcome to our community --- 

For more than 8 years now The Icarus Project has provided a sanctuary of friendship and camaraderie for people seeking support and mutual aid around mental health needs beyond the mainstream. We have woven intricate threads of personal connection and community spirit through the many aspects of Icarus, including this website. The internet is a strange place to create community, and you may find you prefer more direct interaction, but many of us have found the Icarus online forums to be a vital part of our wellness and community-making in the world. 

Over the years we've learned we need to moderate our community with basic guidelines to ensure safety and an atmosphere of support. For most people on the site most of the time this isn't a concern. Occasionally however there are situations that start to affect community safety, and may need moderator involvement to resolve. As an Icarus member, we're asking your help with this. 

We encourage forum members to sort out differences between ourselves. Icarus is a diverse community and like any community there will likely be 
people you disagree with, don't like, trigger you or have offensive views or ways of expressing themselves. The internet is also a pressure cooker that creates huge misunderstandings and conflicts. Keep in mind we easily misinterpret each other online, and replies can often be read the wrong way and make things worse. 

If you are in a discussion and someone starts to be offensive or you don't like them, try to ignore them or disengage from them. If that's not possible, politely try to improve the situation without accusing or being offensive yourself. Watch your own level of triggering and defensiveness and keep that off public discussions if you can. Beware replying immediately to posts that stir you up emotionally -- give yourself time for a more carefully considered response. Private message people you trust to get support when public threads upset you. 

We want to allow as much freedom in our forums as possible, but Community Guidelines and our moderation policies helps promote safety and community. All users of this site must agree to the following: 

1. As a user of this site, you (and all the other users) are responsible for the content. If a post violates guidelines or is miscategorized please use the Report button to alert a moderator. Posts that are reported may be moved, split, locked or deleted and their authors warned or banned. 

2. It is each user's responsibility to self select what conversations they read and participate in. If you are triggered by a topic, please avoid it. 

3. Threats, harassment, abusive, racist, sexist, classist, homophobic, or other oppressive language is not tolerated here. Anger is fine but do not attack anyone's character or attack anyone personally. In other words, it's fine to say "screw this" and "screw that" but not fine to say "screw you." 

4. Posts should be appropriate to the forum and to the topic. Topics that obviously risk strong emotional reactions for trauma survivors (such as violent or sexual content) should contain a "trigger warning" in the subject line. If posts and replies are in the wrong thread or forum please encourage moving the discussion to a different thread, and report the post so moderators can move or split it. 

5. No advertising, no spam, no selling of products. 

6. This is a multi-age site, so no pornography. We are all required to follow all applicable state and federal laws. 

7. We are not dispensing legal or medical advice. The opinions of individuals posting on The Icarus Project website are not the opinions of The Icarus Project. 

8. Do not reveal other users' personal identifying information such as real names and locations etc without their written permission. 

If you engage in language or behavior that violates guidelines you will receive one warning. If you do not change your behavior, your posting privileges will be suspended. You can petition to return but that is the moderators' decision. If you are writing a post and you are not sure if it violates the guidelines or not, please just take a breath and rewrite it. 

If you see a post that you feel violates the community guidelines, politely private message the poster, remind them of the guidelines, and ask them to edit the post. (If you are in a conflict with the poster and they are not likely to hear your private message as neutral or if it's likely to inflame the situation, then don't private message yourself, but consider approaching a third party to message them.) 

If the post author does not respond to your or others' request to edit, and you feel the post is so clearly in violation of the Guidelines that action is needed, click the RPT Button -- Report This Post -- found in the upper right hand corner of the post. Explain why briefly, including quoting the text you feel is in violation. This Report gets sent to the moderators. 

Mods will respond to Reported Posts that get three or more Reports. We will discuss among ourselves and take action as promptly as possible, but we cannot necessarily take immediate action. 

By using this site you consent to moderation. The coordinator collective, which oversees the Icarus budget and housekeeping, also coordinates the moderators. The moderators and coordinators are not perfect but we are doing the best we can. If you don't feel the moderators are acting fairly or competently, we welcome feedback and we are committed to evolving and improving moderation policies. We cannot however get into extended dialogs with members about moderation decisions. To use this forum, you need to have some faith and trust in the moderators. We will not always do things the way you'd like but we hope we can support the community overall, so have some faith. Please focus on why you are here at Icarus, remember the big picture, and make use of the incredible community of caring people you are part of. In turn moderators will take all feedback to heart. 

A Note About Our Politics 
This website was created by people who are not only diagnosed with mental health labels such as "bipolar disorder," but who also have a radical view of how this society should be dismantled and recreated. We come out of a long tradition of solidarity among the oppressed of the world, and we are driven to working towards real live justice for all people. We firmly believe that for true healing to be possible we must work both on transforming ourselves and transforming the world around us. We do not ask that any Icarus Project member have any particular political affiliation or lifestyle choice, but we do insist that you respect the sometimes controversial and frequently pretty radical and anti-authoritarian discussions that unfold on this site regularly around topics like race, class, politics, capitalism, gender, the pharmaceutical industry, and much much more. If you want to talk about mental health as if it exists in a socio-political vacuum, this may not be the site for you, or you may find it wise to stay out of politically charged threads that make you uncomfortable. Check out our Mission statement here: https://site.icarusprojectarchive.org/about-us/icarus-project-mission-statement

To read more about our politics, click here.