APANZ process for responding to disputed posts to the Connect email forum

Council has established a process to read posts to the Connect forum to ensure they comply with community guidelines. This will be done after content has been posted, rather than by intercepting posts before they appear in the forum.

The Association’s Ethics & Professional Standards committee will form a small group who will read posts to Connect.

If a member of this group, or any other member of the Association, believes that community standards have been breached by a post to Connect, they may contact the chair of the Ethics & Professional Standards Committee within 20 days of the post being made, to flag their concern.

If two or more members flag the same post as not following community standards in a way that breaches the code of ethics, and if the group agrees that community guidelines have been breached, the Chair of the Ethics & Professional Standards committee will make contact with the author of the post, by phone or in person. This approach will be supportive & educative in nature, describing what has happened, ensuring that the poster is familiar with the community guidelines and requesting that they post to Connect again, rewording or retracting the inappropriate parts of their post.

The author may be encouraged to recognise any potential negative impact of their actions and to undertake to make appropriate reparation for this.

If a member’s posts repeatedly breach community standards, then there may be an escalated response from the committee.

Steps may include:

• An offer of education or guidance to the author of the posts
• A recommendation to Council for education to be made available to all members (eg. by creation of a course or through material on the Nexus website)
• Moderation of all the author’s posts to the Connect forum before they appear, either temporarily or permanently
• Removal of the author, either temporarily or permanently, from the Connect forum

To contact the Chair of the Ethics & Professional Standards committee, email:

Kate Dent Rennie     

kate@longwhitecloud.com