Community Guidelines

Welcome to CancerConnection.ca!
Our online community is a place where people facing cancer and their supporters can share experiences and build relationships to help them through their cancer journey. 
Remember – post only information that you are comfortable with others seeing and knowing about you. We strongly recommend that you do not use your real name as the screen name that identifies you in the community.  

Follow the guidelines below to help make participation a positive experience for everyone: 
Do 

• Be courteous and use good manners at all times. 
• Be supportive and aware of other people’s feelings. 

• Remain respectful even when there are differences of opinion. Topics are often sensitive and can lead to healthy debate. Although you may have strong feelings, personal attacks are never justified. 
• Exercise tolerance. Respect others and their beliefs or non-beliefs. Coming on too strong about your opinions or beliefs can be offensive to others and may have the opposite effect than you intend. 
• Welcome newcomers. We love it when another person joins the community and participates. 
• Lead by example. Share your experience and contribute content that you think will be helpful to other members. 
• Be yourself. Do not impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or misrepresent your relationship with a person or entity. 

• Post in CAPS. Using all capital letters online is like shouting. 
• Use obscene or hateful language. Profanity and personal attacks will not be tolerated. 
• Name healthcare providers or institutions
• Advertise or promote commercial products, services, personal websites or recruit for research projects. 
• Link to your personal blog to replace a thoughtful, supportive response. (Links to your blog are permitted in your profile and signature) 
• Share testimonials in order to gain followers from CancerConnection.ca. 
• Use CancerConnection.ca for any unlawful purpose. 

• Post copyrighted information. Copyrighted material, emails and other privileged information may not be posted without prior written permission from the author. 
• Post your personal contact information such as phone numbers, addresses and email addresses, or other private information such as social insurance numbers. 
• Post personal details or private information about any other person. Remember – it’s not only your own privacy you need to protect but also the privacy of anyone you talk about. 

• Use the Report button (3 dots in upper right corner of post) to alert us of concerning content or members, or email us at  cancerconnection@cancer.ca.  

Our moderation approach: 
Why we moderate 
Our team of moderators work to keep the community welcoming, safe and inclusive. 
We monitor site content to check for information that could be harmful. We also watch for anyone misusing or breaking the conditions outlined in the Terms of Use  and in the Community Guidelines. At their discretion, Moderators may edit or remove content or members that violate the terms of use and community guidelines. 

How we moderate 
All posts to the community show up right away. We do not screen community activity before it goes live. 
This is called reactive moderation, which means Moderators monitor posts and also rely on our members to tell us about any inappropriate content. Throughout the website you’ll see Report buttons that alert us to that content. Moderating in this way means that we can keep the community running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so that support is available when you need it. 

Remember! 
Every time you use the CancerConnection.ca community, you agree to the Terms of Use, Community Guidelines, and the Privacy Policy. It is your responsibility to review these documents regularly. 
Views expressed in this community are solely the views of the members and do not represent professional recommendations, policy or advice of the Canadian Cancer Society. 

Thanks for joining us!