Forum Guidelines

The New Homemaker and flaming
Flames are not tolerated. Period. Offending messages will be deleted, and repeat offenders will lose posting privileges.

The New Homemaker and spamming
DON'T SPAM. DON'T SPAM. DON'T SPAM. Spamming on TNH is:

• Signing up for the sole purpose of advertising your business.
• Posting unsolicited advertisements or endorsements of your or your client's business.
• Pretending to be an actual community member when you're really a public relations shill--that will get you banned so fast your head will spin, and I'll block your IP address to boot.
• Promoting any kind of get-rich-quick, pyramid or multi-level-marketing enterprise. At all.

If you fall under any of the above categories, TAKE OUT AN AD.

Now--if you have a legitimate business and you're a community member, it's okay to tell us about your products or services in context. If someone asks about widgets and you sell widgets, tell us about your widgets. But if you are a widget seller, you see a thread here about widgets, you've never posted here before, you don't really care about our issues, and you have no intention of ever posting again (apart from more ads), you had better not tell us about your widgets. See "PR shills" above.

The New Homemaker and religion
TNH is a secular site. We are neither Christian nor anti-Christian as a site; as a site we are religious neutral. Now, personally, I am a Pagan Unitarian Universalist. But because TNH supports staying home with the kids we are often assumed to be fundamentalist Christian in outlook. Not so.

When it comes to posting about religion we have three questions you must ask yourself:

• Am I prescribing? That is, are you proposing a religious solution to a secular problem? Saying to someone, "I'll pray for your family" is one thing (a good thing, too). Telling them "Read my religion's holy book and your post-partum depression will go away" is quite another.
• Am I proselytizing? Do not try to convert other people to your faith here. If your faith tradition requires you to attempt conversion of random strangers, well, this isn't the place for you.
• Am I assuming? Do not assume everyone else here is of the same faith as you. We are from many different faiths. TNH has active members who are Catholic, Lutheran, Mormon, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Unitarian and atheist.

If you can answer "yes" to any of the three questions, please rethink your post.

The New Homemaker and politics
We have had a moratorium on politics here since the 2004 US elections, which were as bitter here as they were elsewhere. This has not sat well with me. One of my big motivations in starting this site in 1999 was to build bridges among homemakers of different political persuasions. I was thinking of a friend who, when we met, was a fundamentalist conservative Christian homemaker. She couldn't believe how much she and I had in common, even though I am a Pagan libertarian Democrat. We both stayed home. We both homeschooled. We both used herbal home remedies and natural cleaners. We both ground our own grain to make bread--she actually said to me she never knew "liberals" made their own bread or cared enough about their kids to stay home, and I had no idea that a fundamentalist conservative would use herbal medicine and natural cleaners--or make her own bread! That one exchange is a big part of why I do this site. We have more in common as homemakers, especially homemakers interested in creating a more authentic and more natural family life, than we often do with our co-religionists and political fellow travelers.

All of this is the long way of saying I've decided to allow political speech again. I BEG you not to speak in anger. Please don't generalize or demonize. State your piece calmly and logically, and be prepared to defend your stance. Realize that in questioning someone else's stance, or in defending your own, you must not make it personal or take it personally. See the first guideline: Flaming is not tolerated.

If you have any questions about these guidelines, ask them below. Thank you.

--Lynn