Community | Information and Rules
for Use
¤ Access to online community publications.
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This resource page devoted to our
community is extremely long and detailed. For those who are enquirers, it will
provide a useful look at how we conduct this aspect of the Project and will be
a wise investment of time. For community members, it will serve as a helpful
overview of the discussion areas and their relationship to formation.
Hyperlinked contents of this page:
·
The diversity of our community.
·
Participation and responsibilities
of community membership.
·
Community structure and technical
details.
·
Further notes on privacy,
discretion, limits on article content and other details.
The community is extremely diverse: We have members from all over the world who represent a
wide spectrum of interests and professions. Some of us are single, some of us
are stay-at-home mothers, some are artists and writers, others
are physicians, psychologists, lawyers, teachers and social workers. We have
members who suffer from debilitating illnesses and members who are dyslexic.
Some of our members are in their early twenties, but most are in their thirties
and forties and some are older than that.
· A small number
of us are full project participants who
live under the disciplines given to us as part of our formation and who help
provide guidance to others.
· Others are monitored members who seek greater
insight into their own instinctive understanding of submission by working with
full project participants.
· Some of our
sisters serve newcomers as mentors.
· Members also
assume specific responsibilities: We have a community
librarian, for example, who helps make texts available to those who cannot
afford to purchase them, and mentors-at-large
who seek to help others in obvious need of assistance.
The function served by most members is
described as part of their community identity and attached (as a tag) to each
article.
Most are involved with the Submissive
Wife project only through their role
in the online community. Others are involved in the Project but have little or
no involvement with the online component. We have members who live in formal,
traditional religious communities and members involved with NGOs and other organisations who live far from home. A very few of us are
single, but most of us are married women with families. As a rule, we do not
view submission as something one does, but as an expression of what one is. We do not see
surrender defined only by an affection for BDSM, and we certainly do not think
submission equates to subservience or inferiority. We tend not to view
submission as a “lifestyle choice” but as a comprehensive way of life.
This online community, like the Project
to which it is ancillary, obviously is not for every woman. There are many
different ways to approach submission in marriage and in life. This community
and our site reflect the approach we prefer, but you need not be a participant in any part of our Project nor do you
need to subscribe to all of the Project’s principles to become a forum member.
It is useful however to remember that the function of the community, and the
site as a whole, is not to encourage general debate but to offer an explanation of the Project, even in contrast to
other, sometimes opposing views.
Registration is mandatory. Anonymous
visitors may read posts and replies in the public areas of the community (the
general comments area and the text resources/bookshop area), but they may not
enter into the conversations here. Other areas of the community are closed to
public viewing and may be accessed only by community members in good standing, however a digest of redacted articles from some private
discussion areas is available for public viewing here.
Registration is free and easy (like
some of us!). If you have recently applied for membership
in the forums or if you plan to do so, please note that your account will
not be active until your application has been approved by the forum
administrator. You are welcome to read the posts in the public forums and
in the digest, but
you will not be permitted to post until your account has been activated.
Participation is expected. Participation
is completely voluntary, of course. But it is also difficult and emotionally
and intellectually challenging. Our community has a limited number of places
available for members. We do not support the membership of those who for
whatever reason can only read the posts created by others but not offer any
experiences or insights of their own. Membership in this community is
deceptively difficult. If you cannot participate as a member of our community
please do not ask to take a place that could be given to someone else who can
participate. Members should expect to publish an article, however brief, in our
forums at least once every two weeks and more often when possible or whenever
interest elicits comment. We do not permit passive participation. Accounts are
suspended automatically if 14 or more days pass between posts.
Registration notes:
§ We have
designed a registration and membership process that intentionally discourages
all but those who feel membership in this community is a part of a life
journey.
§ The forums are
intended for adult women only. All registrants, no matter where in the world
they are located, are personally contacted to verify their eligibility for
membership. For the sake of the privacy of the entire community, no exceptions may be made.
§ We are not
at all particularly welcoming to husbands or partners who wish to visit the
community’s private discussion areas or to men pretending to be women. All
applicants are screened by personal contact by community volunteers before
admission is possible.
§ We
respectfully prohibit casual browsing in this forum by curious husbands, friends, partners or
lovers. This is not a personal issue for each of us to decide nor an indication
of our disrespect. It’s a community intention. If you wish to allow your
partner to read your posts only then you may do so by printing out your
posts only and not the thread of which they are a part. Many of us post
assuming the community will protect our privacy. Each individual member must do
her part to help guarantee the privacy of all her sisters here. For this reason
we require members to establish private
email accounts with yahoo, hotmail, gmail or another provider, as article
notifications are sent automatically and contain direct link-backs. If this is
not a possibility for you, please do not register.
§ Our number is
limited to 200. We reached that number four months after launching the
forums. New members replace those who have become inactive. Our community is
limited to 200 active members. Because of the challenging nature of the
community, there are generally places available—although the waiting period can
sometimes be rather lengthy.
Registration process:
§
Click the “register” link on the forum home pageor use this direct link to the registration portal. Follow the
prompts to complete your profile entry and to apply for registration. NOTE: YOU
MUST BE A WOMAN 21 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER to be considered for community
membership and you will be personally contacted to verify your suitabilty for membership (especially your age and sex). You will receive an automatic reply. Please follow the instructions
in the reply, or follow the steps below:
§
Send a brief note the forum administrators explaining
your reasons for wanting to join the community. The explanation need not reveal
any personal details, but it should indicate a reason for wanting to
participate here. This simple step helps us discourage casual applicants. If
you have already registered, you may direct your note to a community
administrator by simply clicking here.
§
Membership is
not an automatic process. Some handwork is involved. Here is an outline of the process:
§
The community administrator will send you a message
confirming receipt of your note.
§
The note will be forwarded to a community volunteer who
will correspond with you to discern your interests, then confirm your interest
and appropriateness by telephone and then match you with a temporary mentor who
will help you make your transition into community membership.
§
Your mentor will be able to answer any questions you may
have about the contents of the community discussion areas, give you assistance
in using the forum programme and help you find ways of engaging in the community’s
activities and using our resources. Between 50 and 100 new articles are added
to the community archives daily. There is a great reservoir of information
contained in the community discussion areas and finding specific articles can
sometimes prove daunting without a mentor's help. The mentoring process, like all our formation processes, is a monitored one: The relationship between a mentor and a new member is private, but monitored by at least one other experienced Project participant in addition to your mentor. In due course you will
receive a notification informing you that your membership is active. This will
enable you to post in the public forums. As a rule membership applications and
registrations are fully processed and made active within 72 hours, often less.
Without violating the privacy of new registrants we try our best to know to
whom we are entrusting membership: We are extremely concerned that the security
and safety of our community be preserved so we do apologise for this careful
procedure. We hope however you will appreciate the reasons for it.
§
Once your admission has been processed, you must post a
brief introduction to the community in the Introductory Forum
on first entering the community. Please feel free to read the introductions
posted by others to get an idea of how to frame your own, but please do not
browse in the other discussion areas without first introducing yourself to your
sisters. New members are identified as ‘novices’ until they have posted five or more
articles.
NOTES FOR NEW MEMBERS
We ask that new
members add an approximate location (ie, London,
western US, Florida, etc) to their profile page during registration and
introduce themselves to the other members of our community by posting a
greeting with a little background information in the introductory forum
(click here and log in). If you browse that forum, you will see other
similar posts from our new members and get a sense of how this is done. To make
a new post, simply click on the 'new topic' button at the bottom of the page.
To reply to a post, click on ‘reply’. For more information, please review the forum FAQs
(click here).
§ After your introduction
has been posted, your membership permissions will be reset to give you access
to all areas of the community accessible to general members (except some
private features; see below for details).
We apologise in advance for the inconvenience of this process. Our hope is that new members will recognise that our community’s usefulness is enhanced by this rather obsessive attention to security and privacy. We are sisters in our submission and we rely heavily on the discretion of our community.
Other forum details:
§ Our boards
operate on GMT. The forum email server uses US Eastern timestamps, although the
forum and site administrator is based in
§ We require the
use of an email address to which only you
have access. This is done to protect the privacy of the entire community as
some automatic correspondence contains direct links to community content. We
recommend gmail, yahoo! and hotmail, all providers of private email free of
charge.
§ The design of
the online community reflects that of the site as a whole. There is a tiered
architecture to the community and there are many areas of the community that are
hidden from view until needed, with each level representing a deeper involvement in
the processes and principles of the Project. Some discussion areas are closed
to novices. Others are closed to the general community but available to those
who request access and have a reason for doing so. Yet other discussion areas
are private, and while some are described, others are not. Some discussion
areas are not visible at all, except to members. Take time to explore the
community, feel free to request access to various levels if you feel they
correspond to your own needs and interests. Be careful what you ask for always.
This
is especially true of our Private Subcommunities—small
groups within the private discussion area comprising sisters engaged in
in-depth reflection and discussion on some particular aspect of submission that
may not be of universal value to the community at large. Admission to these
sub-communities is contingent on a direct application being made to the
appropriate moderator who will arrange for access.
§ The community
area, like the site itself, is designed to be viewed using IE 5.0 or higher. Some
content will not be visible to visitors using other, unsupported browsers. To
download the latest version of Internet Explorer, click here.
(Mac OS X users, click here.)
The online
community is intended for women only. We do our best to keep this area
safe, private and useful for all of our members. We are very careful about who is granted access and allowed to post here.
We feel that the security of knowing that we have tried as hard as possible to
ensure that all our members are women who share our general interest in
submission is critical to making this forum community safe and successful. The community’s private message system
is secure and safe (but not currently functioning as a part of a technical revision). Correspondence with other members outside the system is not
advised. Members posting personal email addresses to encourage off-site contact or soliciting unwanted, off-site correspondence with other
members may be removed from the community without warning. Please report all
inappropriate private messages or emails to a community administrator. To send
her an email, click here.
Allow for software idiosyncracies. It may be
necessary to go through the login procedure more than one time in each session.
This is because of a programme instruction that
discourages spammers and hackers attempting to use the forum for mischief. A
user session is a timed event. Therefore, it’s possible that you may be logged
off if you have taken a long time on a post. If that happens, the post will be
lost. To avoid distress, compose longer posts in a word processing
program, then paste them into the forum page. Cookies are required to use these
forums in order to maintain session continuity, however no personally
identifying information is ever captured in this process and the cookie expires
when you leave this site. For more information on the forum software and how
the forum may be used, consult the forum FAQ. (For
information on the project, consult the project FAQ.)
This community is for adult women only. If you are a
man seeking guidance or if you are under 21 years of age, we respectfully ask
that you please not apply to join. There are many other resources on the web
and we encourage you to explore those carefully.
This community is not for every adult woman, either. Our
discussions are frank and may be considered quite offensive to some. Our
Project encourages the use of direct
language as part of the formation process, although only within the
confines of the community. We generally place a very high value on the dignity
of each other and of our sisters everywhere.
Different opinions are encouraged. While the purpose of the community is not to engage in general debate, one of our intentions is to reveal the principles of the Project in juxtaposition to other, sometimes contrary views. However the overall function of the community is to provide support for those who seek to understand the Project's principles. (It should be noted that only members identified as a participant in their signatures can reliably speak for the Project.) We hope members will feel free
to disagree with one another and animated exchanges indeed are frequent.
Above all, we all respect each other as sisters in submission and we always
refrain from ad hominem arguments and
personal attacks. Political and other discussions are not encouraged, except as
they relate to submission.
Project participants and monitored members must observe the
discreet nature of their formation in the discussion conducted here. Full
project participants and monitored members, past or present, may not discuss the details of their formation on this board or in correspondence with others without first obtaining the permission of
their monitor. Personal disgreements with aspects of formation should not be discussed here, but with a monitor. Posts violating these rules are subject to immediate
removal and/or editing and negligent participants will be held accountable for
their carelessness.
Privacy. Our privacy policy is very simple. We do not share any information
of any kind with anyone. We collect no user information beyond that necessary to
facilitate correspondence and registration. We do not share, sell, relay or
otherwise transmit this information to any third party for any reason. During
registration, you may choose what information is publicly revealed about you.
This information can be changed after registration by clicking on
“profile.”
Images must be used wisely. Explicit images attract casual web
surfers. We are not permitted to display any explicitly sexual images in public
pages because of a wish that we do nothing to confuse submissive sexuality with
superficial or trivial expressions of sexuality, such as pornography. Some
pages restricted to participants do contain explicit images, but access to
these pages is heavily restricted.
Privacy matters to all of us. Please do not provide personally
identifying information about anyone associated with the forum or the Project
in the areas of the community that are open to public view. Remember, the forum
may be read by anyone with access to the web. Examine your profile settings
carefully. This site is not suitable for children, obviously. Please protect
the privacy of your sisters by asking your husband or partner to please refrain
from reading our comments and posts. If you wish to share your comments with
your husband or partner, please print them out for him and present them without
also making access to the community available to him. The community can only function if the privacy of all members is
respected. If helping maintain our privacy is something you do not feel you
can do, please do not seek membership. There are other web sources available.
We often recommend Taken in Hand as
one such alternative.
All posts are subject to editing and are protected by copyright. Once posted,
all articles become the property of The Submissive Wife project, may not be
reproduced elsewhere and may not be used elsewhere for any purpose, including
reportage or academic research. Posts may be edited or removed or repurposed
for any reason at the discretion of the forum moderator or the site administrator.
The working language of the forum is English. Please post in English only.
Those who write more comfortably in other languages are welcome to ask for help
in posting.
COMMUNITY CHAT
Password-protected
chat facilities are available to registered members (only) of the forum only.
For access information, please see the introductory post in the community conference
facilities forum (click here).
FOR MORE FORUM SUPPORT AND INFORMATION…
If you have a
problem with the forum software and how it works, click here.
This link will take you to a page devoted to the functional elements of the
forum application.
If you have
questions about the content of the posts or about the forum rules, contact a forum
administrator by clicking here.
If you have a
general question about the Submissive Wife project, click here.
Si vous êtes plus confortable en utilisant la langue française, demandez svp l'aide. | Se state più bene usando la lingua italiana, chieda prego assistenza. | Wenn Sie mit der deutschen Sprache bequemer sind, bitten Sie bitte um Unterstützung. | Si usted es más cómodo con la lengua española, pida por favor ayuda.
This community is private and admission is at the discretion of
the board of the Sodalitas.
If you have any questions about these rules,
contact the forum administrator by clicking here.
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reserved.
This page reviewed and edited September 2006.