Member Guidelines

These Guidelines are designed to keep our community as valuable, authentic, and safe as possible.

This means a few rules of the road:

  1. Focus on sharing your perspective, not giving out advice unless it’s requested. We want to foster an environment where honest conversation is encouraged and everyone is respected. Our goal is to tackle big questions and work together to discover all of the potential answers. That can only happen when we are committed to collaboration and true knowledge sharing. We’re not always going to agree, and that’s OK.
  2. No campaigning. Scrutineers is a nonpartisan organization. While you may — and probably do — have strong opinions about candidates and ballot issues, this is not the place to try to convince others to play for your team. We’re about fair, accurate, transparent elections, regardless of who wins. When you take action as a member of Scrutineers, you’re making a commitment to act in a nonpartisan manner to support this goal. (Recommended: Read the article, “Scrutineers Is Nonpartisan- – What Does that Mean?” inside the site.)
  3. Be respectful. Please be kind and constructive when you add a new post, ask a question, or comment on someone else’s contribution. Snark or spam will be deleted immediately. Personal attacks and hate speech will not be tolerated on the site or elsewhere.
  4. Provide context and your perspective. We love it when our members share links and resources. When you do, add some commentary or give us some context so that we can understand more about why you care about this particular topic or article. If you’re not sure what you think, ask a question in your post.
  5. Please ask permission before promoting other organizations or companies. Member organizations are invited to promote their work in specific areas of the site. Other than that, feel free to share your knowledge and experiences with the others here in this community, but please do not promote yourself or your organization or business. Spamming, soliciting, or self-promotion will not be tolerated. To ask permission to promote an organization, company, or event, please send a message to our Director, Emily Levy.
  6. Take sensible precautions when sharing personal information or meeting people offline. You’re responsible for your own safety. Use precautions when meeting people in person with whom you’ve connected online. We strive to keep everyone safe, yet we live in a world with real dangers in addition to amazing beauty.
  7. Use private messaging thoughtfully.  Leaders and others may not have time to read and respond to every message. For best results, offer more than you ask for. Not all members of Scrutineers keep an eye on their private messages. If you don’t hear back, please don’t take it personally. You may need to reach the person another way.
  8. Some of what happens in Scrutineers stays in Scrutineers. We’re building a movement, and because of that, we want a lot of what we do to be public. We’re also building a community where we want members to be and feel safe, yet one that anyone can join. This combination can make it difficult to figure out when it’s OK to share something you’ve seen or experienced in Scrutineers beyond the ‘borders’ of this site. Here are a few guidelines: 
    • When links to news articles or other publicly available online resources are posted, it’s totally fine to copy the links and post them elsewhere.
    • If you want to share a post, comment, or other resource you saw on our site, you must first get permission from the person who created it. (For items in our Resources section, ask permission from Member Support.) 
    • When in doubt, ask before sharing!
    • If you’re creating content that you want people to share outside of Scrutineers, please state that clearly in your post.
  9. We reserve the right to remove you from the community for failure to follow any of these guidelines. 

These guidelines may be updated from time to time. Members will be notified of any changes. Make sure you turn on “Notifications from Host” in the Notifications settings. Once you join the community, you’ll see a welcome message with a link to your settings area.

January 2022