User account

Make sure that you have read, understood, and agreed to abide by the policies below before participating in this site. Unfamiliarity with these policies will not be accepted as an excuse for violating them.

This site exists to provide learning experiences and materials for diverse stakeholders of massage therapy.

POEM is a safe place for discussion of evidence-based biopsychosocial massage, and all participants are expected to behave in accordance with the community principles detailed below.

Unlike some popular political sites on the Web, where the atmosphere can be compared to a bar, and it is acceptable to trade insults, this is a learning environment, and professional behavior is expected at all times. We recognize that discussions can get passionate at times, but participants are expected to behave at all times as they would in a classroom, and degradation of the discussions through disruptive behavior or personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Participants can be banned, and all posts from their IP addresses (including from other people at the same IP address) blocked, if they violate community principles. At our discretion, we may give someone a warning or a time-out before carrying out an outright ban, but we are not required to do so.

Banning can occur on a first offense, if that behavior is particularly disruptive.

Privacy Policy:

POEM uses your email, real name, and IP addresses only for security. We will never publish, sell, or otherwise deliberately reveal your information in any way, except upon lawful request from authorized persons or organizations in connection with investigation as described below. We have taken reasonable and prudent measures to protect against hackers, but beyond taking measures to protect the site and its information, we cannot guarantee that such a thing could never happen. Due to the use of a separate spam protection service, please consult their privacy policy for further information on how email addresses are handled.

The exception to this principle is that any participant who makes any threat of real or implied force or violence. We reserve the right to let the community know what is happening and who is responsible in that case.

Comments and discussion areas on POEM are places where you can ask questions, share explanations, and express your ideas and opinions. These areas are not curated for accuracy of the information contained in them and POEM takes no responsibility for their accuracy, but they are moderated to ensure that participants maintain a professional level of discussion.

Class materials and other curated input contributed by the community will be evaluated to ensure that it meets the standards of POEM for publication.

Any attempt to establish multiple accounts for the purposes of avoiding suspension of an established account, or with the intent to deceive the administrators, moderators or other members of this forum, or violating any stated lawful purpose, including/but not limited to the posting of advertisements, spamming, solicitation, disruption of service, or for the purpose of nuisance, by manual, mechanical (including software, malicious software and sundry means) or other electronically compiled or transmitted methods, will result in action taken against the violator, including/but not limited to an IP ban, civil action and/or criminal complaint, at the discretion of the administrators and/or moderators.

• No spam
• No pornography
• No sockpuppets

2) Any/and all messages posted on this site express only the views of the individual authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of this site or any person or entity associated with them. The site administrators monitor the content and appearance of messages posted in our forums. However, considering the real-time nature of this bulletin board, it is impossible for us to monitor or review every message. Therefore, you agree that neither this site, nor any person or entity associated with them, will be held liable for the contents, accuracy, completeness or validity of any information posted in them.

• Take responsibility for what you say

You will not get this site in trouble with legal authorities by admitting or confession to working outside of the law or ethical boundaries. For example, a post declaring that although your state requires draping, you consider it optional, will be deleted right away, and you may be banned immediately as a result.

• Taking responsibility for your own speech, however, will not allow you to break any of the community rules about acceptable behavior to other members of the community

Again to use a draping example, you will not say anything on this site to give a client reading your message reason to fear that massage therapists do not take draping seriously. Use your own judgment, but on this, or any issue relating to client health and safety, the bar for violating community standards is very low. Other topics that do not impact client health and safety directly, nor give a client cause to fear that they would, will have more lenient standards.

3) You agree that you will not use the site to post any message or link, to any material including/but not limited to, that which is knowingly false and/or defamatory, insulting, offensive, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented and/or sexually predatory, threatening, intimidating, menacing, invasive of a person's privacy, racially/ethnically motivated or otherwise in violation of any law.

• No bullying
• No racist, sexist, classist, or homophobic remarks
• No insults purely on the basis of religion or spirituality. Specific religious or spiritual doctrines can be analyzed and criticized--civilly, showing your work--to determine whether they are consistent or inconsistent with empirical observations in the natural world. For example, "All Zoroastrians are benighted" is a religious insult (and a false one, at that), and is an example of what will absolutely not be permitted under community standards.
  On the other hand, "Fundamentalist Christianity's claim that the earth is only 6000 years old does not match the evidence from biology, geology, and paleontology"--while some people may not like it--is an acceptable analysis and criticism under community standards. If the comment is borderline, the administrators and moderators of POEM will make a decision at their discretion.
• No threats (these will be immediately pursued to the fullest extent, and any participant making any kind of threat can expect to be publicly outed)
• No profanity, as this is effectively a virtual classroom, and that is the standard to which discussion will be held. Believe me, this policy is going to hurt me way more than it hurts you, but if I can find a ding-danged Fu-Schnitzen way of keeping my discourse appropriate to a classroom, then so can you.
• No credential checking
• No sarcasm, another policy which probably hurts me more than anyone else here. If you find you cannot explain something patiently and straight-up as you would in a classroom, then that discussion needs to take place elsewhere.
• No derailing
• No trolling
• No insults. If you start insulting someone, you can be banned. If someone insults you, and you feel the need to defend yourself, keep it civil, so that you don't get banned as well. Remember, the other readers can see who started it; you don't need to keep it going just to defend yourself.

4) You agree that you will not post any copyrighted material without the express permission of the copyright holder, unless such copyright is owned by yourself, the message poster, and by extension is implicitly licensed to the Forum.

• I (RST) do not want to be receiving nastygrams from copyright holders and/or their lawyers. Do NOT put me in this position by submitting copyrighted work to the site.
• Be sure to protect yourself and your own work: if you are planning to publish it somewhere else later, make sure before you submit it here that the other organization will not disqualify it for appearing here. 

5) Advertisements, chain letters, pyramid schemes, and solicitations for tickets, merchandise or services, including/but not limited to, other websites, message boards and/or blogs, are prohibited on this site except in the marketplace area, where one advertisement per user is allowed. They will be removed and will result in an IP ban, at the administrators' and/or moderators' discretion.

• Spam or porn links = immediate banning and blocking

6) We retain the option to edit and/or remove objectionable messages. Any user who believes that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately by e-mail (use Contact link at bottom of page). Upon receipt of such notification, we will make every effort to take such action as we deem necessary within a reasonable period of time, to address your concerns. Since this is a manual process, you are advised that we may not be able to remove or edit particular messages immediately.

• "Objectionable" does not mean "contains ideas people here disagree with" or "although it was civil, it nevertheless hurt someone's feelings". It means it contains content that violates the principles above, such as racist or sexist speech or insults. For example "You advocates of evidence-based massage are harming massage" is an unsupported assertion, and as such, it borders on insulting the other members of the community. In the name of exploring inquiry, that comment by itself wouldn't earn a ban, but if the participant repeats it over and over again, they might earn a ban for derailing the discussion. On the other hand, "I fear that you advocates of evidence-based massage are harming massage, and that I will be left behind"--while containing similar sentiments--is not bordering on insult. The speaker is taking responsibility for admitting feelings, rather than asserting that something is a blanket truth. It might not be a popular opinion, and some people might find it irritating, but it is not objectionable.
• If someone writes something civil that offends you, you have several options:

1) you can ignore them,

2) you can counter their opinion in a civil manner, laying out your facts and sources, or

3) you can escalate it into an argument.

You'll be held responsible for whichever choice you make, but neither 1) nor 2) will violate community standards for behavior. On the other hand, 3) could get you banned.

• If you make unsupported or non-factual statements in a discussion, you may be politely asked to connect the dots, show your evidence, or otherwise support your assertions. Done in a civil manner, this is neither insult nor objectionable speech.
• This is a web site on the Internet. People are here to teach and to learn. Just as in any classroom, there are going to be people you like and people you don't; people you agree with and people you don't. As long as it doesn't degenerate into a bar fight, it's all good.

7) POEM reserves the right to edit or delete any message for any reason whatsoever, at our sole discretion. You agree that you are solely responsible for the content of your messages, and that you will indemnify and hold harmless this Forum.

8) In the event of any complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by you, POEM reserves the right to reveal your identity and any other available pertinent information to any authorized person or organization, upon lawful request.

9) POEM reserves the right to alter these terms and conditions at any time, without any prior consent, warning or notification to their membership.