Forum rules and registration agreement

Forum rules

This page tells you how the forum works and what is expected of you. Read it before you post.

1. Reading and posting

Anyone can read the forum without an account. An account is needed only to post.

2. Pseudonyms

A pseudonym is required. You never need to use your real name. Choose a name that does not identify you. Do not post your own identifying details, or anyone else's.

3. Age and images

You must be 18 or over to register. This site discusses genital surgery, and its own articles carry clinical images.

You cannot upload photographs to the forum. Posts are text, including where a photograph of your own result would be relevant — describe it instead. Any use of clinical material on this site for sexual purposes will get the account removed.

4. No individual medical advice

You can describe your own experience: what you were told, what you tried, what happened. You must not diagnose another member, tell another member what treatment to have, or tell them to start, stop or change a medication or dose. Nothing here replaces advice from your own doctor.

5. Products, surgeons and clinics

You may name and discuss specific devices, products, medications, surgeons and clinics, including recommending them, based on your own experience. That discussion is the point of this forum and is not restricted.

What is not allowed:

• Advertising, affiliate links or referral links.
• Soliciting business or customers.
• Posting on behalf of a company or clinic without saying so.
• Recommending anything you have a commercial interest in without disclosing that interest.

If you have any commercial connection to something you are recommending, say so in the post. This applies to every account on the forum, including the site's own editorial account, which does not promote products.

Repeatedly pushing the same clinic, surgeon or product across threads is treated as spam, whatever the account's motive. One person's account of their own treatment is useful. The same recommendation posted over and over is not.

6. Verified professionals

A clinical badge is shown only after the site has verified the person's credentials against the relevant public register. An account without a badge is not a verified professional, whatever it says about itself. Do not assume clinical authority from an unbadged account.

A badged clinician posting here is giving general information, not treating you. Nothing a verified professional writes on this forum creates a doctor-patient relationship, and none of it is a diagnosis or a treatment recommendation for your case. Your own doctor is the only person who can advise you on your own treatment.

Verified clinicians must disclose any financial relationship with a company whose products they discuss, such as consulting, speaking or training fees. This is the same disclosure standard rule 5 sets for every account, applied to the accounts readers trust most.

7. New members

Some posts are held for approval before they appear, based on their content. This is a spam and safety measure, not a judgment on what you wrote.

8. What gets removed

• Spam and advertising.
• Abuse, harassment and personal attacks.
• Anyone's identifying details.
• Content that is illegal under United States law.
• Content that encourages self-harm or suicide, or gives method detail. Covered fully by the safeguarding policy.
• Impersonating a clinician or another member.
• Running more than one account. One person, one account.
• Using the forum to send unsolicited commercial messages, sell services, recruit patients or promote a clinic.

A post describing your own distress or suicidal thoughts is not removed. See the safeguarding policy for what happens to it. If you are replying to a post like that, you are welcome to offer support, but do not give medical or psychological advice and do not discuss methods.

9. Appeals

If a post is removed or an account is restricted, contact the moderation team at contact@uroanswers.org. Appeals are handled there, not in the thread. Do not argue a moderation decision publicly on the forum.

If your account has a temporary restriction, you can also appeal it directly from your account page instead of emailing — a permanent suspension can only be appealed by email, since a permanently suspended account cannot sign in.

10. Closing an account

You can ask for your account to be closed at any time. Your username is permanently replaced so the account is no longer identifiable, and your posts stay in place so the threads other members are reading still make sense. If you would rather your posts were removed too, ask us and we will remove them. See the privacy policy for details.

11. Contribution points

Signed-in members earn contribution points for approved posts: 15 for a reply, 50 for opening a new topic (a topic's own first post earns only the topic bonus, not both). Points reflect how much someone has posted, not expertise or accuracy, and are shown on a member's profile alongside their post count, if they choose to show it.

Registering also means accepting the registration agreement below. See the safeguarding policy for how the forum handles distress and suicidal-thought posts. For anything else: contact@uroanswers.org.

Registration agreement

Shown at signup.

By creating an account, you agree to the following.

Age and content warning

You confirm you are 18 or over. This site contains clinical and educational descriptions and images relating to genital surgery.

You cannot upload photographs to the forum. Posts are text only.

What you must not post

You must not post content that is:

• false or defamatory
• abusive, harassing or threatening
• obscene
• an invasion of someone else's privacy
• unlawful under United States law

You must not post copyright material you do not own or have permission to use.

No spam

No spam, advertising, chain messages or solicitation. See the forum rules above for the specific position on products, surgeons and clinics.

Moderation

Posts are not checked before they appear, except some that are automatically held for review based on their content. Moderation happens after posting and in response to reports. The site does not warrant the accuracy of anything a member posts. Posts express the author's own views, not the site's.

Your responsibility

You remain responsible for the content of your own posts.

Licence to the site

By posting, you keep ownership of your words. You grant the site a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to display, store, reproduce and format your post on and through the site, including in notification emails and in the site's own search. This is a license, not a transfer of ownership. If the site is transferred to a new operator, the license transfers with it. If a post is removed at your request, the license ends for that post, apart from copies in backups until they are overwritten.

IP addresses

Your IP address is recorded with each post. It is used only for enforcement and security.

Personal health information

Sharing your personal health experience is optional. If you choose to, before you submit it we ask for your explicit consent through a separate checkbox at signup, distinct from agreeing to this registration agreement. You can withdraw that consent at any time by emailing contact@uroanswers.org; because the forum can't run without it, withdrawing it closes your account. See the privacy policy for details.

Closing your account

You may request closure at any time. Your username is irreversibly anonymized and your posts remain in place, so discussions stay coherent for other members. If you ask, we will also remove your posts. The privacy policy explains how this works.

Anonymization and removal requests are applied to the live site straight away. They complete across backups by the end of the backup cycle, because backups are taken on a fixed schedule and are restored as a whole. Server, security and email delivery logs expire on their own retention schedules, set out in the privacy policy.

Editing posts

You can edit your own post for 24 hours after posting. After that, add a correction as a reply rather than rewriting the original. Posts edited more than a few minutes after they were first published are marked as edited, with the time of the edit, so anyone reading the thread can see it changed.

Suspension and removal

The site may suspend or remove your account for breach of the forum rules.