MDS Europe community standards and participation guidelines
 

The following standards and guidelines address different aspects of online interaction in the community section of the MDS-Europe website and outline some basic rules all online communication contributors (incl. those posting comments) will be expected to abide by. Legal statements covering the entire MDS-Europe website, including the community section, can be accessed at https://mds-europe.org/legal.

Aim and mode of operation of the MDS Europe stakeholder platform

The MDS-Europe website offers a community section and a dedicated English-language online platform for MDS stakeholder interaction and to facilitate the exchange of views on different aspects of MDS management and research. This stakeholder platform is set up as a blog that is moderated by MDS-RIGHT.

Monthly MDS-Europe blog posts are by invitation only and all MDS researchers, physicians, patients, regulators, funders, industry and other interested parties are encouraged to express their views and opinions on the topics raised in the blog by posting comments, thus generating an ongoing and gradually expanding multi-stakeholder discussion on a variety of important MDS-related subjects.

The MDS-Europe stakeholder platform is not intended for discussing personal/individual questions concerning MDS diagnosis or treatment. A collection of links to existing national/organisational MDS-related discussion platforms can be found in the community section of this website. Interested users can visit these discussion platforms for exchanging personal diagnosis- or treatment-related views and questions.

Community standards and participation guidelines

1. Comments should always be relevant to the topic in question. Comments that are not related to the blog entry under which they are posted (including comments or questions about moderation) may be removed from the MDS-Europe website to keep the discussion focused on the topic.
    
2. MDS-Europe encourages online debate and the open expression of different views and opinions. Comments that take the form of personal attacks or ‘trolling’ (engaging in discussions just for the sake of generating argument), however, will not be tolerated.
    
3. The respect for other people’s views and orientations should guide all contributors when posting comments, even in case of strong disagreement. Any offensive or threatening content and any inflammatory or hate speech will be removed from the MDS-Europe website.
    
4. Any contribution that includes discrimination, or could be interpreted as such, will be deleted from the MDS-Europe website. This includes the attacking of people based on their nationality, race, age, education, disability, sex, gender, sexual orientation or religion.
    
5. Misrepresentation of MDS-RIGHT, MDS-Europe or of the author of a given blog post on this website will not be tolerated. Any contribution to the discussion should be made in a fair, focused and constructive manner.
    
6. Any defamatory, spam-like or nonsense comment as well as any contribution or material perceived as potentially infringing the copyright of third parties will be deleted from the MDS-Europe website.
    
7. Comments or links that include or imply the commercial promotion of a medicinal or other product will be removed from the MDS-Europe website.
    
8. To avoid potential misunderstandings, any comments posted on the MDS-Europe website should be as clear and unambiguous as possible. Irony, sarcasm, humour and the use of icons or emojis may be difficult to understand for some readers and could therefore lead to misinterpretation.
    
9. The MDS-Europe online platform is for multiple stakeholders and all contributions should therefore be easy to understand for everybody. Abbreviations and acronyms should be explained.
    
10. Responsible and reasonable contributions are strongly encouraged and MDS-RIGHT reserves the right to curtail or redirect blog conversations to establish and sustain a common-sense discussion culture on this website.
     
11. Users coming across inappropriate comments or conversations on the MDS-Europe website are encouraged to inform the MDS-RIGHT project team by sending an email to mds-right@radboudumc.nl.