About Connect: Who, What & Why: Community Guidelines

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Mayo Clinic Connect is an online community that connects people. In the About Connect blog, find out more about members, mentors and the community. Meet the Mayo Clinic moderators and learn how the community is managed. Review the community guidelines and learn how you can get the most from your Connect experience. Follow the About Connect blog to get updates about members and the community.

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Community Guidelines

Whether this is your first time participating in an online community or you're a social media user, these Community Guidelines offer 12 short rules of conduct that help keep the Mayo Clinic Connect community safe, supportive, inclusive, and respectful.

Mayo Clinic Connect is a public website, available to help as many people as possible. See why and how we moderate Connect.

1. Be careful about giving out medical advice
   • Sharing your own experience is fine, but don't tell other members what they should do.
   • Experiences and information shared by members on the Mayo Clinic Connect are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
   • Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on the community. See the full Disclaimer.

Mayo Clinic provides high quality, expertly developed health information. Visit https://www.mayoclinic.org/

• • Medical tips or information may be removed if a member:
    • Tells another member what to do.
    • Attempts to provide a diagnosis for another member.
    • Makes a medical statement that cannot be verified clearly as coming from their own personal experience.
    • States information as fact or makes a claim that is not properly referenced.
    • Spreads misinformation about unproven therapies.
    • Posts a message that was generated by artificial intelligence (AI) without a disclaimer or personal experience. (See below.)
    • References information that is not evidence-based and/or does not come from a verified medical expert source.

Guidance about the use of AI.
Artificial intelligence (AI) means using computers to try to act like humans by learning from lots of information. These systems look at the data, try to understand it, and then give back plain language answers or suggestions. But the information AI gives isn’t always 100% accurate—it depends on the data it was trained on and how your query was worded.

If you share information from AI tools with the Mayo Clinic Connect community, please follow these guidelines. 

• Include your personal experience
  • Mayo Clinic Connect is first and foremost a space to share your health experiences to help and support others with similar health issues.
  • When replying in a discussion, think about conversation first. Share your real-life, first-hand experiences.
  • Connect and engage with fellow members like you would face-to-face.
• Use human oversight and verify for misinformation
  • Do not post long AI generated answers as stand alone replies. Short, specific quotes from AI may be used to support your personal experience.
  • AI tools do not replace human judgment or oversight. Any text, image or video generated by AI should be viewed as a starting point, not verified factual information. It may contain inaccuracies, biases and other problems.
  • Fact check and review for accuracy, relevance, and unbiased balance and that the post reflects your words.
  • Ask the chatbot you’re using to include source information in its response. You can instruct chatbots to create citations, a bibliography, or both, at any point in your conversation with these tools.
  • You are responsible for what you post. You are responsible for the accuracy, originality and quality of your posts, whether a tool helped you or not.
• Be transparent
  • If you use the help of Gen AI to write your experiences, disclose that to fellow members. For example: “This post was generated by AI with some human edits. Be sure to check for accuracy.”
  • You will get different answers depending on the query you use. Include the question you asked AI if your post includes AI generated information.
• Report fake accounts
  • Spammers try to create fake patient accounts on Mayo Clinic Connect. If you suspect that a post is not a real person, please report it.
  • How to report:
    • 1. Click the 3 dots (...) in the lower right corner of the comment.
    • 2. Select "Report comment"
    • 3. Write the reason for the report and SUBMIT.

2. Remain respectful at all times.
   • Exercise tolerance and respect toward other participants whose views may differ from your own. Disagreements are fine, but mutual respect is a must.
   • Realize that sarcasm, irony, and joking will often be misunderstood.
   • Be inclusive. Not everyone shares the same religious or political beliefs. Don't impose your beliefs on others.
   • Avoid comments (even when said in jest) that single out a specific group of people.
   • Personal attacks against members or health care providers are not acceptable. Such posts will be removed.
3. Be polite.
   • Do not use obscene or hateful language. Profanity, vulgarity and abusive language are out-of-bounds.
   • Avoid typing in ALL CAPS, as it is considered shouting.
4. Stay on topic.
   • Create a clear descriptive title for any discussion that you start. This helps people know what you want to ask or talk about.
   • Titles may be modified for clarity or to correct spelling, as well as to help members connect and get answers.
   • Take note of the topic of the discussion you are participating in. Stay on topic.
   • Tangents will happen sometimes. If they do, that's okay. But bring the discussion back to the main topic.
5. No commercial postings, self-promotion, advertisements or solicitations.
   • Postings or profiles that advertise or promote your products or services, your business, personal coaching, or medical practice will be removed.
   • Get-rich-quick schemes or solicitations for a charity will be removed. Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify the validity of each and every organization or personal fundraising campaign that solicits donations; therefore, to protect you from fraud, we must prohibit solicitations for charities.
   • Postings that promote products, coaching or events (videos, webinars, etc.) may be removed upon review. (See Guideline 1).
   • Do not post used medical devices or unused medications for sale or to give away.
   • Journalists can submit interview requests to Mayo Clinic media relations at bureau.mayo@mayo.edu.
   • Solicitations for research must be Mayo Clinic and IRB-approved. Requests for product reviews, such as feedback on apps, devices, etc. are not allowed without prior consent. Submit your request for review to the Community Director.
6.  Keep politics out of the community conversations.
   • Mayo Clinic Connect is a place to share about health experiences, to improve living with chronic conditions and health and wellbeing. Political discussions often divide us and do not build community or promote health and wellbeing
   • Don't post about politics, political viewpoints, political news stories.
   • Political and/or divisive posts will be edited or removed.
7. No illegal activity.
   • Do not to use Mayo Clinic Connect for any unlawful purpose.
8. No copyrighted postings.
   • Do not post copyrighted information. Copyrighted material (text or images), private email text and other privileged information may not be posted without prior written permission from the original author.
   • Acknowledge the original source when quoting content from elsewhere.
9. Protect yourself and others.
   • Keep in mind that Connect is a public forum.
   • You are not required to use your full name or real name when posting.
   • Feel free to introduce and talk about yourself. But for your safety and privacy, do not post personal information such as phone numbers, addresses, social security numbers or any other private information.
   • Remove personal identifying information from images before uploading.
   • Sharing images of genitalia is not permitted.
   • Personal contact information on the public forum will be removed. You can use secure private messaging.
   • Do not post personal information of other people.
   • Keep your password confidential. Don’t share it with anyone.
10. Be yourself.
    • Do not impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity.
11. Follow the rules.
    • By posting to Mayo Clinic Connect, you agree to abide by our Terms of Use.
    • We agree to protect your privacy. See our Privacy Policy.
12. Report misuse.
    • Report any offensive, abusive, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable postings to a Community Moderator. Click the 3 dots ... and select “Report comment” at the bottom right of the abusive message.

If a member posts an error of fact or inappropriate content (as defined in the Terms of Use), the Community Management Team will review the post and use policy criteria to determine whether the posting should: 1. remain posted, 2. remain posted with editorial comment added, or 3. be removed permanently. The Community Director may contact the member directly and describe the action taken and provide justification.