Community guidelines

Last updated: October 27, 2026

Epieme's discussions are for people working on patient safety: patients, families, clinicians, advocates and anyone following the legislation. These guidelines keep the space useful and safe. They apply to posts, comments, profiles, success stories and logged actions, alongside the Terms of Service.

What belongs here

• Legislation: bills, hearings, rulemaking and the people who move them.
• Stories: first-hand accounts from patients, families and clinicians.
• Questions: how to find, read or verify something.
• Action: templates, sign-ups and campaigns people can join.
• Evidence: data, studies and records requests, with sources.
• General: anything about patient safety that doesn't fit the others.

Be accurate

• Link to your source: the bill, the hearing record, the study.
• Say when something is your experience or opinion rather than established fact.
• Don't post claims you know are false, or pass off rumours as fact.
• If you get something wrong, edit your post or say so in a reply.

Protect health privacy

• Never post another person's medical information, or details that could identify a patient.
• Think twice before sharing your own. Everything here is public and can be copied.
• You can discuss institutions and officials in their public roles. Don't post anyone's private details, such as a home address or personal phone number.
• Before you post, we point out anything that looks like it could identify someone, so you can edit it out. A post or comment that seems to contain a date of birth, a medical record number or a Social Security number waits for a moderator before anyone else can read it; take those details out and it is published at once.

Actions and deadlines

• An action says what to do, to whom, how and by when, and links the official page.
• Only post a deadline you can source: the committee calendar or the bill's own page. People plan around it.
• Say "I did this" only when you did. Only totals are ever shown, and two weeks later we ask whether the office replied.
• When the deadline passes, whoever posted the action reports what happened, losses included. Report outcomes as what happened, not as credit.

Stories

• Stories are shared in trust. Acknowledge before you advise, and advise only when asked.
• Every story records whether it may be quoted anywhere else: keep it in this thread, ask me each time, anonymized, or with my name. Hosts follow that choice, and its author can change it.

Be respectful

• Argue with ideas, not people. No harassment, threats, slurs, or attacks on anyone for who they are.
• Don't impersonate anyone, including officials, clinicians and other members.
• Disagreement about policy is welcome. Pile-ons and personal attacks are not.

No spam or gaming

• No advertising, affiliate links or repeated self-promotion.
• Don't use extra accounts, coordinate votes, or log actions you didn't take to earn points.
• Post in the space that fits, and keep replies on topic.

Reporting

Use Report on any post or comment and pick a reason: spam, harassment, misinformation, private health information, off-topic, or other. Only moderators see reports. Please don't use reports to settle disagreements.

What moderators can do

Moderators review reports and can:

• remove a post or comment so no one else can see it;
• release a post held for a privacy check, or remove it;
• turn a post into an action, and correct an action's facts, but never your words;
• lock a discussion so it takes no new replies;
• ban an account from one space or from all discussions, for a set time or permanently.

Moderators also pin useful posts and can mark their replies as official. Every moderator action is logged with who took it and why.

Appeals

If you think a moderator got it wrong, email support@epieme.org with a link to the content and why. We will review it and reply.