Are you over 25? Please read this.

[Heather]

If you are here, and outside the age group we primarily serve, and always privilege, please bear the following in mind, especially as we head into summer, where our direct services often become twice as busy as they are during the rest of the year:

Older adults here are expected to always keep, in the very front of their minds when posting or considering posting, that Scarleteen, and all its services, is created and maintained for those between the ages of 15 and 25, and that their wants and needs will always be put before the wants and needs of older people.

If you're here, wanting to actively participate, because you want to do all you can to help support our users compassionately, productively, putting their voices, and expressed wants and needs first -- not your own -- and to help support our staff, that's great: thank you! However, what we generally prefer if you want to do that as an older adult is that you apply to volunteer for us, and, if accepted, that you do so as a volunteer. You can get our volunteer application here: http://www.scarleteen.com/scarleteen_volunteer_application.

Older adults are also expected to be highly respectful and mindful of our site guidelines and policies, as well as our staff and volunteers, including any requests or guideance from staff and volunteers about your participation in our direct services. That includes recognizing that we are and have always been an organization who has learned and designed our policies and services, refining as we go over the last 17 years, based in the expressly stated wants, needs and preferences of younger people, and respecting what we've created from what we have learned. That also includes doing your level best not to make more work for us via your participation, such as pushing back against our policies or guidelines or refusing to follow them, or arguing with us about how we work here, or your own ideas about how we should.

Users within the age group we aim to serve have a good deal of wiggle room when it comes to adherence to our site guidelines and policies, as well as all of the above, before we take next steps like suspensions of use or banning. The same is NOT true for older adults. Older adults participating here should figure that we're going to be pretty quick to do one or both of those things -- or to edit or delete posts -- if they don't abide by both the posted guidelines and any direction our staff, volunteers, or users 15-25 give them.

In a word, if you feel like a stress or a strain to us or our intended users, we're going to put a fast stop to your participation, because we want and need to give the vast majority of our time, energy and focus to the population we focus on serving. If that's not a thing you appreciate and are all the way behind, you're likely in the wrong place.

Long story short: if you're here and and want to participate as an older adult, you need to be be down with how we do things, and dedicated to making things easier on our users, staff and volunteers, not harder; older adults here need to help facilitate what we do and how we do it, not be an impediment. If you can't or don't want to do that, please stick to lurking and to reading our static content. And if you can't, or clearly don't want to, do that and participate anywhere on our site creating any challenges, stress or strife for our users, staff and volunteers, understand that we are just going to go ahead and limit or cease your participation for you.

Thank you.