ATT ADMIN... RE IMPORTANT PRIVACY ISSUE

Thanks for your feedback, jdakic. You are not alone in your observations.

Currently there are two settings for "Blogs", which are really just posts:

• Public - everybody can see posts
• Private - posts are only viewable by your contacts

Comments are not affected by this. These options are found in Edit Profile (not Settings).

I agree that a third option of 'viewable only by members who are logged in' is a good idea and this is something that we're working on. Creating this type of granular permissions at an individual user level is a difficult piece of development.

Having said that, please remember that when you post something online, it is never truly private. This is why we encourage members to post only as much as they're comfortable disclosing and why we prefer for members not to use first names and surnames or emails as their user names - to protect privacy. You're right that is not obvious in the registration process and we're currently making some changes to that.

You can always give feedback on the online network. You can also send us a private message, email or give us a call.

Moving away from that a bit, I also want to correct some misinformation that keeps getting repeated.

The online network is a free service by BCNA for all Australians affected by breast cancer.

This community is not pre-moderated. We do not vet content before it appears in the online network. When you hit the post or submit button, your content goes live immediately.

Ann-Marie, Jess, and I are community managers. Our role is to ensure that the online network is a safe space for all Australians affected by breast cancer to find information and support. There's a lot more to it, but that's the gist of it. We are not admins or developers. It is often repeated that our job is to "fix" the site; that's actually the one thing we don't do, though we do help identify issues that we then take to our developers to investigate and resolve.

There are two reasons a post may not appear in the main feed:

• The member's blog setting is set to private
• The post is being affected by a bug in our system that we are currently investigating

The community is moderated in the sense that we review content (after it's live) to make sure it is within the network posting guidelines. Most of it is. I often brag how lovely BCNA members are and what a pleasant, kind, and supportive community this is. As a result, moderation here is generally very light. However, it is incorrect to assume that anyone can post anything nor is it correct to assume that freedom of speech, which is ingrained in the U.S. Constitution and not Australia's, applies here. Every community has rules.