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Community Leader Applications Are Closed!
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Paul Asplund is the Director of Online Communities at DailyStrength and has been an active member since 2007 Check Paul's blog regularly for the latest scoop from inside the development track volunteer opportunities health…
FAST FACTS
Thanks to the over 100 members who applied. We'll be reviewing your applications and getting back to you soon.
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DailyStrength is now accepting applications for Community Leader (CL) positions in Support Groups throughout the site.
Being a CL is a big job and not everyone who applies will qualify for a position. CLs need to be fair, even-handed, and have a history of making positive contributions to their communities. CLs also need to be familiar with the Rules of the Road and be ready to answer questions, coach members, close threads, and report the occasional cases of abuse.
CLs are on the front lines in every major community helping us keep DailyStrength a safe, supportive, and positive place where everyone can share.
To submit your application, please use the Give Us Your Feedback form found at http://dailystrength.org/help/feedback and type "CL Application" in the subject line.
On that form, please write a brief paragraph describing why you think you would make a great Community Leader.
Next, please list the Support Group or groups (no more than three) where you have been an active member for at least six months and where you would like to be a CL. Some groups will receive many more applications than others and we would like to place you in a community where we think you can be most helpful.
Applications will be accepted today through Sunday, February 8, at 5:00 p.m. Applications received after that time will not be considered for this first round of openings.
We anticipate dozens of applications over the next week and will be working hard to evaluate them based on each applicant's history on DS.
Potential candidates will be contacted starting February 23, 2009, and the first round of CLs will be in place by March 1, 2009.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Team DS
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CATEGORIES:
News
CONDITIONS AND COMMUNITIES:
ADHD / ADD
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Agoraphobia & Social Anxiety
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Alcoholism
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Anxiety
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Anxiety Disorders in Children
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Autism / Autism Spectrum
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Bereavement
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Bereavement - Teens
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Bipolar Disorder
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Bipolar Disorder - Teen
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Breakups & Divorce
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Chronic Pain
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Cocaine Addiction & Recovery
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Codependency
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College Stress
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DailyStrength Members Community
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Depression
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Depression - Teen
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Depression in Children
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Depression Supporters
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Diets & Weight Maintenance
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Eating Disorders
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Families & Friends Of Addicts
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Families & Friends of Gays & Lesbians
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Family & Friends of Bipolar
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Family & Friends of Cancer Patients
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Family Issues
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Fibromyalgia
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Financial Challenges
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Food Addiction
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Gambling Addiction & Recovery
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Gay & Lesbian Teens
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Gay Parenting
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Healthy Eating
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Healthy Relationships
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Healthy Sex
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Hepatitis C
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Heroin Addiction & Recovery
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High School Stress
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Infertility
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Infertility, Secondary
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Infidelity
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Male Infertility
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Marijuana Addiction & Recovery
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Meth Addiction & Recovery
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Miscarriage
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Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
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Obesity
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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
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Panic Attacks
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Parenting 'Tweens (9-12)
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Parenting Big Kids (5-8)
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Parenting Newborns & Infants (0-1)
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Parenting Preschoolers (3-5)
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Parenting Teenagers (12-18)
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Parenting Toddlers (1-3)
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Physical & Emotional Abuse
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Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
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Post Partum Depression
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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
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Pregnancy
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Pregnancy - Teens
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Pregnancy After Loss/Infertility
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Rape
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Self-Injury
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Separation Anxiety
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Sex / Pornography Addiction
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Sexual Abuse
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Single Parenting
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Smoking Addiction & Recovery
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Stillbirth
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Stress Management
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Teen Anxiety
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The Financial Crisis
Displaying comments 110-91 of 110
Got a Question?
POPULAR POSTS
USalone
Please don't tell me this can't happen because it does and it has.
To be fair to all if a CL doesn't participate in a forum of which they are CL, they should consider vacating the position for someone else to assume.
Thank you to the over 100 members who put themselves forward for this opportunity.
We'll begin contacting candidates early next week and training will commence immediately.
Thank you again!
Paul
Both of your posts speak to the importance of having CLs who are long-standing members of the community they help with.
Rather than hire more support staff to cover abuse reports we thought it made more sense to let a trusted member of each community help to prevent tense situations from escalating to that point. We have so many abuse reports right now, many of them for minor issues, and each one requires our time and attention to resolve. If we can resolve some items at the CL level, then we can focus on bigger issues like spam, trolls, and abuse.
As for polling each group, the impact on the support team is a better indicator than a straight vote. Especially when we have 5, 10, or even 30 thousand members in some groups. Many groups go for months without any abuse reports but others send reports every day. That fact played some part in how we decided to approach this.
Finally, I hope that some day every CL on this site spends their precious time here helping newcomers and sharing their experience with others, not fielding problems. Everyone has their "off" days and says things they regret but I'd rather see more acceptance, frequent apologies, and less hurt feelings.
We all came here looking for support in a world that too often offers too little. A little strength on a daily basis, hence the name.
I do NOT want to be CL in any other groups, so I have no agenda there.
My view of censorship is fairly simple. I don't like it when somebody signs a get well card with "you wouldn't be in the hospital if you didn't go skiing drunk", but support a person's right to state that "drinking can impair judgment and cause you to hurt yourself".
We have a lot of experience with closing posts in depression. More than 75% the time when I close a post I have been requested to do so either by PM or directly in the post itself. And I think that anytime a person has asked for their post to be closed a CL has done it without question.
We are not perfect, and I get feed back from members pointing things out to me. When I got the position of CL I promised to listen to every complaint anybody gives me, and to reply to them if I could. I believe that I have done this.
Paul is very serious when he says that a CL must be a trusted member of their support group. If a majority of the users do NOT support the CL then they will run away from the post in a huge panic.
Peace
The CLs will be given training and if they abuse their power they will not remain a CL.
I see it as a way our groups can have more control instead of taking problems to the head office they might be able to be resolved within our groups.
I personally have always wanted to know what the office environment is like at DS lol Curious like how close or far away everyone is and who sits by a window etc. lol Let me ask this....does the DS staff ever read anyone's "public" journal entries? Do they see how some of us started and where we are at now? Hey...that may be a good idea for those requesting to be a part of the DS CL family. ;)
Well I wont take up too much more space. Just wanted to note that I enjoyed this blog entry.
~Joe
Your sense of ownership of DS has always been important to us and became more apparent when we chose to sell the site to HSWI. So many of you were afraid that drastic changes would force you to leave, end dear friendships, and break up beloved communities. Rumors of monthly fees and advertising mayhem were everywhere. Well, DS has been a part of HSWI for two months now and none of those fears have come true.
We have also had the CL program in place in a few communities for several months and we've learned a great deal about what works and doesn't work. CLs, like all members, care about keeping their communities safe from the occasional troll, watching out for spammers and abusers, and helping other members to recognize the importance of every opinion expressed and to avoid engaging in personal attacks.
What sets CLs apart is that they have a few, very few, tools to help them that are not available to everyone.
In order to be effective, and I have stressed this over and over, a CL has to be a trusted member of the Community who knows the other members, knows their personalities, is willing to let them express themselves freely, and only, ONLY steps in when a post crosses the lines of the ToS that we all agreed to when we became members.
We recognize that a CL in the Depression community will probably face a completely different set of needs than a CL in a parenting community. The conversations will be different, the questions will be different, but the need for their knowledge, strength, and experience will be just as strong.
We honor the differing personalities among the communities and have no interest in homogenizing the DS experience. What we do stand by is the essential need for every person on this site to be honored and respected without fear of personal attacks.
The CL concept arose from our desire to allow members to take a more active role in their communities. Many of you have stepped forward already to welcome newcomers, share your knowledge, strength, and hope with others and taken an active role in reporting problems to us. We field hundreds of abuse reports every week, some of them quite serious, but many of them expressing hurt feelings over what's been said between members. We review each report and take appropriate action which in the vast majority of cases is nothing other than an e-mail stating the the ToS have not been violated and that no action will be taken.
We though that by offering a set of enhanced tools to those of you who already have taken the lead in your communities that we would help to build strong, more autonomous communities where ideas could be expressed and conflicts resolved before they get reported as abuse.
CLs will be trained by us and frequently coached about how to do their jobs better. We rust that you will report their missteps to us so there is a built-in fail safe. If, after training and coaching, a CL doesn't work out then they will be replaced. We think that having several CLs for each major community will be best since two or three minds are always better than one, right?
Please let me know your thoughts on our reasoning.
So much of what has been discussed here touches on the ToS and Rules of the Road. Maybe we should start a separate thread to openly discuss the details of these so that we're all on the same page. Let me know if that would be helpful.
As for my part in all of this. Twenty-one years ago I was a homeless kid with no chances. I got lucky when someone in the shelter where I ate lunch reached out to me and have never forgotten the power of one person reaching out to another person. I apologize if stating my length of sobriety comes off as pride. I'm just happy and grateful that I'm still here.
I was approached by DS in December 07 to become a contributing writer. I got to know the site a bit and pitched them to come on board since I had been hoping to find work that would merge my personal interests with my professional ones.
A year later this position opened up and I put myself up for it. So here I am, the often unpopular face of DS.
My job is to listen to you. To share your ideas, fears, and hopes with the creators of this site. It is also to hopefully give you insights into how this place works. I sit next to Doug in a 15'x15' office so we spend hours every day exchanging ideas. Believe me, you are heard.
I hope I've been able to calm some of the fears about the CL program and if I've convinced you of it's merits I invite you to apply.
A little bit about my backdrop on this: my mother is a nonJewish Holocaust survivor. When she was 10yo, the Nazi's took Warsazwa & my mother's schoolteachers were told not to teach anything about Polish history and other specific topics. My mother's teachers would secretly meet with groups of 3 or 4 students at a time, to teach the forbidden topics, at the risk of their very lives. Freedom of thought & speech is important to me. When the Communists took Warszawa, my mother's childhood friend, who was still living there as an adult, and for whom I was named, was teaching Constitutional Law at the University. She was then imprisoned by the Communist government because she would not stop teaching Constitutional Law. Freedom of thought & speech is important to me.
One of the wonderful things about DS has been that in encourages people to be proactive. To make the decision for themselves on how and what to post. It's how we learn, by other's examples, by making our own mistakes. Maybe there are communities where people need someone to facilitate that....where people are so insecure that they need the assistance. But the communities to which I belong are hell-bent on empowering people...and it's done by putting everyone on equal footing. A CL in those communities will only stifle the free-flow of communication, and in some of them...it can be literally life saving, that normal human discourse be able to take place, especially when someone has a rough and painful vent....It can't be hampered by anyone thinking "I hope the CL will allow this post" or by having to temper your thoughts because you are afraid of what someone in power will feel.
I, like Anne7676, would like to know what YOUR qualifications are to be appointing people to this position. And what your criteria is. And how you will judge these people, to decide they are qualified.
I am truly unhappy with the direction my beloved DS is taking here. And all to consolidate power to satisfy someone's egoic agenda. None of it is necessary. It is YOU, the folks who feel this is necessary, that are afraid of freedom....There were tyrants in history that started out this way...trying to first put a small control on people...and it just grew. The tough thing about an ego...it's never satisfied, always afraid of others, and only interested in itself....
Too bad.
BTW, I am also an administrator of a group. I was appointed by the founder of the group, as she could not always be there. And I have yet to even consider pulling a thread, or censoring anything on it. But....I wasn't asked to do it, and I would never abuse my position. But not everyone is that way...and someone applying for the job, just might not have your best interest at heart...or ds's. As an admin. I find that the community weeds itself out...Without my help, or ds's....
Couldn't be more clearer to me! Lets not get paranoid, and greatful they are consulting with us at all. Its their business, we don't even pay a membership. If you don't like it go to Myspace or Facebook and moderate yourself!
My wife had been an administrator of a group for a few months here at and has no problems, no dramas, and no big heads. Clearly some groups need a CL and i welcome it. I'm sure there will be some bugs in the system, but ultimately DS is still the head moderator, and it won't take long to weed out problems. So how about some calm heads :)
Thanks for consulting Paul.
No, it may not happen. But......it may. And suddenly, one board that has been helping people suddenly is censored to advance someone's personal agenda, someone's ego. And you people at the top, that are planning to do this.....show us, the regular members, the common folk that come here for help, to vent, for camraderie....that you don't think we can handle the ups and downs of the written word.
For heaven's sake, we are all anonymous!!!! Go ahead, threaten me...you don't know me, where I live, what my name is....What are you, Paul, so worried about. We can just ignore what we don't like....There are TV shows that are offensive to me, I JUST DON'T WATCH THEM. If a thread offends me, I just ignore the writer. What offends one, may not offend another, and who are YOU to decide for ME????
We're not in kindergarten here. We don't need the principal to come in and break up a fight. We need to learn how to disagree with respect...if that's what goes on in a thread. NOT have someone pull a thread, or a post....
The whole bent of this is alarming to me. I have loved DS, it has kept me sane in my darkest days. But now, someone wants to come along and mess with it. To take away the security and freedom that we all get from being able to come on here and be ourselves.
You need to step up, and have faith...that members of DS are, and have been up to the job...that's why it has grown to be what it is....I have yet to see a newcomer not welcome, a disagreement not resolved, a trouble maker not chased out.
Whats your agenda, Paul. You're the one doing this...when no one asked for it or wanted it...that I know of....What's your agenda? Why is it so important to you to put someone of your choosing in charge of a board?
any person Moderating the Board, may already have personal issues with another member...OR...most of us are on our Home computors...what if a teenager, or one of their friends decides to PoP on and Decide to have a bit of "Harmless Fun"...I do not feel a Moderator is a good idea...but hey...not my board !! I just live here !!