UUCTC-branded or affiliated social media groups or social media groups that use the UUCTC as its predominant source of members, shall be governed by the following policy.

1. Administrators and moderators: There need to be at least 2 people who are group members overseeing the group as moderator or administrators; these people shall be considered the primary moderators. The office administrator, webspinner, and default UUC account (when available) shall also be added as administrators of any such social media group; they shall be considered the secondary (or backup) moderators.
2. Policy: The membership of the group shall agree that the group’s conversations are governed by our church covenant (https://uuctc.org/about-2/our-mission/) and principles (https://uuctc.org/about-2/uu-principles/). By being a member of the group, members are agreeing to be governed by the church covenant and principles in the church-affiliated forum. Group members agree to identify conversations they feel in violation of covenant and principles by flagging (or otherwise alerting) admins/moderators so admins/moderators can apply this policy.
3. Consequences: Interactions that occur in the group that do not abide by the policy as determined by the administrators go through this process:
   1. The people involved in the interaction are warned that the administrators feel the conversation is not meeting the spirit of our church covenant and principles, and continuing in the same spirit will result in that conversation being shut down.
   2. If the conversation persists, the moderators/admins will turn off the comments to the relevant conversation, so noting they are doing so on the thread.
   3. If a poster continues in this same thread of conversation in another post, the admins will shut off comments on that post also, and warn the poster they could be banned from the group.
   4. If the poster continues, the admins and moderators for the group shall ban the member violating this policy.  This ban can be considered temporary based on the case, and should be considered by everyone as a “cooling off” period.
   5. Appeals to any of these decisions should be emailed to the webspinner@uuctc.org account, and the webspinner on tap will ensure it is reviewed and debated by the collection of the group’s administrators. The response will be emailed back to the appealer, and subsequent changes made to relevant posts as determined by consensus of the admin group.
4. Modification: The communications committee shall suggest changes to this policy to the board based on needs. Wherever possible, the committee will offer notice to the social media group, and solicit input from the social media group on changes. Social media group members interested in offering changes to this policy should contact the communications committee chair or webspinners.

v.171120.  Approved by the Board 11/30/2017