Minti is an interactive parenting internet site, and it is a very good one. The Administration work very hard to protect the members by keeping an active watch on what goes on, and many members report all activity they find that breaches the Terms of Service and/or Code 
of Honor. However, no matter how safe it may seem, Minti is still an internet site, where anyone can log on, login, cause trouble, and even pose a danger to others.
There are a number of good advice articles on Minti about keeping our children safe on the internet, yet we as adults seem to forget sometimes that we should be taking some precautions as well - and on a site as friendly as Minti, sometimes it's easy to forget the danger that we could inadvertantly put ourselves in.
Minti is not a dating service, it is not a find-a-friend site, it is not an advertising site, and anyone that comes here expecting to use it as such will be sorely disappointed. The membership will not tolerate insults and abuse, they will not tolerate misuse of the site, and there are members that will report anyone that does the wrong thing. The Administration will not tolerate people behaving poorly, and they are not against permanently booting someone off the site if they deem such harsh measures to be necessary.
If you notice any activity on Minti that appears questionable, don't be afraid to report it. If you are unsure, it doesn't hurt to bring it to the attention of another member that you trust to be impartial and ask them to have a look at it and confirm whether they come to the same conclusion as you, or think you may have been reading it wrong. Reports require a brief explaination as to why you feel it warrents reporting, and then it is put up for further investigation and voting. Which way the votes go, determines whether the thing that was reported is forever gone or it comes back again once the voting is done. All members, advice, and comments are reportable. Just click on the "Report" link and follow the instructions. If someone has Minti-messaged you and the content of that message is inappropriate, offensive, malicious, threatening, or even just makes you uncomfortable, do not reply to the person, but keep the message (evidence is a good thing) and contact Clay, Rachel, or Matthew immediately.
My guidelines for staying safe on Minti:
Personal contact details.
Never should we put on any internet site, including Minti, our personal contact details in any place they could be viewed by other members. If someone really wanted to track you down and knock on your front door, they might be able to do so by only knowing one or two of these things:
- Your surname.
- The address of any property you own, whether you live there or not.
- The name of the street you live in (don't need a full address).
- The name of the suburb/town you live in.
- Your telephone number, even if it is unlisted (being unlisted just stops the amateurs).
- The name of your place of employment/education.
- The name of your child's school.
- The suburb that your child's school is in.
- Your personal email (unlikely but still possible with the right knowledge and contacts)
- The name of any clubs or associations that you are a member of.
- Account numbers of any kind (bank account, electricity or phone bills, credit cards, social security number, student or employment ID numbers, etc)
- Any of these same details about a close relative of yours.
It is vitally important that you do not provide these details anywhere on Minti where other members can read them - even in private groups. Keep them off your blog, out of your advice, and out of all your comments. Do not provide links to other sites that have this information on them. Be careful that when posting photos there are no definable and recognizable things in the background. For example; a street sign or unique landmark, an emblem on an item of clothing identifying a school or club, or a picture or item that might give a clue about one of the things listed above. In private Minti-mail, be very careful about who you are communicating with before giving out such details. Internet predators don't just prey on children, there are plenty out there preying on adults as well, and there are plently of vulnerable adults that take the bait. Don't be one of them.
Trusting other members.
It is very easy for people to show false pictures of themselves and their "family" and to lie about every detail that is them. You may think you are talking to a 27 year old single mum of 3 children, but how do you really know? You don't. Even if you received details from this person that allowed you to check if they were "real", they could be giving you their neighbours details. You just don't know. This is of course not to say that you can't put some faith into what people write and say.
Take it all with a grain of salt. Presume that what a person displays and writes is the truth as they know it. Bare in mind however, that the truth as they know it may not be the same truth as you know it. We can not assume that everyone on Minti is well educated, but on the same hand we can't assume someone is as thick as bricks either. We can't go around assuming that everyone is a lying sleazebag, but we can't be 100% sure that the person they are portraying themselves to be on Minti is exactly who they really are either. We can only take everything at face value and react upon what we see. That being said, we also need to make sure we read things carefully so as to not misunderstand the intentions of others.
Even when a few other members back up the claims of another member, we still don't know for sure what the deal is. They may be friends or relatives in real-life, or they may be all the same person that has opened seperate Minti-accounts, posing to be different people. They may not know each other any better than you and I do. You just don't know, so assume nothing and take nothing to heart.
Meeting other members.
All that having been said, it is nice when you can meet a Minti member that lives in your area and find a new friend in the real world as a result of being on Minti. If you are going to do this, you must be very careful, very smart, and be prepared for the worst.
If you do agree to meet someone, make it in a busy public place. Do not make it a place where alcohol is served as you don't want to risk either of you having one too many and letting alcohol talk and regret it later. A coffee shop is a good option. Make it a neutral place that neither of you frequent on a regular basis, that way if you don't like the person, they won't know where to find you, and you can't be tempted to 'conveniently' turn up at one of their haunts if they don't like you. Also, stay where you can be seen by other people.
Limit the amount of time for the first meeting. Half an hour for the first meeting is a good time span, that way if either of you are uncomfortable with each other, you can avoid embarassment and offensiveness of having to explain your discomfort, you won't need to make up excuses to get out of there, and at worst you will only have to put up with the person for half an hour. Half an hour is enough time to determine whether you like the person enough to meet them again for a longer period of time later on or not. If they offer to get in touch later on Minti rather than set another meeting time, don't force the issue. They may need more time to make that decision, they might have a busy schedule and need to check when they will next have some spare time, or they might simply not like you for some reason and not want to be offensive about telling you this. Don't let them pressure you into setting another meeting time either. And don't let them pressure you into giving them information you are not prepared to give, or pressure you into going somewhere or doing something you are not completely comfortable with.
Take a friend. Suggest to the person you are meeting that they do the same. It doesn't hurt to have a friend with you for the first meeting, it's not like you're meeting for some sort of secret romantic interaction. If that is your plan, well, you're running a very serious risk and are on your own. For a first meeting, each of you having another person along is safer, smarter, and more sociable. It can also save you the pain of sitting alone if they don't make it.
Do not take your children. Not only will they pose a major distraction, but you may be putting them as risk of harm if the person you are meeting turns out to be something you really did not expect.
Watch your food and drink. It takes only the smallest slight of hand trick to spike any food or drink you have with drugs or poison. People have fallen victim to this in full view of other people, imagine how much easier you could make it for someone to drug or poison you if you weren't watching at all.
Until you know the person you are meeting up with well enough, I suggest that you keep a very close eye on your belongings. Not only is there the risk of theft, but even more concerning is that it is very easy to have a look at someone's identification, find out where they live, and leave no trace. If nothing was missing, you might not have a clue that they had that information.
Get yourself there and home again. Do not rely on them to take you anywhere, and don't offer to take them anywhere until you know them well enough that you can feel safe with them. You wouldn't hitchhike with a stranger, just because you have been talking to someone on Minti for a few months, that doesn't mean you know them. Some con-artists and internet preditors can work for many months winning over a person's trust before they strike.
Minti is free of charge.
If you receive something asking you to pay money for anything on Minti, alert Rachel, Clay, or Matthew immediately. Membership, the advice, having a homepage, etc; is all free. If someone is trying to charge you money, do not pay anything and report it. Don't give out your credit card or bank account details over Minti either. Advertising for any services that someone has to offer is not recommended for posting as advice. Generally Minti members will poorly rate, and even report, such advice. Whether or not someone offers something on their homepage - well, that's between them and the Administrators, but be wary if you do find such a thing.
Links.
Minti membership is open to anyone that is a parent, soon to be a parent or planning to be a parent. Given that teenagers do sometimes become parents at a very young age, and Grandparents sometimes have full custody of their grandchildren and even great-grandchildren, this potentially means that anyone from the age of about 13 years onward could potentially be a member of Minti. Consequently, the site needs to be kept "clean" and free of offencive material - and that includes links to other internet sites. If you find a link to a site that you believe to be inappropriate to be viewed by certain members, that link needs to be reported. Links can be put into any comment, advice, or blog, and reporting it will require reporting the written material that it was found in with the link being pointed out as the reason for the report in the explaination that is required. Whenever you click onto a link to an external site, be prepared for the worst just in case.
Technical problems.
Viruses and worms infect computers all over the world, and Minti, although well protected, is not totally immune. No computer that is connected to the internet is perfectly safe. As safe as Minti is, you still have to be aware that it is possible to pick up a probem that infects your own computer.
Often, the first signs of such infections are weird little glitches and inconsistancies. Minti has a technical support team to resolve these problems, but if members don't report them, they may not realise something is wrong until damage has been done. In order to help protect your own computer, you can help protect this site by reporting such glitches.
There is a Group that is dedicated to sorting out technical problems that the technical support team keeps an eye on for such reports. To report a technical problem you will need to join the group and then put in a blog comment about it. Before blogging, have a look at the recent previous blogs to see if someone else has noticed the same thing. If they have, then go into that blog and add your comment stating what you noticed. If there is nothing about it, make a blog comment.
This Group is a good one to join even if you don't notice anything technically amiss, as it is a good place to go to ask technical related questions, or read blogs and comments about things you want to know, such as how to add links or pictures (they seem to be incredibly common questions recently).
Offensive material and comments.
Sometimes people get very easily upset, read things wrong, word things badly, take things too personally, find something offensive that others find harmless, and some people really don't care what others think or feel and deliberately get nasty. Most commonly these offensive moments are just totally unintentional miscommunication. Sometimes it can get way out of hand and the Administration has to step in and deal with it personally. It is not good when that happens.
Any time we are dealing with other people and their opinions, we need to put on a thick skin and be prepared to have others disagree with us. This is just as important in Minti as anywhere else. Every time we post a comment, we have to be prepared for someone to reply in an inappropriate fashion. Every time we read something, we have to try to not take it personally, not be offended, and respond in an appropriate manner. Responding does not always mean replying or reporting, as chosing to ignore something is still a response - it's just a less obvious one. Remember, if something seems offensive or out of place, it doesn't hurt to ask someone else to look at it and see if they agree with you, or whether you may be reaching differing conclusions about it.
Whenever we are posting something, we need to take some care about how others may feel about it. Sometimes we need to talk about topics that can be very upsetting for some people, and that shouldn't stop us. However, it is sometimes a good idea to put fair warning that what you are writing may be hard for some people to read, and carefully consider how it is written to minimise unduly upsetting people. Posting graphic pictures of something horrible is a generally bad idea, and if you see any such pictures, it is okay to report them if you feel it necessary.
If an arguement does start on a public section of Minti, the best way to resolve it is usually to take it into a series of Minti-mails. Members don't like seeing vicious debates, and they definatley don't like getting caught up in them. In a Minti-mail you only have to worry about offending the recipient, as no one else can read it, so you can have a bit more ability to write freely. No one else is going to comment on it either, so there will be no more fuel added to the fire as you sort the problem out with the person involved. Again, if someone is sending you offensive Minti-mails, keep them, don't reply, and contact Rachel, Clay, or Matthew.
Everyone should be able to feel safe on Minti. You can help maintain that safety by keeping in mind that it is an internet site, and follow some simple common sense precautions, and by helping out by speaking up if you find something wrong.
Be happy, be active, and most of all, be safe.
