The community promise

Three rules. Break one and a caregiver moderator, not a robot, will talk to you.

1. No diagnosing, no dosing

Share what happened to you. Never tell someone what to give the person they care for. Medication advice from a stranger is the fastest way for a caregiver to hurt someone she loves by accident.

2. Ugly feelings are allowed

Resentment, grief, relief, rage. They are all normal, and none of them get you reported for having them. A moderator steps in for how people treat each other in here, never for what you feel.

3. So are good days

A first word, a decent night, a nurse who was kind, a whole hour to yourself. Bring those here too. Nobody will think you are bragging, and nobody is so far down that they cannot be glad for you. Most people here have had both kinds of week.

A post can be marked as a good day the same way it can be marked as a vent. Nothing is turned off when it is: people can celebrate with you, and they can ask you how.

What Kind Soup is not

Kind Soup is not a medical service, a therapy service, or an emergency service. There is no crisis line here and no way to summon help through the app. Moderators are caregivers who look after the circles; they are not on call, and a report reaches a queue rather than a person waiting by a phone.

If you or the person you care for is in danger, contact your local emergency number. If you are struggling and want to talk to someone tonight, your country almost certainly has a free crisis line staffed around the clock. Please use it. We would rather say that plainly than imply we can be that for you.

How moderation works

Every circle is moderated by a caregiver who has done this work. Reports are read by a person, never a keyword filter, and they are worked in the order they arrive. Actions run in tiers: a warning, then a suspension, then removal from a circle, and every one of them is written to a permanent record with the moderator’s name on it.

Taking a post outside its circle skips the tiers, as rule three says. Everything else can be appealed once.

What moderators cannot see

Your kept posts. Your direct messages, unless you or the person you were writing to reports one of them. Anonymous posts are anonymous to other members permanently; a moderator can see who wrote one only by opening a report about it, and that act is itself recorded.