Threads visible in public searches- why?
 

I am just wondering why I can do a search of a post when I am offline and it comes up. Especially distressed about that re: my Creative Corner thread. Wanted to share a poem I wrote but don't want it linked back to the use of this board. Is it because the journals are confidential but nothing else is? I always see like 4 members and 100 guests everyday. It just feels a bit voyeuristic that people can read your posts who are not members of the RYL community. I think I missed something, but please clarify which sections e.g. chat etc. are for members only.

I am currently having nightmares of my doctors scanning the site.
Do I just delete every post I want to share in the real world?

Part of the reason RYL has public boards is to allow non members to be able to see what sort of topics etc are discussed on the forum. If there was no way to see any threads at all it would be very difficult to gauge whether or not this forum was right for them.

If you are concerned about confidentiality and your safety I think the only thing that we can really suggest is that you don't use your personal information etc and to not use usernames that you use on other sites etc.

I believe that the two boards that are not viewable to non members are the events board and the picture board, chat isn't available to non members either.

And the ranting and venting board I think?

In terms of the public boards, as long as you are not using your full name, it would be really tricky for anyone to find you. My name (Jenna) is quite unusual, but I've just had a quick google search of "Jenna self harm" and "Jenna anorexia" and nothing comes up about me, either on tumblr or here. I think professionals generally have better things to do than browse the web searching for patients, and even if they wanted to find you, unless they knew the exact title of your thread or something, I think it would be pretty tricky to find anything. An additional helpful thing is that non-members cannot click on profiles, so if you search on google for "Jenna self harm" and include the city where I live, it does actually link to a thread that I started on here, but if someone were to click that and wonder if it was me, they then would not be able to click on my avatar to see my profile and view my info and look at all the threads I've started without logging in/creating account and no one but the most dedicated researchers would even think of doing that!

As an aside, I use my real name on here, but use a different name professionally, as an extra precaution in case any of my students are already on this site and just happen to come across me, but that's me being over-cautious.

Ranting/venting forum isn't available publicly or searchable via Google etc. I googled a specific term that is in mine and it didn't come up.

Also I believe that serious discussion isn't public either.

I just checked in an in cognito window where I'm not logged in, and serious discussion was visible.

Sorry, forgot about RV, that isnt public, serious discussion is however.

K. Thanks.

We thought about having First Aid as being private and some members really wanted it that way. the reason why we didn't (and sometimes it being private would benefit my personal security) was because we wanted the public who aren't members but do SH or similar to be able to use the advice given to others to help them so that we give the max help possible. However, that does lead to the problem that sometimes we do have users join ryl just to post on the FAF or even PM me asking for advice and it may not even be SH related which is something else that we've thought about in the past and whether we should answer these as we would everyone else or not.