Welcome to Rewild.com (READ HERE FIRST)

Hello there! Welcome to the rewild.com forum, an international discussion board for learning more about, participating in, and contributing to, the rewilding renaissance. This site was created in 2006 and is the brain child of Peter Michael Bauer, Willem Larsen, and Jason Godesky. There is a wealth of conversations here from over the last 10 years.

Please read the following guidelines before posting and joining in on the fun. And please help us all maintain these guidelines by stepping in with reminders as needed.

We have three rules:

  1. Topics must be related to rewilding. A wide range of subjects relate to rewilding, but please make it clear in your post how your topic relates if it seems like it may not be obvious. Rewilding has a lot of different meanings. We go by a thorough examination of this definition:

Rewild, v; to return to a more wild or self-willed state; the process of undoing domestication. Synonyms: undomesticate, uncivilize, indigenize.

Premises in rewilding:

a. Civilization is unsustainable.

b. We are in the midst of a global social and ecological collapse.

c. Humans are not inherently evil animals hell bent on destroying the planet.

d. Rewilding offers us a path to return to more regenerative ways of being and living.

e. Rewilding is a transition culture—too many barriers prevent full-on rewilding.

f. This forum exists to discuss these barriers and how to dismantle or break through them.

g. Rewilding is for everyone. Our community is strengthened by diversity and inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented perspectives and voices.
  1. People posting and discussing must follow three communication guidelines: interpret generously, ask questions, and tell your story. We have come to really treasure the kind of community these guidelines create. To elaborate:

    a. Interpret generously.

Listen and interpret the words of others generously. In other words, avoid making assumptions. The vast majority of members are thoughtful, insightful, compassionate folks. Diversity of opinions, perspectives, and lifeways are to be expected—but we can learn much from these differences if we communicate respectfully with one another. Our common interests and concerns are what bring us together in this forum. Our differences can and should be opportunities for exploration, learning, and growth.

b. Ask questions.

Give others the benefit of the doubt—ask for elaboration and clarification. Recognize that on the other side of the “screen” are real, flawed human beings with emotions. Differing communication styles and “off” days can be overcome by asking questions. Do this a lot to be certain you really understand what you think others are saying.

c. Tell *your* story.

Share your thoughts, experiences, perspectives, plans, and dreams, and treat those of your online neighbors with the level of respect and consideration you would appreciate receiving when you share your own. Do not tell someone else’s story for them. Debate must be requested by the original poster—otherwise point/rebuttal/point/rebuttal-style commentary is off limits. We’re telling stories here.

  1. Verbal abuse, personal attacks, racism, hatred, vitriol, deliberate rudeness, or argumentativeness toward anyone in this community will not be tolerated. We all have emotions, and emotions are valid; abusive language is not and does not lead to fruitful dialogue.

If it seems outlandish to assume intelligence and thoughtfulness in others here, this forum may be the wrong place for that particular conversation.

(The credit for this system goes to Willem Larsen. He engineered this long ago for the www.rewild.com forum and it works beautifully. We have seen it work similarly here at the Facebook page for the forum. Thanks to our moderators Willem Larsen, Tracie Moon, Nathan Carlos Rupley, and Bill Maxwell for helping craft this document and keep the tradition going.)

Ban Policy

  1. Please do not step out of the bounds of these rules and guidelines. Please moderate yourselves. If you see someone else step out of the bounds, please remind them to read and follow these guidelines.

  2. If a member steps out of the bounds of our guidelines, a moderator or other forum member may jump in and remind them of the forum guidelines.

  3. If a member continues to not follow the guidelines, this may be cause for an immediate ban (depending on the situation/words exchanged). However, more often the moderators will try to reel in the conversation and bring members back to the guidelines. We recognize there are “off” days, emotionally charged issues, etc. Sometimes people need to be encouraged to step back from the internet. It’s a hard place to have conversations about charged subjects. Our guidelines really do foster great dialogue online if they are followed. That’s why we love them so much!

  4. If someone continues to ignore the forum guidelines, we will ask them to self-select themselves out, and remove themselves.

  5. If they do not do this, a moderator will remove them. For the sake of transparency, only under very rare circumstances do we delete posts. We will also always make a post when we remove someone from the group explaining why.

Thank you for reading our guidelines. That’s more or less the gist of it. We highly encourage people to join in the conversations over at the actual website (www.rewild.com), as posting here on Facebook is fleeting (not archived) and Zuckerberg can claim ownership over all the content we create here. Looking forward to everyone’s contributions!

1 Like