Dilemma regarding group member's offensive behavior

[Guest guest]

I wondered if there was any way of asking that when new members join

the orthognathic surgery site they respectfully keep in mind other

members' privacy?

I ask this because for the past few weeks I have been having someone

IM me without identifying themselves. Yesterday I finally decided to

reply to one of the IM's (against my better judgement) and the person

revealed himself to be a member of this site. While the person in

question claimed to want to know details about my surgery (which I

was more than happy to share as I have done in the past with other

members) he then began to ask me some quite personal questions

regarding my relationship status and I quote whether " I wanted a man

from the US " . Furthermore the person in question wanted me to give

him an opinion based on his photo whether he should go through with

the surgery or not. When I respectfully declined to provide such an

opinion, explaining that it was not up to me to tell him but a

professional doctor and ultimately for him to decide, he got quite

nasty with me, especially when I asked that he not flirt with me. I

was accused of being rude and full of myself because I refused to

give him an opinion and worse yet, being " not all that " based on my

photos on the site and even " down right ugly " . At this point I

decided to end the conversation and have blocked the person from

contacting me again in the future.

Needless to say this experience really upset me. First of all because

as the nature of this message board is to be a support network and as

we all know there is also a lot of psychological/emotional

rollercoastering going on during the process, the last thing someone

needs is someone being rude to you and telling you that you are ugly.

Also this message board is not a dating site nor should a member be

surprised if another member does not take their advances well. My

biggest worry is that this member in particular that I had to deal

with will repeat the same offensive behavior towards another member.

I know there is no way of monitoring who joins the group or not but

perhaps adding in the introductory message that this group is

composed of people who are undergoing or considering the orthognathic

surgery process and that members should only be contacted via the

message board and only email if an individual member accepts

beforehand to be individually emailed.

I'm sorry of this message has come off as a combination of venting

and moaning but I just wanted the group members to be aware of this,

as well as see if it's happened to any one else and whether there is

something we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again. If it does

keep on happening it will ultimately just drive people away from the

site which would be a shame.

Humbly yours,

Sara