Community guidelines

Who it's for

People who run, or are about to open, a boutique. You need to be 18 or over, and you agree to these guidelines and our terms when you join. You're shown to other members as your first name and last initial; the moderators can see your full name and email, and nobody else can.

Nothing here is private

Every channel is a room full of other shop owners. Whatever you post, they can read, save, screenshot and repeat, and we can't stop that. Share generously, but never post passwords, bank details, customers' information, or anything about your business you'd hate to see outside the chat. What other members say is their opinion, not ours, and not advice; check anything important yourself before you act on it.

The one exception is the anonymous channel. Posts there carry no name and no picture, and nobody, moderators included, can see who wrote them. It's for the questions you'd rather not put your name to: numbers, money, mistakes, messy situations. Two things to know: what you write is still visible to every member, so don't include details that give you away; and anonymous doesn't mean consequence-free. The same rules apply, and a moderator can still mute or ban the author of an abusive post without ever seeing who it was.

Be kind, be useful

• Talk to people the way you'd talk to them in your shop. Disagree with ideas, not with people.
• No harassment, name-calling, pile-ons, slurs or bigotry of any kind. None. Not as a joke either.
• Don't share other members' names, shops, photos or messages outside the chat.
• Keep it honest. Don't pretend to be someone you're not, and don't impersonate staff.

Selling and self-promotion

Recommending a vendor you love is exactly what the chat is for. Posting the same link in five channels is not. Keep promotion to the channels that are about it, don't DM-style pester people in public, and never post anything you'd call spam if someone else did it. Affiliate links must say they're affiliate links.

Our guides

Talking about the guides is great. Pasting pages of them into the chat, or sharing your download, isn't. The same licence you agreed to when you bought one applies here.

Pictures

Shop photos, product shots, your window display, your dog: all welcome. Nothing explicit, nothing violent, nothing that isn't yours to share. Pictures from new members are checked by a moderator before everyone can see them, and we strip location data from every photo automatically.

Moderation

The moderators are Lazy Girl's owners and a few people they trust. They can remove or edit messages, pin things, mute members for a while, and, if it comes to it, close an account. Every action is written to a log that can't be edited. If a moderator gets something wrong, tell us and a human will look.

You can block anyone (their messages are hidden from you and they can't mention you) and report any message with one tap. Reports are anonymous to the person reported.

New accounts

For the first day you can't post links, and for the first week your pictures wait for a moderator. It's nothing personal; it's how we keep the bots out.

Leaving

You can leave from your chat settings whenever you like. Your messages stay in the conversations they were part of, shown to other members as “Deleted member”. The moderators can still see who you were, and you can come back later by signing in again. Want your profile erased completely? Just ask.

Questions

Email [email protected] or use the contact form.