Welcome to the JWTalk Forums! Here are a few guidelines we ask all our members to observe.

A. Membership

Who Can Be a Registered Member at JWTalk Forums?

To post on the discussion board, you must be an active publisher associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses, baptized or not. An active publisher has a share in the work of proclaiming Jehovah’s Kingdom every month and reports it, and is thus counted among us in the monthly and yearly reports. In other words, this forum is intended for Jehovah’s Witnesses only.

If an extenuating circumstance causes you to go temporarily inactive, this does not mean you have to abstain from participating in the forums. However, should you become “no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses” via disassociation or expulsion, it would be appropriate for you to send a private message stating clearly that this is the case. Your account will be disabled, but not deleted. It can be reactivated at a later time when your circumstances have turned around and you have been reinstated.

We reserve the right of controlling membership at our discretion.

B. Registration

How Can I Become a Participant in the Discussion Forum?

Registration is required to participate in JWTalk’s Discussion forum. For 3+ years, membership was strictly by referral only, meaning that a current member had to refer you to the forums. This is still the fastest and simplest way to become a member is by a referral from a current member. There is a ‘Refer a Friend’ form inside the discussion area that Full Access Members can see that they can use to refer others to the boards.

Today, all applicants, whether you have a referrer or not, must answer fill in the registration form completely and accurately. There are questions on the registration page that under normal circumstances, only active publishers would know the answers to.

When registering, you are required to provide your full real name. You have the choice of making this available to the administrator only and hiding it from others by filling in the field that is marked specifically for your first name only. While you will be known by your choice of username, we are on a first name basis here. If you leave the first name only field blank, your full real name will be displayed.

C. Publicity & Linking

While the news page is public, JWTalk Forums is a private membership community. The contents of the posts within the forum are only readable to forum members. While it is okay to share poetry and experiences, do not copy and paste the contents of conversations, discussions, or topic threads to another internet location outside of JWTalk Forums. You may link to www.JWTalk.net from your personal homepages, but do not directly link to the forum or any topic therein.

D. Speech & Content

Is There a Code of Conduct? Are Certain Things Not Permitted to be Posted to the Forum?

Of course there is a code of conduct. The same behavior expected of you in the congregation is expected here in the forum. This discussion board is operated by and for true Christians. Hence, we will not tolerate anything against Biblical standards, including apostasy and unclean or obscene speech. (Eph 5:3,4; 2 Tim 2:16-18) Links to apostate sites (anti-witness sites) will get you immediately banned, as will hateful speech and obscene language. This is a site for discussion, and not debate. Therefore, your goal in contributing to a topic should be to build up your brothers and sisters, or share something of interest that may consist of news or wholesome entertainment.

We seek to maintain an upbuilding, entertaining, safe, open, and intellectually stimulating environment, where mature Christians can exercise their God-given “freeness of speech.” (2 Corinthians 3:12) A few principles can help us to do that:

1) Matters of Conscience: If there are no clear indications on a subject in the Bible or in the publications of Jehovah’s Witnesses, then we are obligated to show respectfulness towards the conscience decisions of others, both of those that are stricter than ours and those that are less strict. (Romans 14:3) Do not make rules where none exist.

2) Handling Disagreement: It can be very productive to discuss areas of disagreement, as long as this is done in a “spirit of mildness,” avoiding mockery or belittlement. (Galatians 6:1) Keep in mind that this is a discussion forum, and not a place for heated debate. Express yourself with love, and do not “pour fuel on the fire”, as it were. While expressing disagreement, your goal should be to keep the conversation calm and cool, “so before the quarrel has burst forth, take your leave.” (Proverbs 17:14) If you are seriously concerned about someone’s motives in posting, please contact a moderator or administrator privately, and do not assault another user publicly within the topic.

3) Avoiding Offense: We all want to try to apply the counsel to not “hurry… to become offended.” (Ecclesiastes 7:9) However, it will be easier to do that if we watch for each other’s areas of sensitivity, and avoid them. (Romans 14:15)

4) Acceptable Language: Forum members come from diverse social, cultural, and geographic backgrounds, which means that they will have different standards of acceptable language. Please endeavor be sensitive to these differences, both in your own word choice and in how you react to others’. If you are seriously concerned about language that you feel is inappropriate, please contact a moderator or administrator privately. Do not engage the other user publicly within the topic.

5) Freedom of Speech: The above principles definitely do not mean that matters of conscience and speculative questions cannot be discussed. The Watchtower of May 1, 2000 gives the following balanced perspective: “It is normal to discuss Bible accounts or wonder about aspects of the promised new world that have not as yet been revealed. And there is nothing wrong with exchanging ideas on personal matters, such as dress and grooming or choice of entertainment. However, if we become dogmatic about our ideas and take offense when others do no agree with us, the congregation may end up becoming divided over minor issues.” (page 11, paragraph 14 – we recommend reading this whole subheading).

6) Personal Problems: The scriptures urge us to settle personal problems in private. (Matthew 18:15) Personal or private details of ongoing situations, whether those of your own or those of others, should not be shared on the board. This is true even if the problem is with someone who is not a member of the forums. When dealing with past situations, discretion and good judgment are still needed.

7) Cooperation: The administrator and moderators are responsible to Jehovah and to their brothers for what occurs on the forums. Please cooperate with their directions. (1 Corinthians 16:14) If you disagree with them, please inform the administrator privately.

E. Forum File Uploads

1) Material for Meeting Preparation: The November 1999 Our Kingdom Ministry states “Using another person’s research for a talk or [as a substitute for] meeting preparation really defeats the purpose of personal study.” Posts on spiritual matters should therefore contain the results of your own personal meditation, first-hand accounts of what you heard at meetings, and brief quotes from the publications of the Faithful and Discreet Slave, along with appropriate references. If you want to share a part you worked hard on for the Theocratic Ministry Scool, do not post transcripts or audio recordings of your assignment prior to their being delivered in congregations all over the world.

We are not opposed to posting documents with extracted scriptures, although keep in mind that we are encouraged to look up scriptures with our own copy of the Bible, as this way we get to see a citation within it’s context in God’s Word, as well as learn how to navigate our way through it’s pages more effectively.

Posting the answers to the oral review, or other question and answer meeting parts, is prohibited.

2) Audio Recordings of Talks: The Question Box in the April 2010 Our Kingdom Ministry discourages the circulation of recorded talks. Prior to it’s publication, JWTalk used to host a small sized archive of recorded talks and had a dedicated forum to trading such recordings. This forum has been deleted and the index of recorded talks, although it still exists, has been hidden from the public and from forum members. In other words, JWTalk is about discussion, and is not for trading recordings of talks.

With that said, we will not prohibit a user from occasionally sharing a recorded talk. However, we will not permit a user to make a habitual practice of this, nor will we allow JWTalk to drift towards becoming a file sharing site. Uploading a Circuit Assembly or District Convention program is strictly prohibited.

If you thought that this was the site where you can join and have access to thousands and thousands of talks, you were wrong. This was never that site.

F. Unverified Experiences & Sensational Stories

The October 1999 Our Kingdom Ministry says:

“What if the experience you pass on is not accurate? Would this not be sharing in perpetuating an untruth?” – (Proverbs. 12:19; 21:28; 30:8; Colossians 3:9)

Be mindful of sensational stories or experiences that you cannot verify. This becomes a problem from time to time. It’s a chore for moderators to read extremely long ones, and we will point out what we feel is ridiculously sensational and unrealistic and publicly state why we find it to difficult to believe some facet of this incredulous story. Not to ridicule you, but to protect the gullible for believing everything he or she reads. If the story or experience is legitimate, OR truly encouraging yet not overly far fetched, we’ll probably let it go. Just remember this is not the purpose of the forum.

Generally speaking, links to experiences about our brothers should not be posted unless they are first-hand accounts and we personally know the writer or we can testify to the veracity of the account/writer.

G: Ads and Secondary Links

Before linking to any page, please make sure that it does not have ads for pornography, comments by apostates or opposers, or prominent ads/links to apostate or other inappropriate sites. We would not want to be responsible for exposing our brothers to temptation or facilitate the efforts of those who want to draw our brothers away. (Matthew 18:6)

If a particular news story has such comments or ads on the source site, yet is something that would be truly of interest to Jehovah’s people, contact the administrator privately about making the article available on the public news portion of this site, where it can be enjoyed without having the exposure to uncleanness and apostate propaganda.

H: Copyright Violation

For both embedded links and direct links, caution must be taken to respect the copyrights of others. All sites, whether public, commercial, social, personal or private–contain elements that are protected under copyright laws. We reserve the right to edit or remove any post, image or other media that, in their opinion, constitutes a violation of the copyrights of any other individual or enterprise.

In summary…

* Do not post entire articles from or upload our publications to the forums.

* Do not post publicly identifiable information, such as your email address, phone number, street address, etc, on any public posting. We hide all email addresses from profiles and encourage communication using the forum and the private messaging system only. If you trade usernames or email addresses for other communication services, you are doing so at your own risk. Remember, while every effort is made to make sure that only active publishers associated with Jehovah’s people are granted membership, there is no real way to verify the identity and congregational status of everyone inside. The faithful slave cautions against associating with people whom you do not know over the internet, even when they claim to be your fellow brothers and sisters. Those cautionary statements are valid and apply to this forum as well.

* Do not use the forum to sound off on what you think the organization should do differently. It is discouraging, and quite frankly not up to you anyhow.

* Do not bring issues to the forum that you ought to be speaking to your elders about.

* Since all members of this site are supposed to be active publishers of the good news and counted as Jehovah’s Witnesses in our monthly and annual reports, you must NOT count the time you spend participating on this forum in your monthly field service reports.

*We understand that people are shy. If you comment here, please be making and sincere effort comment at your meetings as well.

In all instances, we retain the right to trim, edit or remove content that violate the policies above.