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Community Guidelines

PTAL only works because people feel safe enough to be honest. These guidelines exist to keep it that way. Every story is reviewed by a human moderator before it goes live.

What we welcome

  • Share your own lived experiences, struggles, and reflections
  • Talk about systems, organisations, or public figures in their public role
  • Offer support, empathy, and shared experience in comments
  • Disagree respectfully — different views are welcome
  • Use anonymous detail (a relative, a workplace) without naming individuals

What gets removed

  • Naming or identifying specific private people (full name, photo, ID number, address)
  • Hate speech, slurs, or harassment based on tribe, religion, sexuality, or nationality
  • Threats of violence, including against yourself or others
  • Detailed methods or encouragement of self-harm or suicide
  • Sexually explicit content, especially anything involving minors
  • Spam, scams, advertising, multi-level marketing pitches
  • Doxxing, revenge content, or content meant to expose someone

Talking about self-harm

You are allowed to talk about feeling suicidal, struggling, or wanting to give up. That conversation matters. But please don't share specific methods, plans, or step-by-step descriptions — that can harm other readers.

If you're in crisis right now, please look at our Crisis page for Zimbabwean helplines.

How moderation works

  1. 1.You submit a story. It does not appear in the public feed yet.
  2. 2.A human moderator reviews it within 24–48 hours, applying these guidelines.
  3. 3.If approved, your story goes live anonymously. If not, it stays hidden — we don't notify the author with a reason for now (we may in future).
  4. 4.Anyone can report a comment. Reports go to the same moderation queue.

A note from us

Most people who write here are processing something hard. When you read or comment, please remember there is a real person on the other side. Be the kind of stranger you would have wanted on your worst day.