Nothing appears here until a person reads it.

ThyroidTools is not a forum and it is not a feed. When you submit a story or a reply, it goes into a queue. It does not appear on the site, it is not visible to anyone else, and it is not indexed by search engines. Someone reads it and decides whether to publish it.

That person is Joe - a patient who has had Graves' disease, not a doctor and not a moderation team. If a submission needs a judgement he isn't equipped to make, the answer is no. Publishing is a choice we make, never a default.

Before a human reads it, every submission is checked automatically for a specific set of problems: spam, content that has nothing to do with thyroid disease, personal details that would identify you or someone else, dangerous medical claims stated as fact, expressions of suicidal intent or serious self-harm, and abuse or harassment.

That check is done by an AI system, which means the text of your story is sent to our AI provider to be assessed. It is not used to train anything. Some categories - anything suggesting self-harm, and anything abusive - stop a submission from going any further, immediately. Others flag it for closer human reading.

The automatic screen can only ever say no. It cannot say yes. A person makes every decision to publish.

Regardless of who sends it or why:

• Anything unlawful, or content that encourages a criminal offence.
• Content that encourages or gives instructions for suicide or self-harm, or an eating disorder.
• Abuse, harassment, threats, or hatred directed at any person or group.
• Medical advice. Not from us, and not from you. Telling other people what dose to take, what to stop taking, or what to demand from their doctor is the one thing this site exists to avoid. Describe what happened to you; don't prescribe for someone else.
• Dangerous false claims presented as fact - unproven cures, advice to stop prescribed treatment, and the like.
• Personal information that identifies you or anyone else: full names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses.
• Named criticism of an individual clinician, hospital or practice. Write about what happened to you, not about who to blame.
• Links of any kind, advertising, product promotion, or anything selling something.

We may also edit a story lightly for clarity, length or spelling before publishing. We will never change what it says.

If something published here is harmful, wrong, or about you and you want it gone, tell us through the story submission form, which reaches the same queue a person reads. Write REMOVAL or REPORT at the top so it is obvious. It reaches Joe directly.

If you wrote a story and you want it taken down, you do not have to give a reason and we will not ask for one. It will be removed.

We will act on anything unlawful or seriously harmful as quickly as we reasonably can. This is a small project run by one person, not a service with a support desk - but a queue that one person actually reads is more than many larger sites manage.

ThyroidTools is written for adults managing their own thyroid condition, and for the people around them. It is not designed or promoted for children, there are no accounts, and there is no way for users to contact one another. Nothing published here is age-restricted, because nothing that would need restricting gets published.

Submissions we decline are not published and are not kept indefinitely. Submissions we publish are stored as the text you wrote, with no name attached unless you chose to add a first name or an initial.

The rest of the site - your lab results, medications and symptoms - never reaches us at all. That is covered on the privacy page.

Nobody moderating this site is medically qualified, and no clinician has reviewed the guides published on it. We check stories for harm, not for clinical accuracy. A published story means one person's experience passed a safety check - it does not mean anyone has confirmed it is medically correct, and it is never a reason to change your own treatment.