Ordinary Members Policy

CLCI Hub rates organisational control patterns and the structural conduct of leadership. It does not rate or judge individual ordinary members. This page documents what that distinction means in practice — for current and former members, for readers, and for anyone who might consider using CLCI content to harass.

The principle

High-control-group dynamics target ordinary people through ordinary social moves. Recruitment, retention, and continued participation are structural outcomes of well-tuned group mechanisms, not evidence of personal weakness, gullibility, or moral failure on the part of members. Many members in high-CLCI groups are themselves harmed by the same dynamics the rating reflects. Many are also good neighbours, attentive parents, generous donors, and capable professionals.

What this means for CLCI ratings

• A high CLCI score is a statement about the group's documented structural conduct, not about any individual member.
• The score does not imply that members are abusers, accomplices, or culpable for the group's harms.
• The score does not imply that members are unintelligent, naive, or unworthy of respect.
• The score does not authorise hostile treatment of members in any context — workplace, school, hospital, court, social setting, or online.

What CLCI content must not be used for

• Harassment of individual members, online or offline.
• Public exposure or naming of private individuals based on group membership alone.
• Discrimination in employment, housing, services, or family proceedings.
• Aggressive confrontation or 'deprogramming' of members against their will.
• Mass-targeting campaigns against any group's general membership.

For families

The most consistent finding in the family-support literature is that family hostility toward a loved one in a high-control group tends to confirm the group's framing of the outside world and push the member closer to the group's social network, not further from it. The families hub covers what is documented to help.

For professionals

Therapists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and social workers encountering members of profiled groups should treat membership as one factor among many, never as a sufficient basis for adverse treatment, default suspicion, or different professional standards. /professionals has field-specific framings.

For current members reading this site

We treat current members as adult readers who are entitled to encounter outside reference material on their own terms. We do not require you to leave the group, agree with our rating, or accept any particular conclusion. We do not contact members or attempt intervention. If you believe specific claims about your group are wrong, the corrections route is the formal way to flag them.

For ex-members

Ex-member testimony is one of the most valuable categories of evidence we use, and ex-members themselves often face retaliation, shunning, or reputation attacks for speaking publicly. The reputation attacks tactic profile covers that pattern in detail.