The Seafarer Index forum exists for working seafarers, cadets, families, and welfare workers to share advice and experience. Reading is open to anyone; posting requires a free account. These rules keep the space useful, safe, and legally defensible. They are enforced by moderators.
What is not allowed
No doxxing.Do not post other people's personal information — home address, personal phone number, family details, ID-document scans, photographs of children, etc. — without their explicit consent. Naming a public officer (master, manning-agency director, flag-state inspector) in connection with their public role is permitted; naming a private person in connection with a private matter is not.
No unsupported criminal accusations. If you allege fraud, assault, theft, harassment, or any other criminal conduct against a specific named person or company, you must either provide source-backed evidence (linked) or use the proper complaint route (ITF, flag-state administration, port-state-control, police). Use the scam-alerts category for pattern-level reporting without naming.
No sharing private documents without consent.Posting another seafarer's SEA, payslip, or medical record — even with names redacted — is not allowed unless that person has consented in writing.
No fake job offers. The forum is not a recruitment board. Genuine recruiters should use the licensed manning-agency channels (see licensed-agency registry). Forum "job offers" will be removed.
No recruitment-fee solicitation.Charging a seafarer for placement is unlawful under ILO C181 and MLC A1.4(5)(b). Posts soliciting fees for "visa processing", "medical", or "joining tickets" will be removed and reported to the relevant licensing authority. See recruitment fees + scams.
No medical or legal advice as certainty. You may share your experience and what worked for you. You may NOT diagnose, prescribe, or assert legal outcomes. If a poster is asking about a specific medical or legal situation, direct them to helplines, ISWAN SeafarerHelp on +44 800 012 1004, or a maritime lawyer.
Tone + safety
Be civil. Disagree about ideas, not about people.
Slurs, harassment, threats, and content sexualising minors are removed immediately and the account banned.
If a thread becomes a crisis (suicide ideation, immediate physical danger, abandonment in progress), report it. A moderator will respond and the post may be locked while the situation is escalated to ISWAN or ITF.
Every post has a Report this postbutton. Reports go to the moderator queue. The reporter's identity is not shared with the post author. Moderators are seafarers and shore-side maritime professionals who volunteer time — please be patient with response times.
Moderator actions: warning, post hidden, post deleted, thread locked, account temporarily suspended, account permanently banned. We do not pre-moderate posts; rules are enforced after publication.
Community answers are not verified
Every post in the forum carries a small "not verified by Seafarer Index" label. The forum is for peer experience. For authoritative information, see Know your rights, Practical reference, and Help & helplines.
When a community answer is genuinely useful and source-backable, moderators may convert it into a sourced guide. See the Convert to sourced guide action visible to moderators.
Privacy
Seafarer Index does not run analytics or tracking on the forum. Posts are stored in a Supabase database under EU data-protection law. You can delete your own posts at any time; deletions are immediate and not soft-deleted. To delete your account, email [email protected].
Disclaimer.These rules apply to posts on the Seafarer Index forum. Decisions on individual cases are at the moderators' discretion. Rule violations may also be reported to relevant external authorities (ITF, flag-state administration, national police) at the moderators' discretion when the safety of a seafarer is at risk.