To better foster a sense of community, help people network, and facilitate sharing advice, we’ve put together some Whatsapp groups. If you’re interested in joining our community Whatsapp groups, please take a moment to read through our rules and register.
A few rules do apply:
1. All discussion should take place in English.
2. All discussion should be relevant to the group topic.
3. Do NOT message any members of the group privately. There is a ZERO tolerance policy on this. If an admin is informed you are privately messaging anyone that didn’t give you their contact details personally, you will be removed. These are not matchmaking groups and shall not be treated as such. (The exception is receiving permission from them publicly in the chat to proceed via DM.)
4. Be respectful and kind. No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, animal cruelty, or hateful speech of any kind permitted.
5. No overt sales or commercial promotion of any sort. No promoting agencies offering residence permits services or similar scopes. Any types of promotion that involve sharing a link repeatedly through Whatsapp as part of the deal or from suspicious websites (this is left to the discretion of admins) are forbidden.
6. No politics or culturally sensitive discussion.
7. No discussion of anything illegal.
8. No audio recordings. Please send all messages in text form.
9. No messages in all capital letters. (This has been suggested by several community members, so we’ve decided to implement it as it seems to be widely disliked.)
10. Promoting conspiracies, false and misleading information, etc. are prohibited and will result in a warning being issued.
11. We are unable to accept non-Turkish phone numbers. All numbers must begin with +90 or be cleared with an admin.
12. No promotion of agencies, groups, or websites offering particularly similar scopes to Yabangee. This is up to the discretion of our admins.
Admins reserve the right to either issue a warning or outright remove someone from the groups.
Quality of Chat Advice
1. If someone posts something political or offensive, please inform an admin and ignore it. It will disappear from view quickly. (We know it’s hard to do and really appreciate your support in this.)
2. If you’re posting a job advert, selling something, etc. please consider including permission for people to DM you instead of responding in the chat. This reduces the number of irrelevant messages for the rest of us and helps keep your post towards the bottom of the chat (thus more likely to get seen).
3. Please try and avoid uploading multiple photos. Consider making a collage that includes all the photos in one if necessary.
4. If organizing a group activity, please aim to be as inclusive as possible.
5. Note that many members of our community are new to Istanbul and may need some assistance in reaching destinations, knowing where things are, etc. If you take up the role of an organizer, please be patient in this regard.
6. Feel free to make separate private chats, but understand when joining member-created groups that Yabangee is not involved in any way.
7. If you have any other suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact a chat admin.
8. Exercise common sense in all aspects of participation. Whether you are buying something from someone, following a reference, meeting for an activity, etc. This is a public forum and members are not vetted in any meaningful capacity. Always be cautious and safe.
If you notice anyone violating any of the above rules, please do inform an admin.
By agreeing to join any of these Whatsapp groups, you confirm to understanding that these are public groups and that Yabangee is in no way responsible for any of the content shared by users or any other resulting issues. Must be 18 or older to join.
Sign up here: https://chat.whatsapp.com/Hec72BkoJUpEELkNQGjv1J
For questions or concerns, you can e-mail us at whatsapp@yabangee.com.
