The Big Conversation platform operates like an online virtual room or discussion forum that you can join from any internet-connected device, at any time to suit you, it has been designed to be a psychologically safe place to share your opinions and have your voice heard. It is an open and transparent place to post comments and suggestions anonymously, vote to support the ideas of others or simply read what is being shared.

Once closed, everything that has been shared in the Big Conversation is analysed to gain insight into participants’ hopes, fears, expectations, and ideas for change.

Big Conversations are anonymous

Names and identifying information are never displayed with any ideas, comments or votes on the platform. This means all ideas will be treated by other participants based on what someone says not on who they are. 

There are only two simple rules for participation:

• Personal comments - either naming individuals, or comments which make identifying individuals possible - should not be made and will be taken down by the site moderators.
• Abusive or offensive content will not be tolerated. The moderators will remove the comment and will email the author without identifying them through the platform if this is the case to let them know their contribution has been removed. 

 Facilitation of a Big Conversation

A Big Conversation is facilitated in order to support the conversation, not censor anything that is said, for example the facilitators may need to: 

• Move ideas to other sections of the conversation if that is where they more logically fit.
• Split some ideas that discuss multiple topics in one post. If a post contains more than one idea, the facilitation team may choose to break the post up into multiple posts. 
• Deal with inappropriate contributions. If contributions are reported to the facilitators as being inappropriate or offensive, the moderators may choose to remove an idea or comment.

 The intention is for a Big Conversation to be open and transparent; no comments will be removed because moderators do not like them. They will only be removed if they are deemed abusive or offensive.

• If someone doesn’t like a comment or idea, they just need to hit the thumbs down button.
• If someone sees a post that causes them concern, they just have to hit the report button to let the facilitators know.

Analysis of a Big Conversation

All contributions, no matter how large or small, will be read and analysed by the facilitators, who will then develop an iterative coding frame and use qualitative thematic analysis to identify key themes and trends.