Recommendation & Moderation Policy

Last revised on May 2026

Introduction : Our Approach

Born to Be Wild is built on the voices of women and parents in Portugal. Our directory exists because women deserve honest, peer-sourced information about the practitioners who support them during pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period.

Every recommendation in our directory comes from a real person describing a real experience. We believe in the value of that testimony - positive, nuanced, or mixed - and our role is to make space for it with care, rigour, and respect for everyone involved.

This policy explains how we collect, assess, and publish recommendations, and how we handle disputes or removal requests.

1. What Qualifies as a Recommendation

To be published, a recommendation must:

• Be based on the submitter's own genuine, direct experience with the practitioner
• Relate to care provided in a perinatal context (pregnancy, birth, postpartum, or newborn care)
• Be submitted by a real individual (not submitted anonymously or via automated systems)
• Contain enough substance to be informative for other parents - a general endorsement alone, without any descriptive element, may not be sufficient for publication
• Comply with our Terms of Use

We do not accept recommendations submitted by practitioners themselves, by their staff, or by individuals acting on their behalf.

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2. What We Publish

Recommendations may include:

• A written testimonial describing the experience
• The first name or nickname provided in the submission form
• The year or approximate period of care

We do not publish email addresses or any other contact information. The first name or nickname provided in the form is displayed by default. If the submitter has consented to having their full name published, we will display it as provided.

We publish positive, nuanced, and mixed testimonials. A recommendation does not need to be entirely positive to be published - experiences that are partly critical are welcome, provided they are grounded in concrete, first-hand observations (for example: "consultations felt very brief" or "my birth plan was not discussed").

We do not publish testimonials that are exclusively negative without substantive description, or that could constitute defamation under Portuguese or EU law.

3. Ratings and Highlighted Qualities

Our submission form invites parents to rate various aspects of their experience. These ratings serve an editorial purpose: they help parents reflect on and articulate their experience, and they inform our internal moderation process.

Ratings are not published in the directory. They are used solely by our team to guide moderation decisions.

We may also display a summary of qualities that parents have highlighted - for example: "Parents particularly valued: attentiveness, availability, respect for birth preferences." These tags are:

• Derived from aggregated responses, not from any individual submission
• Positive only - we do not display negative tags publicly
• Displayed only once a minimum threshold of recommendations has been reached, to ensure they reflect a genuine pattern rather than a single experience

This format allows us to provide useful, at-a-glance information for parents while protecting both submitters and practitioners.

4. Moderation Standards

All submitted recommendations are reviewed individually by a member of the Born to Be Wild team before publication. We do not use automated filtering systems. Each submission is read and assessed on its own merits.

We will not publish content that:

• Contains personal insults, discriminatory language, or harassment
• Makes unverifiable or clearly false factual claims
• Includes identifying information about third parties without their consent
• Appears to have been submitted in bad faith or as part of a coordinated campaign
• Is exclusively negative without any concrete descriptive element

We do not edit the substance of recommendations. If a submission requires minor formatting adjustments, we will contact the submitter before publishing. We aim to process submissions within 10 business days.

5. On Criticism and Nuance

We distinguish between:

• Statements of opinion ("I felt my concerns were not taken seriously") - which describe a subjective lived experience and are generally protected
• Statements presented as objective fact ("This practitioner did X") — which must be based on what the submitter genuinely experienced or observed

A critical or nuanced recommendation is not automatically rejected. What matters is that it reflects a real experience and contains enough concrete detail to be informative for other parents. We believe this kind of honest testimony is exactly what our community needs.

6. Practitioner Right of Response

Any practitioner who believes a published recommendation contains inaccurate factual claims may contact us to:

• Request a factual correction
• Submit a brief professional response to be published alongside the recommendation
• Request removal, with reasons

We will consider all such requests in good faith and aim to respond within 30 days.

Contact: admin@borntobewild.pt

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Any practitioner who believes a published recommendation contains inaccurate factual claims may contact us to:

• Request a factual correction
• Submit a brief professional response to be published alongside the recommendation
• Request removal, with reasons

We will consider all such requests in good faith and aim to respond within 30 days.

Contact: admin@borntobewild.pt

7. Removal Requests

We will remove a recommendation if:

The person who submitted it requests removal

We determine upon review that it violates these standards

A practitioner provides credible evidence that a specific factual claim is false

We will not remove a recommendation solely because it is critical, nuanced, or because a practitioner finds it unflattering.

Removal requests from submitters are processed within 5 business days. Requests from practitioners are processed within 30 days.

8. Directory Inclusion

Inclusion in the Born to Be Wild directory is an editorial decision. We do not apply automatic or purely numerical thresholds. Instead, we assess each practitioner's listing based on the overall picture provided by community submissions - including the number, consistency, and substantive quality of recommendations received.

Where submissions raise recurring concerns, or where individual recommendations - though insufficient for publication on their own - suggest a pattern, we may conduct additional outreach to submitters to better understand their experience before making a listing decision.

We reserve the right to decline to list, or to remove, any practitioner at our sole editorial discretion, without obligation to provide reasons. This decision is independent of whether individual recommendations about that practitioner are published.

9. No Paid Listings or Sponsored Recommendations

Born to Be Wild does not accept payment for listings, recommendations, or any form of prioritisation in the directory. No practitioner can pay to appear, improve their ranking, or influence the publication of recommendations in any way. This policy is absolute.

Practitioners with an account on Born to Be Wild may update their professional profile. They have no ability to view, edit, or remove recommendations or ratings associated with their listing.

10. Transparency

We are committed to being transparent about how this directory works. If you have questions about how a recommendation was assessed or why a decision was made, you are welcome to contact us.

Contact: admin@borntobewild.pt