Anyone looking to make use of our services is expected to adhere to the following community guidelines.
1. Treat everyone like a part of the community.
a. Do not make threats, violent or otherwise.
– Note: Death threats and suicidal threats will be taken seriously at all times.
b. No bullying or harassment.
c. No unwanted (or continued unwanted) sexual or romantic advances, including sexual harassment, whether public or in private.
d. No spamming on any medium. This includes, but is not limited to: emoji, stickers, repeated posts, unwarranted/non-cw’ed long posts.
e. No misuse, mistreatment, or unnecessary public use of any bots.
f. No pictures, videos, media, or discussion of illegal activities (inside the jurisdiction of the respective region the activity was committed). Please see more specific details of this below.
2. Keep the community safe.
a. Respect others’ personal space.
b. Keep discussions civil (e.g. no personal insults or threats).
c. Report bad or questionable behavior.
3. NSFW Content is defined here as the following:
a. In general, things that are considered Not Safe For Work. Anything that would otherwise be deemed inappropriate to view or say in a public, school, or work setting.
b. Depictions of sexual organs, implied sexual content, or any implied rule 34 related content.
c. Depictions of excessive gore, violence, or profanity.
d. Discussion or implied discussion of sexual activities, innuendos, gore, or kink related activity.
Service Specific Guidelines
Here are some rules specific to the services we offer.
Mastodon
We expect new users to at least adhere to the guidelines outlined on the flagship instance's about page, listed here, as well as the basic guidelines outlined on this page, in addition to the following:
– Posts should have a content warning attached if they contain the following:
– NSFW content, art, or language.
– Political discussion, articles, quotes, depictions, etc.
– Advertisements, including personal ones.
– Content known to be triggering towards other users on the instance.
Homeroom (or any of our official chat rooms)
Something something json
Gitea
Something something lightweight
Administration & Moderation
Everything you should need to know about how we moderate the community. We believe having this publicly available can only help the community, as this way everyone knows what we’re all being held accountable for.
Administrators & Moderators
The primary job of all admins and mods is to moderate discussion, enforce the guidelines, and appropriately and promptly respond to reports and issues raised by the community members and those outside the community.
1. Admins/mods are not dictators and should never:
a. Make any user or member of the community feel singled out or belittled.
b. Give opinions on a matter or situation as if it were law.
c. Carry out unnecessary deletion of comments, kicks, bans, etc.
d. Act or present themselves as though they are above or do not need to adhere to the community guidelines.
e. Ignore or dismiss legitimate criticism, suggestion, or discussion of how the community is being moderated.
2. Actions an admin/mod may take:
a. Step into an active discussion to ask that it be moved to DMs or another forum (this should mostly be done in official chat rooms).
b. Warn that a discussion is inappropriate for the current forum or otherwise violates the community guidelines. This may result in the request and/or deletion of the offending posts.
c. Ask that the discussion stop and that the current forum move on to another topic (again should mostly be done in official chat rooms).
Reporting
While we acknowledge that reporting others can be a stressful or unpleasant activity, it is necessary for maintaining the safety of the community as a whole. Here are the following ways a user or member of the community can report activity.
1. Contacting an admin/mod directly. Contact information for all admins/mods will be publicly available on all of our services.
2. We will also offer an anonymous form for reporting users in the future.
Enforcement
It should be first stated that since incidences can vary in intensity and variety across platforms, respective consequences are up to the admin’s/mod’s discretion.
1. In general, minor offenses (especially a first one) will be dealt with a warning by an admin/mod and possible removal of the offending content.
a. In most cases, the offending community member will be directly asked to remove the content themselves.
b. If it is not removed within 30 minutes of the request, an admin/mod has permission to remove it.
2. Continuous violations of the community guidelines and/or respective service’s guidelines will most likely result in a kick or ban.
a. In most cases, this will require the agreement of the majority of active admins/mods.
b. In extreme cases, admins/mods may kick or ban members without doing so.
c. Any action of this kind should be followed up with a public statement on why the action was taken and how it was justified.
Challenging an Administrator or Moderator
If a member of the community has a disagreement on the way a certain situation is handled, they may do the following:
1. Personally message an admin/mod explaining the disagreement with the actions taken and their side on the matter. This won’t guarantee that the enforcement will be lifted or reversed, btu will make the admins/mods aware that there is a disagreement.
a. Please include everyone you know has a disagreement in your initial message. They will each be individually contacted for their say on the matter.
b. Regardless of whether the enforcement is lifted or reversed, an admin/mod will make a public statement on the disagreement and resulting action. This ensures that everyone knows and acknowledges that there was a disagreement and that/how it was considered by the admins/mods.
c. All complaints will remain anonymous unless they have otherwise specified that they wish to have their names public. This ensures the privacy of reports and clarity with members.
2. If you wish to be completely anonymous, we will in the future be offering a report form. The actions listed in the previous bullet will then be carried out.
3. Publicly express your grievances with our decision. It’s not recommended to take this action, as it can cause great stress on the community as a whole.
a. An admin/mod will make a public statement acknowledging that there was a disagreement and that/how it is being taken into consideration.
b. Member(s) expressing their disagreement will be contacted to allow them to express their full view on the matter (if they feel they need to say anything else).
c. Regardless of whether the punishment is reversed or liften, an admin/mod will make a public statement that there was a disagreement and the resulting decision, and will preserve anonymity when possible.
Last updated: 26th of October, 2018
