Moderation Guidelines
Hello there! This thread lays out guidelines for your moderators. Your moderators will do their best to model the kind of behavior that we think is good for this community, so these double as community guidelines.
I believe that an online community thrives when the community trusts its moderators and vice versa. Your moderators’ main goal is to cultivate a plesant and fun place to hang out while building and maintaining trust with the community.
Social communities like these are complex, and I do not think that a didatic laundry list of rules is a good way to moderate that complexity. Rather, your moderators will be trusted to use their best judgement to facilitate a healthy community. That being said, I have written a few specific guidelines for them:
Moderators will assume good faith.
Communication is hard. Particularly online where people come from many different cultural backgrounds, native languages, age groups, and so on, it can be difficult to intuit tone or intent from the way someone writes.
Sometimes, something you write might come across a way you didn’t mean for it to.
Sometimes, something you write might be accidentally “wrong.” (This comes up a lot when people don’t know lilian’s pronouns!)
When those things happen, your moderators will assume that you’re here in good faith. We’re all learning and we’re all here to have a good time, your moderators included!
That being said, your moderators will not react naively to obvious malice or cruelty.
Moderators will use their tools thoughtfully.
Moderators have a lot of tools to guide and organize this forum. They shouldn’t be scared to use their tools when it’s helpful, but they should be thoughtful and considerate as they go about their work.
Generally, this means moderating with kindness and empathy. It also means trying to use the least obtrusive tool to get the job done.
But ultimately, it is up to the moderator’s best judgement to decide which tool is most appropriate to the situation at hand. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to moderation.
Moderators are people too.
Sometimes people make mistakes, and this includes your moderators.
When that happens, your moderators will acknowledge the mistake, apologize, and do what is appropriate to make things better.
When that happens, they will try to show themselves the same grace that they show you!
Moderators will welcome complex and nuanced topics.
Many of you are here because you resonate with topics that address gender identity, neurodivergence, and disability. These are complicated topics, and they’re not all sunshine and roses.
I do not think that toxic positivity is healthy or wholesome for a community, so moderators will not indiscriminately remove topics that are negative.
That being said, moderators may categorize or tag negative topics so people can choose for themselves if they’re in the right headspace before engaging. Moderators will also try not to let these topics spiral into out-of-control doom, despair, or anger.
Some specific rules.
- This is not the place to debate the rights or validity of any group of people.
- This is not the place to share pornography. I do not have anything against pornography, but there are better places for it than here. Please note that this is not a blanket ban on nudity or topics that address sexuality. If you’re unsure then the best thing to do would be to check with a moderator before posting, but it might also help to ask “would it be weird for lilian to be looking at/reading this at work?” because lilian is most definitely looking at/reading this at work.
- This is not the place to share anything illegal, do anything illegal, or to enable someone to do something illegal. Yeah, I know, “be gay, do crimes”! Our platform host is cool with us being gay but their lawyers don’t want to deal with us doing crimes. All the obvious things apply here, but I think the way this will come up the most is piracy. I’m not a big fan of copyright law as it currently exists but to keep the forum hosted, your moderators will remove pirated material.