Code of Conduct

This is a rough draft! Please feel free to make suggestions!

I. Definitions

  1. “The Community” in this document refers to the Public Interest Town community at https://publicinterest.town.

  2. “The Administrators” refers to the administrators of this organization. These are listed publicly on the Admin Page.

II. Guidelines

A. Expected Behavior

  • Be welcoming.
  • Be kind.
  • Be inclusive.
  • Ask others if they want advice before just giving it.
  • Respect others’ experiences.
  • Bring a learning mind to conversations here.
  • Look out for each other.

B. Unacceptable Behavior

  • Conduct or speech which might be considered sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or otherwise discriminatory or offensive in nature.
    • Do not use unwelcome, suggestive, derogatory, or inappropriate nicknames or terms.
    • Do not show disrespect towards others. (Jokes, innuendo, dismissive attitudes, deadnaming.)
  • Intimidation or harassment (online or in-person).
  • Disrespect towards differences of opinion.
  • Inappropriate attention or contact. Be aware of how your actions affect others. If it makes someone uncomfortable, stop.
  • Not understanding the differences between constructive criticism and disparagement.
  • Sustained disruptions.
  • Violence, threats of violence or violent language.
  • Sharing non-public content outside of the community without explicit permission from the author.

III. Harassment

A. Statement of Intent

The Community is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all of The Community spaces, including public channels, private channels and direct messages, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Administrators.

B. Types of Harassment

  • Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, indigeneity, immigration status, religion, or other identity marker. This includes anti-Indigenous/Nativeness and anti-Blackness.
  • Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
  • Deliberate misgendering or use of “dead” or rejected names
  • Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate
  • Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop.
  • Threats of violence or incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
  • Deliberate intimidation
  • Stalking or following
  • Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes
  • Sustained disruption of discussion
  • Unwelcome sexual attention
  • Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
  • Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
  • Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse
  • Publication of non-harassing private communication
  • Jokes that resemble the above, such as “hipster racism”, still count as harassment even if meant satirically or ironically.
  • Microaggressions, which take the form of everyday jokes, put downs, and insults that spread humiliating feelings to people of marginalized groups

C. Behaviors Not Considered Harassment

The Administrators will not act on complaints regarding:

  • “Reverse”-isms, including “reverse racism,” “reverse sexism,” and “cisphobia”
  • Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
  • Communicating in a “tone” you don’t find congenial
  • Criticism of racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

IV. Prohibited Content

The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline:

  1. Excessive advertising
  2. Uncurated news bots posting from third-party news sources
  3. Untagged nudity, pornography and sexually explicit content, including artistic depictions
  4. Gore and graphic violence, including artistic depictions
  5. Fake news

The following types of content will be removed from the public timeline, and may result in account suspension and revocation of access to the service:

  1. Racism or advocation of racism
  2. Sexism or advocation of sexism
  3. Casteism or advocation of casteism
  4. Discrimination against gender and sexual minorities, or advocation thereof
  5. Xenophobic and/or violent nationalism
  6. Anti-vaccination content of any sort

The following types of content are explicitly disallowed and will result in revocation of access to the service:

  1. Sexual depictions of children
  2. Content illegal in Germany and/or France, such as holocaust denial or Nazi symbolism
  3. Conduct promoting the ideology of National Socialism

Any conduct intended to stalk or harass other people, or to impede other people from utilizing the service, or to degrade the performance of the service, or to harass other people, or to incite other people to perform any of the aforementioned actions, is also disallowed, and subject to punishment up to and including revocation of access to the service. This includes, but is not limited to, the following behaviors:

  1. Continuing to engage in conversation with a person that has specifically requested for said engagement with that person to cease and desist may be considered harassment, regardless of platform-specific privacy tools employed.
  2. Aggregating, posting, and/or disseminating a person’s demographic, personal, or private data without express permission (informally called doxing or dropping dox) may be considered harassment.
  3. Inciting people to engage another person in continued interaction or discussion after a person has requested for said engagement with that person to cease and desist (informally called brigading or dogpiling) may be considered harassment.

V. Reporting

If you are being harassed by a member of The Community, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact an administrator (listed at the top of this document) directly or file a report using the Mastodon reporting system (click the “…” on a post and then use the reporting feature).

The Administrators reserve the right to exclude people from The Community based on their past behavior, including behavior outside The Community spaces and behavior towards people who are not in The Community. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

VI. Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately. If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the Administrators may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all Community spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other Community members or the general public.

VII. Administration of Policy

A. Updates

The Administrators reserve the right to update the Code of Conduct at any time at their discretion. Updates to the Code of Conduct will be communicated to Community members via email and posts from admin accounts. If you have any concerns about or suggestions for the Code of Conduct, please contact an administrator or make a suggestion on GitHub.

B. License

The Code of Conduct was adapted from the LGBTQ in Tech Code of Conduct and is therefore licensed using a Creative Commons Zero License, meaning the contents are in the public domain.

The content guidelines are based on mstdn.social’s privacy policy, which is in turn based on Discourse’s privacy policy. It is released as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0.