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fiercelydreamed Before the pre-festival discussion and the festival itself get started, I wanted to take a moment to let people know how I'm going to handle this comm. I'd like anyone who's concerned to be able to start thinking about whether this is a space they'd like to watch and/or participate in.
Rules and definitions. In my experience, strict boundary-setting and border policing creates hostile spaces as often as it promotes safe ones. There are some things that will need to be defined for the festival -- what constitutes gen, and who are sexual and gender minorities, to name two pretty pertinent examples. I've already got a sense of what definitions I'd like to use, and I'll be putting those out there for your input soon. My inclination is to give general rules of thumb, let creators use their discretion as to whether their work qualifies, and encourage creators to use header information to let people know if they think a work might be at the outer limits of the definitions the comm uses. I will likely err on the side of inclusivity in many of my judgments and avoid setting a bunch of strict rules governing specific cases. I will also ultimately be making some judgment calls, which I'll try to be explicit about, and which I'll never suggest should be rules applied for any purposes outside of this comm.
Monitoring and moderation. I like to start with the expectation that people, even people who disagree, can treat each other with respect and consideration. I don't think disagreement alone crosses this line, and I tend to watch and wait to see how people in a tense discussion handle themselves rather than step in preemptively before anyone's actually stepped off of safe ground. If any particular post or comment starts to make you feel unsafe and you'd like me to pay closer attention to it, please feel free to flag me down via email. If I judge that someone's starting to cross the line of respectful conduct, I'll issue a warning and ask them to self-correct before I actively curtail a discussion or someone's participation in the comm. Like a lot of you, I have responsibilities, friends, and activities that don't happen on a computer. I expect to be able to check in with what's going on here at least once a day (and often more frequently), but I won't be doing minute-by-minute moderation. If I expect to be away from the comm for more than 48 hours, I'll recruit a co-moderator who's willing to take over in my absence.
Pitching in. If anyone's interested in helping, there are a few things I could probably use a hand with. A co-moderator would be really great once things start picking up, especially as I'll be out of town for a week later this month and will otherwise need to time the festival so that there's low activity here until after I get back. I'm also currently lacking the resources to make community icons or a more interesting layout. Later on I'll be doing some kind of recurring link round-up posts, and it'd be a huge help from an time perspective if someone felt like assisting with those. Please leave a comment or shoot me an email if you'd like to get involved with any of this.
As per usual: questions, comments, suggestions, inquire below. :)
Rules and definitions. In my experience, strict boundary-setting and border policing creates hostile spaces as often as it promotes safe ones. There are some things that will need to be defined for the festival -- what constitutes gen, and who are sexual and gender minorities, to name two pretty pertinent examples. I've already got a sense of what definitions I'd like to use, and I'll be putting those out there for your input soon. My inclination is to give general rules of thumb, let creators use their discretion as to whether their work qualifies, and encourage creators to use header information to let people know if they think a work might be at the outer limits of the definitions the comm uses. I will likely err on the side of inclusivity in many of my judgments and avoid setting a bunch of strict rules governing specific cases. I will also ultimately be making some judgment calls, which I'll try to be explicit about, and which I'll never suggest should be rules applied for any purposes outside of this comm.
Monitoring and moderation. I like to start with the expectation that people, even people who disagree, can treat each other with respect and consideration. I don't think disagreement alone crosses this line, and I tend to watch and wait to see how people in a tense discussion handle themselves rather than step in preemptively before anyone's actually stepped off of safe ground. If any particular post or comment starts to make you feel unsafe and you'd like me to pay closer attention to it, please feel free to flag me down via email. If I judge that someone's starting to cross the line of respectful conduct, I'll issue a warning and ask them to self-correct before I actively curtail a discussion or someone's participation in the comm. Like a lot of you, I have responsibilities, friends, and activities that don't happen on a computer. I expect to be able to check in with what's going on here at least once a day (and often more frequently), but I won't be doing minute-by-minute moderation. If I expect to be away from the comm for more than 48 hours, I'll recruit a co-moderator who's willing to take over in my absence.
Pitching in. If anyone's interested in helping, there are a few things I could probably use a hand with. A co-moderator would be really great once things start picking up, especially as I'll be out of town for a week later this month and will otherwise need to time the festival so that there's low activity here until after I get back. I'm also currently lacking the resources to make community icons or a more interesting layout. Later on I'll be doing some kind of recurring link round-up posts, and it'd be a huge help from an time perspective if someone felt like assisting with those. Please leave a comment or shoot me an email if you'd like to get involved with any of this.
As per usual: questions, comments, suggestions, inquire below. :)