archaeo.social is a
Mastodon instance for archaeologists, ancient historians and anyone interested in scholarly communication about the human past. It is part of the
archaeo.social collective, a network of open, federated social media services for archaeology.
This server is administrated by
Joe Roe and financially supported by
donations on OpenCollective. Our policies, rules and community expectations are decided by consensus; discussion takes place in our
GitHub repositories and are open to all.
Joining archaeo.socialCreating an account on archaeo.social means that it will be your "home server" in the Mastodon network. Your posts will by default appear in our
local timeline and you will need to agree to abide by our rules and community expectations. It doesn't mean that you are limited to interacting here; you can follow users from other Mastodon servers and the wider Fediverse freely, and your personal timeline will include only the accounts and hashtags you follow, wherever they are.
After you have created an account, uploaded a profile picture, and filled in your bio, we strongly recommend introducing yourself to the archaeo.social community with a post that tells us about yourself and your interests. Including the hashtag
#introduction will greatly increases how many potential new followers your post reaches.
archaeo.social is still a young community and the Fediverse in general is not as widely used in academia as other social networks. We appreciate anything you can do to spread awareness, for example by including links to your Mastodon profile (i.e.
https://archaeo.social/@username; the short form username@archaeo.social only works in the Fediverse) on your other social media profiles, on your institutional profile, in your next conference presentation, etc.
Community expectationsThese guidelines supplement the server's rules.
Zero tolerancearchaeo.social has zero tolerance for racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, and casteism. Users that engage in these behaviours will have their accounts immediately and permanently suspended.
Acceptable and unacceptable contentarchaeo.social is primarily intended for scholarly communication about archaeology and the human past. We encourage you to use it to talk about your research, promote academic events and programmes, share references and resources, and network with colleagues. We are an international community, and posts can be in any language. Satire, activism, and a reasonable amount of "off-topic" posting are also welcome. Users who use our services excessively for other purposes may have their accounts frozen and will be asked to migrate their accounts to a more suitable server.
Content that
others may not wish to see should be accompanied with a
content warning and/or marked as sensitive. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Images of human remains
- Spoilers for recent popular media
- Content likely to be of interest to only very narrow audience
Users who repeatedly omit these warnings may have their posts marked as sensitive automatically, have their accounts frozen, or be suspended.
The following types of content are
not allowed on this server:
- Pornographic or sexually explicit media without an explicit historical context
- Excessively violent media without an explicit historical context
- Anything illegal in Germany, including Holocaust denial and Nazi symbolism
- Advertising and spam
Users that post these types of content will be immediately suspended.
Academic integrityBehaviour that is broadly considered unacceptable in academia is also unacceptable on archaeo.social. This includes, but is not limited to, academic dishonesty (plagiarism, cheating, not giving credit), misrepresentation (of your credentials, experience, background), spreading misinformation or pseudoscience, and soliciting for predatory publishers or conferences. Users that engage in or promote these behaviours may have their accounts frozen or suspended.
Etiquette and accessibilityWhen posting, please be considerate of how your posts will appear both to your followers and in the local and federated timelines. Consider using a content warning or making the post unlisted if it is significantly 'off-topic' (i.e. likely not of interest to most other users of archaeo.social) When writing a thread, set the first post to be "public" and subsequent posts "unlisted", so that they do not flood the timeline.
To make posts accessible to all users, attached media should be accompanied with a description. A good media description concisely summarises the content and purpose of the image or video. It shouldn't be longer than a sentence or two. An exception is if you post an image of running text; you should transcribe the text in full in the image description.
Bots and organisation accountsarchaeo.social was made for people and prioritises the experience of human users.
Bots are currently not restricted on archaeo.social, but we ask operators of bots to be considerate of other users, server resources, and the readability of our local timeline. Specifically, bot accounts should:
- Include the name and contact details of the human being responsible for them in their bio
- Respond to direct messages from server administrators and moderators
- Not post at a rate that dominates the local timeline or degrades server performance
Accounts that represent commercial, institutional, or collective entities are also allowed, but must be relevant to the server's scope.
Reporting and moderationarchaeo.social's moderation team actively monitor the local timeline. Unlisted posts are not proactively reviewed but are subject to the same rules and expectations.
If you see a user of archaeo.social breaking any of our rules or failing to meet any of the above expectations, please
report the problematic content to moderators. Please explain why you are reporting them in as much detail as you can; we aim to respond within 24 hours.
You can also report posts you see from users of federated servers on archaeo.social, but please be aware the we are more limited in the ways we can respond to them. Mastodon has
extensive options for controlling what you see from users on your home and federated servers.
Privacy, data security and longevityMastodon was not designed to be a secure storage or messaging protocol. Everything you post to this server, including direct messages to other users, is stored
unencrypted and therefore technically readable by anyone with access to the database. We will never knowingly breach your privacy or leave your personal data vulnerable to misuse, but can make no guarantees. Please see the
privacy policy for more details.
We envisage archaeo.social as a long-term resource for the scholarly community in archaeology and related disciplines. All posts and uploaded media are backed up, at least daily, to multiple secure locations. However, archaeo.social is not an archive and you should not assume that your data will be preserved in perpetuity. In the event that circumstances force the server to shut down, we commit to giving users at least three months notice so that they can
export their data and migrate their account to another server.