The Association of Internet Researchers is sponsoring this Mastodon server for its members. Members in good standing are welcome to join and have a home on the fediverse!

Admin contacts: @admin1@aoir.social and @admin2@aoir.social

AoIR Code of Conduct 0.6

Operation

The server is operated by @admin1@aoir.org and @admin2@aoir.org. The instance agrees to abide by the Mastodon Server Covenant.

Moderation

We currently have around a dozen moderators located around the world. Our goal is to respond to community concerns swiftly. The instance subscribes to fediverse-recognized blocklists, including Oliphaunt's Tier 0 List. The admin account follows #fediblock and other hashtags and will block or silence instances based on the advice of respected fediverse admins.

Funding

This server is funded by the Association of Internet Researchers, an academic association dedicated to the advancement of the cross-disciplinary field of Internet studies. It is a member-based support network promoting critical and scholarly Internet research independent from traditional disciplines and existing across academic borders. The association is international in scope.

Accounts on this server are available to dues-paying members of AOIR.

Code of Conduct

This is an instance for current members of the Association of Internet Researchers. Real names and credentials are only recommended if you plan to use your account on this instance for networking purposes; they are absolutely not required.

Encouraged uses of AoIR.Social

If you are an AoIR member in good standing, and you are willing to engage with others respectfully, and you will respect our community's efforts to make this a safe space for queer, trans, Indigenous, BIPOC, and other structurally disadvantaged people, you are absolutely welcome here. While this instance is hosted by a scholarly association, sociability & posting about everyday life are just as welcome as professional networking, sharing research resources, and bragging about your publications.

First things first, please introduce yourself. After signing up, post a message to the Local Timeline telling us who you are, what your academic interests are, and helping us to get to know you better. Use the #introduction tag.

And after introducing yourself, feel free to:

• Put your handle on the last slide of your conference presentations
• Post a picture of your pets
• Share your art and creativity
• Engage in satire -- just must make a good-faith effort to punch up ("Punching up": making jokes or criticism at the expense of those with more power, higher status or greater privilege.)
• Engage in activism
• Recruit participants for academic surveys—formal, IRB-approved ones or even informal ones (just make sure to use content warnings so that others can consent and don't get too obnoxious about it; see below for more about research on AoIR.social)
• Share what's going on in your day

Content Warnings (CW's)

One thing that differentiates Mastodon from other social media is the Content Warning affordance, which allows you to put a preview or warning about your post. This is useful for sensitive content, but can be used in other ways, too (e.g., jokes).

On AoIR.social, please add CW's (content warnings) that are accurate and descriptive enough to enable reader consent to the following types of posts:

• strong language,
• rants,
• selfies with eye contact,
• current events (includes: US or non-US, local, national, international, and should be applied regardless of whether sources are academic or non-partisan), high-conflict or otherwise exhausting issues of popular debate (e.g. climate change, GMO's, privacy issues, elections, etc.),
• mentions of death or violence,
• photographs or illustrations of insects, genitals, wounds (even if they come from a scientific source)
• spoilers of popular and recent TV shows or other media,
• sexually explicit content,
• ASCII art (this one is important to ensure that someone using a screen reader doesn't have to listen to an attempt to read out a bunch of obscure symbols)
• stresses particular to academia such as grades, exams, thesis progress, academic job market prospects, and
• anything else where another user might want to decide for themselves whether or when they want to interact with your post.

There is a setting in your preferences to open all posts with Content Warnings automatically, if you don't want to click through each one. CWs are a courtesy to fellow AoIR.social members as well as the broader fediverse.

Image descriptions (alt-text)

It is an expectation of this instance that you add accurate descriptions to all images and video that you post to aid in accessibility. (A description like "image.jpg" that does not aid in accessibility would not meet this expectation.)

If you post an image of a screenshot of text, it is an expectation of this instance that you transcribe the text in the image description. Here’s a guide on how and why to supply alt-text.

Unwelcome conduct on AoIR.Social

The following will result in: a warning from the admin or having offending posts deleted, possibly without prior notice.

• Providing unsolicited advice to strangers
• Inappropriate un-CW'd posts on the Local Timeline (see above for CW policies)
• Posts with un-described images or video
• Shortened links, e.g. bit.ly, t.ly, tinyurl.com, goo.gl, ift.tt, lnkd.in, is.gd or t.co (These are considered malicious because link-shorteners track users without their consent and obscure the destination address, which also prevents users from being able to decide whether they want to visit the link beforehand)
• Advertisement or spruiking for cryptocurrencies, NFT's, or multi-level marketing schemes
• Unrequested solicitations to join religious, political, or other ideologically-defined organizations

Exceptions:

DOI links (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k959) are allowed but the post must accurately describe the title/author/journal to allow the reader to decide for themselves whether they would like to follow the link. (In cases of very long titles, you may truncate it, and in cases of long author lists, "First-Author et al" will do.) Posts with DOI links where the target of the link is not described, or not described sufficiently, may be deleted without warning.

Discussion of research about cryptocurrencies is of course allowed.

Things that will get your account closed, possibly without warning

• Conduct that would violate the Association of Internet Researchers conference Code of Conduct, and specifically the following, which is adapted from the clause on harassment: “We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Harassment includes, but is not limited to, offensive comments related to characteristics such as gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion, technology choices. It also includes deliberate intimidation, stalking, and unwelcome sexual attention.” Violations can result in a permanent ban; you may not receive a prior warning.
• Serious dishonesty that is hurtful to others (e.g. falsely representing oneself as a member of a minority; services offering to write academic papers to help students cheat; vaccine denialism; predatory conferences or journals; overt pseudoscience such as flat-earther-ism etc.)
• Anything that could be described as "spam"
• illegal content, especially child exploitation images or sexually explicit materials posted without the subject's consent 
• Impersonating other people
• No bots and no "institutional" accounts operated by non-members please; AoIR.social is for people. The obvious exception is that the AoIR organization itself will post official communications here. Any official communications will be marked as such.
• Accounts that automatically repeat a Twitter account, RSS feed, etc. must post to AoIR.social as Unlisted, not Public

Regarding attempts to abuse these anti-abuse tools and policies

Do not attempt to weaponize our Community Standards or anti-abuse tools/policies against marginalized groups such as people of colour, women or queer people. Members of AoIR.social are expected to have the literacy to understand that "reverse discrimination" is not real, and so attempts to re-centre discussions of marginalized people around the feelings of the privileged will be taken as manipulative behaviour undertaken deliberately in bad-faith. (E.g. white people should not demand that people of colour put CW's on every discussion of race). Furthermore, the abuse of content moderation tools for targeted efforts to silence, smear, or otherwise harass any individual account holder, for any reason, will not be tolerated.

Use of AoIR.Social for research

Researchers who wish to study AoIR.social or our users by collecting data using the API or through any other means that does not involve an "opt-in" from individual users are required to submit their protocol, analysis plan and all relevant ethics approval documentation from their institutional review board or departmental internal review documentation by email to the AoIR Fediverse admin account. You may also be required to submit code you plan to execute so that it can be tested to ensure it does not degrade the quality of service to other users.

This does not apply to, e.g. surveys circulated on AoIR.social that individual users can consent to participating in. This does apply to database scraping software, or any means of recording user activity where our users might be surprised that they were included afterward, because they were not given a chance to consent.

AoIR is well known for being the leading organization developing ethical online research. Ethical research on this instance (and much of the fediverse) should be sensitive to the privacy expectations of its members. Many people came to the fediverse in order to avoid being included in unethical social media research, and so we place a higher value on conducting research on human subjects with informed consent than most other social media, in order to maintain high ethical standards.

At the admin's discretion, you may be asked to submit your research protocol, and the institution that is providing ethical review, even in the case that it is an opt-in survey. Failure to disclose your research plan may result in closure of your account, or having your network banned from our service.

Account Cancellation due to Lapsed Membership

If your AoIR membership has lapsed for longer than 1 year, you will be contacted about renewing your membership. If you choose not to renew, you will have 60 days to download your data. You may move your data to another Mastodon instance.

Version History

Version 0.1: Edited by AoIR Executive Committee in Google Docs

Version 0.2: Posted to AoIR.social, 20230312

Version 0.3: Edited after consultation with AoIR.org moderators, 20230325.

Version 0.4: Edited after second consultation with AoIR mods + aligning this COC with conference COC, 20230326.

Version 0.5: Edits to CW policy.

Version 0.6: Small edits, including adding @admin2 to the list.

1. Abide by the Code of Conduct
2. Use Content Warnings where appropriate
3. Post alt text for any images you share
4. No harassment of others based on gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion, or technology choices
5. Ethical research on this instance (and much of the fediverse) should be sensitive to the privacy expectations of its members
6. This server is for Association of Internet Researchers only. To join AOIR, go to https://aoir.org/membership/. If you are a member, please use the same email you used when you signed up for AOIR to join this server.

1. nothing.tacowolf.net: suspension