What is Fandom Garden?In Fandom Garden, you are free to gush about the fandoms you like, whether they're related to books, comics, TV shows, movies or music. Come and find fellow fans to share your passion with!
This is a queer, anti-racist, anti-ableist space. We do not tolerate any hateful, discriminatory or bigoted behavior towards any oppressed group (including but not limited to people who are disabled, fat, Jewish, neurodivergent, queer, trans, people of color, sex workers, etc.). We aims to be a sex-positive instance, with a strong opt-in culture for adult content. Our main language is English, and you need to be at least 13 years old to sign up.
Want to join us?FanDen is a small instance and we try to keep it that way so that everybody can know each other, and for this reason we have currently closed registrations. However, if you really want to get in, you can still send us an email or ask someone on the instance for an invite!
Tell us why you want to join our instance specifically, when there are so many different options on Mastodon! You can tell us about your current fandoms, about your online communities, and even share other social media accounts if you feel like it.
Some good practice:
- Talk about your fandoms.
- Confirm your email address.
- Remember that actual human beings will read and consider your application.
More about fandomsWe are aware that fandoms can be toxic, but we hope to foster a good environment rather than an abusive one. We believe that you can enjoy content that has flaws (or was made by flawed creators) without glorifying said flaws (or flawed creators). Always prefer
calling in rather than calling out, and never harass fellow fans over their interests: if they are breaking our rules, for instance by promoting hate speech, simply report them.
The same goes for writing about fictional abuse and abusive relationships: we recognize the need for this content to exist, but since it is a hurtful topic for a lot of people, proceed with caution, do not glorify known abusers and use content warnings as much as possible.
Do not hesitate to make your experience of this instance more comfortable by muting fandoms, characters or topics that you don't want to see in your feed! The same goes with users, nobody should hold it against you if you mute or block them.
ModerationWe are a safe instance first, and a fandom instance second. We especially do not tolerate any hateful, discriminatory or bigoted behavior towards any oppressed group. In addition to the rules below, we also agree with the rules of trusted instances
eldritch.cafe,
solarpunk.moe and
weirder.earth.
The instance's moderation is taken care of voluntarily by the administrators. There are currently four moderators:
@ariel,
@ikol,
@Nightshade and
@rainbowhalo. Together they speak Dutch, English, Finnish, French, and Italian. All of them are white. Obviously they will have oversights as white people, but they strive to create an environment that not only says it won't tolerate racism, but an environment where racism cannot thrive.
Together they enforce the rules of the instance. To that end, they are free to use all the tools at their disposal: reports, sending DMs or emails, mutes, blocks.
Our usual process is: delete the reported message, call in the person in private, mute them in the meantime, and if they don't back down or don't respond within a week (or sooner if we see that they've posted messages in the meantime), we ban them. If this happens to be a user of another instance, we reach out to their admins to make sure they take similar measures, and otherwise we consider taking actions towards the whole instance.
We preemptively block any instance we come across that badly contradicts our rules or policies, as well as those which lack consistent moderation. We try our best to communicate, but we don’t negotiate with trolls. If you think an instance should be blocked, please contact our moderation team by reporting any account of that instance or by sending a DM to
@gardener.
We have turned on the AUTHORIZED_FETCH option. This means that toots made on Fandom Garden will not be federated to blocked instances (through people boosting them for instance).
In order to declutter the instance, we take actions to delete any account that has been inactive for more than six (6) months: we send two warning emails first, three weeks from one another, and if these haven't gotten any reply we delete or deactivate the account.
You can support the instance by helping with the server costs on
Liberapay.
Endorsed InstancesThe following is a list of instances that we have historically been on good terms with, are communities we think are nifty, and we trust have good moderation. We feel comfortable recommending them to others.
- blackqueer.life, a community for all Black queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people.
- cathode.church, an instance dedicated to trans and gender-diverse makers, coders and tinkerers.
- cloudisland.nz, a community of people in Aotearoa New Zealand.
- dragonscave.space, a small dragon-themed community of mostly visually impaired folks.
- old.mermaid.town, another small and well-moderated instance.
- solarpunk.moe, a small, friendly server run by a group of optimistically-utopian LGBT+ individuals.
Recommendation: Content WarningsContent warnings are inbuilt in Mastodon, meaning there is a "CW" button that hides the content of a post under a "show more".
As a general rule, before you post a message, ask yourself whether everybody wants to see what you have posted without warning. Maybe your message will trigger a panic attack for some people? Maybe some folks read Mastodon among their family or at work, and don’t want to see graphic images appear suddenly on their screen?
Having a content warning allows others to
choose to confront themselves with topics that can be hard for them, instead of having these topics forced upon them.
Some people also use the CW field as announcement or as title for the topic of their post, or to say that their toot is long: that way, the toot is folded and doesn’t clutter the feed.
A non-exclusive list of topics for which you should use CWs is:
- Spoilers
- Sexual content, sex, lewd
- Gore, violence
- Politics, religion, discrimination (racism, sexism, antisemitism…)
- Mental health: depression, suicide, usual phobias, negative thoughts, rants…
- Physical health: medical topics, diets…
- Common addictions: alcohol, cigarettes, drugs…
- Food: you can specify whether it's kosher, vegetarian, vegan…
- Violence: physical & mental abuse, toxic relationships…
- Weapons: guns, blades…
- Flashing pieces of media
- Caps: contains at least one word written in capital letters
- Media without alternative text
- Long posts
- Upsetting ships (eg incest, big age gap, abusive relationships, RPF…)
Recommendation: Screen Reader AccessibilityTo make sure that everyone is provided with the tools they need to participate fully in our community, here are some collective habits that we should adopt:
- Alt-text your images. If you are not in a position to do so, please use #Alt4Me and someone from the community should be able to help and provide it. More on this in the next section.
- Use PascalCase for the hashtags. Example: #FandomGarden (the first letter of each word is capitalized).
- When sharing a link, provide a brief description of where the link directs to
- Use captions in uploaded videos
- Use as few emojis in usernames or screen names as possible (preferably none).
- Please don't scatter emojis between words in an alternating pattern. Ex: word followed by clapping hands emoji, repeated indefinitely. Screen readers do not handle them well.
(These best practices were inspired by blackqueer.life. Thanks!)
Recommendation: Image DescriptionsIf you have the energy for it, try to write image descriptions of the pictures you post. This can be done by clicking on the image in the Compose Box (on the Mastodon web app it's the Edit button, on Tusky it's a round A with a checkbox).
Image descriptions can be a few words (“Books on a shelf.”) or several sentences (“Four books on a shelf. From left to right: […]”). The text should convey what the image mean. If it’s a picture you took, explain what drew your eye; if it’s a graph, explain its behavior and key numbers. You don't have to talk about all the details; just explain what matters to you!
If the image is a long text, you can try to use Mastodon's text recognition if you use the web app. Otherwise, you can mention
@OCRbot and it will reply with its text recognition. Be mindful that OCR doesn’t always work, and it’s best to copy and edit the output of the bot rather than letting disabled users try to decipher what the text says.
If you don’t have the energy to write an image description, you can write so in the CW, use the :helpDescribe: emoji to invite people to add one, or tag the
@imagecaptionpls group which will notify everyone who follows the group that there’s someone who needs an image description.
You can also follow the
@PleaseCaption@botsin.space bot, which will send a message each time you forget an image description.
If you see an image without description, you can reply to the post, remove the mention of the OP, and write the image description.
Image descriptions or the helpDescribe emoji / #Alt4Me hashtag are mandatory for public posts (shown on public timelines).
Privacy PolicyYou can choose the privacy level of each of your toots (direct message, followers-only, public). We do not process or sell your data in any way. However, every toot, even sent in private, can be seen by the moderating team if there is a report against it. This means that toots are not encrypted and could be accessed by a third party in case of malicious attacks or legal actions. Therefore, if you wish to discuss sensitive topics, we recommend you use another medium.
CreditsThis instance is set up thanks to
Fedi.Monster, which handles the server.
Our mascot (the raccoon reading a scroll) was designed by
Florence.
The banner was drawn by
Kaerhon.
This instance uses emojis from several sources: