Server rules
Below is a summary of rules you need to follow if you want to have an account on this server of Mastodon:
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This is a safe and welcoming community. Abusive or antisocial behaviour will not be tolerated.
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In particular, no hate speech or bigotry, including dogwhistles (implicit but deliberate discrimination through coded language).
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No posting others' personal information or private exchanges without permission.
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Do not continue to engage a person, or incite others to do so, after they have requested otherwise.
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No content that is illegal in the United Kingdom, Germany, or France. This includes "grey area" content such as sexualized, artistic depictions of minors.
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Sexual or sexually suggestive content must be tagged as such, with a clear content warning. Avatars and profile banners must be clean.
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Same goes for artistic depictions of graphic violence or gore. Real pictures and recordings of gore and violence are generally not acceptable, you better have a really good reason. Shock value is not a good reason.
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Bots are OK as long as they don't post to the public TL more than twice a day and don't interact with folks out of the blue. That means no followbots.
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When in doubt about something you'd like to post, ask a mod. When in doubt about something you saw posted, report liberally.
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We may take administrative action for reasons not listed here.
Your staff
Chitter is run by:
Etiquette pointers
Many on the fediverse are trying to make social media kinder, more personal, and more accessible. Here are some things you can do to help.
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Use content warnings liberally.
Commonly tagged subjects include:
- Common phobias, and triggers (spiders, blood, gross stuff, trauma, etc)
- Politics (often: “pol”)
- Hot takes (opinions delivered on the spot with little thought, often worded in a provocative and generalising manner)
- Selfies
- Public displays of affection, affectionate subtoots (often: “pda”)
- Food
- Money
- Family
- Health
- Mental health in particular (often: “mh”)
- Negativity
- Negativity about oneself in particular (often: “self neg”)
Additionally, when a lot of people are talking about one subject, it’s polite to tag that subject, using the CW as a subject field of sorts. It is also polite to tag long posts and threads similarly.
Content warnings are invaluable in letting people decide if and when to deal with subjects that may be harmful or exhausting to them.
It is helpful to augment a CW, indicating if it is positive (+), negative (-), a joke, a shitpost, etc. More context is always better.
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Strive for accessibility
You can add a caption to images or videos you upload. This helps people with sight impairments get the context of your post. Writing a good, concise caption is an art but any caption is better than none!
Another practice that helps is spelling hashtags composed of several words #LikeThis with capital letters, as opposed to #likethis. This helps screen-reader software read them correctly.
It’s also polite to CW posts that won’t make any sense to screen-readers at all, like ASCII art or posts spelling out things in 💶Ⓜ️🅾️🌶️❗
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Avoid using a crossposter.
These programs or services broadcast your posts from one network to another and back, usually between Twitter and a fediverse server like Chitter. They are controversial across the fediverse. A common criticism is that it feels like the person is “not really there,” reacting to things happening on another network entirely, and broadcasting Twitter culture, which many have come to the fediverse to avoid.
If you want to use one despite this, it is polite to set it not to post remote posts as public, and even to set a CW on them indicating where the posts originated.
It is up to each one of us whether we want to follow these guidelines, but administrative action may be taken against members behaving counter to them to the point of disturbing others, and continuing to do so after being asked to change their behaviour.
Supporting Chitter
Chitter has a Patreon and a Liberapay team. Donations of any amount are greatly appreciated and will go towards keeping the servers running.
Attribution
- Mutant Standard emoji by Dzuk, licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA
- Milkshake emoji, Ferris emoji by Dzuk, licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA
- Blobfox emojis by Feuerfuchs, licensed under the Apache License
- Blobhaj emojis by Heatherhorns, licensed under CC-BY
- Dragn emoji by khr, licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA