Minnow Support Project Community Rules Update

Periodically the Minnow Support Project updates our community rules and standards. Please find the updated and approved community rules below.

A community member who makes the choice to violate any of these rules will be held fully accountable and should expect to leave the community. The Board member that enforces the ban is responsible and accountable for the bans they make. The ban-er, the ban-ee, and the Sheriff's department will work collectively regarding what is necessary to come back. Appeals can be made to the Sheriff's department to be brought before the Board.

Creating Healthy Boundaries

As much as we love you, nobody should spend too much time here. We love having you here, but if we see you are struggling to interact with the community in a healthy way we will dm you and ask you take a break. Once per two weeks every person in here should make a choice to put themself on a 24hr leave from the PALnet Discord community. If you’re causing problems while also not taking your highly recommended leave, you’ll be contacted by an active mod, a kick or ban may be gifted if you are not accepting (at least temporarily, and longer than 24 hrs).

The Minnow Support Project can be an emotionally intense place at times. You are welcome to talk about your problems, challenges, and issues that you are dealing with. People get raw, and people get extremely guarded. If you are raw or extremely guarded you are allowed to be in MSP asking for help or looking for support, but don't come in at that time expecting to work in any official capacity.

Each person is expected to maintain a level of social maturity that will prevent escalation of arguments and debate from turning into harmful actions. You are expected to know how to properly relate to acquaintances, family, neighbors, friends, and intimate relationships. This includes, but is not limited to:

Ability to accept constructive criticism
Ability to hear complaints and criticism without immediately acting out
Ability to empathize with other community members

Posting offenses leading to mutes and bans

No cheating, plagiarism, and/or dishonesty of any kind:
In this community, our intellectual spirit and our integrity are vital. We strictly adhere to an honor code, backed by manual content review; dishonest (plagiarism, copy/paste, vote farms and multiple accounts), low-quality or low-effort posting will get you muted from @minnowsupport use. We will work with you to reform posting habits, but continued abusive behaviors may lead to a ban from the community entirely. Truthfulness at all times, no matter what the social pressure, is essential and expected.

No sale or trade of sex or illegal substances in any of the channels:

This should be obvious for legal and health reasons. We have a limited tolerance of drug or alcohol use. You're still held accountable for the damage you cause while inebriated and acting badly in the Discord channels or on the block. Do NOT explicitly sell or trade these goods or services... There's the whole rest of the internet for that.

No stealing and/or destruction of channels, programs, or any form of intellectual property:

We all “own” this place and this community. Stealing is incompatible with a healthy community. Destroying rooms that you were entrusted to manage isn't fair to others. Stealing or breaking programs you were entrusted with access to isn't acceptable either.

No harassment of individuals or groups of individuals:

Respect for each member of the community is vital to the success of our community. Harassment of any kind (religious, racial, ethnic, gender, sexual, or sexual orientation) has no place on the block, within the Minnow Support Project Channels, or between members through other communication avenues. This includes but not limited to digital and terrestial overt acts of physical assault, as well as unnecessary touching, suggestive remarks, verbal abuse, unwelcome sexual advances, posting pornography, graffiti, epithets, threats of violence, or purposefully over-the-top humor. This also includes posting content intending to cause emotional distress or disturb others. (Violence, gore, nudity, etc.)

MSP isn't a "meat market." Don't make overt sexual passes in public channels. Don't make repeated requests for dates, sexual favors, pics, or creepy shit in DMs with members. If you recieve anything like this, and it is unwanted, contact a Moderator or any other available member of Leadership. Block any member you feel may continue to do so until we can deal with them.

F4F, V4V, vote begging, post-promotion outside of the channel for it, and "please just review my post" is highly discouraged:

Follow for Follow is a horrible way to gain followers. They aren't loyal and won't vote you anyway. Begging in our channels for that will get you warned and kicked. Same with Vote for Vote. There are literally hundreds of delegations to community bots that the public and members can get access to. Go through the normal channels for support. Don't sit around all spammy in public channels, on the block, or in DMs. Make connections and friends and they will want to see your posts!

You need to build a community to support you as a minnow and begging doesn't do that. Acts of kindness will. So, start by offering your personality and watch how you start getting traction.

Please do not spam your steemit links in inappropriate channels. We have post promotion for that, and it is where our curation initiatives, please check the guidelines (displayed in channel descriptions) for each room before posting. Posting innapropriate links across multiple rooms will result in an instant ban.

Don't abuse the community account:

We have a cooldown on MinnowSupport to make sure that each member of the community gets an equitable share of the votes from our account. It's not meant as income, but an extra bit of supportive love for the members who make this place great. Multiple accounts or attempts to get around cooldown, take additional votes, or farm the community for goodwill is an instant ban and non-negotiable.

In a similar vein you are only welcome to have one Discord account per human. Do not create alternative accounts, "smurfs, socks" to communicate within PALnet. If you need to update an account for any reason please notify a moderator.
Finally, do not use @minnowsupport to upvote pornography, NFSW content, purposefully hateful content, pro-violent, or other types of content prohibited in section 4.

Tags:

You're welcome to use minnowsupportproject and mspwaves as tags on your posts (others as well). You don't have to ask. Don't expect a warm welcome if you're using community tags to escalate issues publicly or for unrelated posts. Spamming our tags for posts against our guidelines can get you kicked or banned.

Don't be aggressive:

This is a Peace group. Don't be aggressive. Don't spend your time judging everyone. Don't make passive aggressive comments or art. Don't be an asshole. Don't intentionally try to cause harm. Don't make threats. Don't hold yourself hostage. Don't make domestic terror threats. Don't call for the death or harm of community members, Steemians, or groups of people. Don't run whisper campaigns (a DM to a friend to vent is one thing, a dozen DMs to burn the member to the ground is another).

Changing the messages after the fact or false representation can be considered an attack on the communities integrity.

If you're triggered for any reason, take a break until you can function. Don't sit around causing harm. This is a server made for everyone, and specifically to help new people and people from around the world. Liberty is important; peace is just as important; kindess is everything.

Rules for conflict:

Don't start name calling

Try to deescalate (temporarily pausing, calling in a mod for support, find an alterative mutually beneficial solution)

Don't complain about other people

Do issue detailed requests for changes in behavior

Do tell people when you don't consent to something

Do ask for help!

Breaking Trust:

Don't share private DMs or expose other people's personal information (DOXXing) on the block or in public Discord channels.
Behavior such as pulling private messages and broadcasting into rooms for intent such as diminishing or excluding another, any form of attack via trust will not be tolerated.

(The two exceptions being people who have your consent, or the messages sent to leadership as examples of community standards having been broken.)

Consequences

The Minnow Support Project is designed for minnows, people that are new to Steemit, new to these values, and new to this community. It is a learning community because we strive to teach and spread the values of Peace, Abundance, and Liberty. There is some limited tolerance for errors and violations, but only when there is a later understanding of how violaters broke the rules, apologies are issued, and changes in behavior result.

Failure to follow rules may result in any of the following: verbal warning, mediation, temporary bans, permanent bans, loss of witness votes, loss of bot privileges, loss of program access, loss of leadership, and/or loss of just about any privilege we offer.

The leadership reserves the right to pursue discipline at any time, though we will attempt to provide an adequate reason or reference to the violated rule. Remedy will be issued through working with the Sheriff's Department on the MSP-Probation server; https://discord.gg/fwRFj2K.

If you are issued a "kick" you are being notified that you are out of line. You'll lose your start date on the server, the roles you have acquired, and your access to Discord. Please don't immediately log back in. Cool off, relax, and when you're calmer come back. Depending on your response we can recover anything (except the original start date) that was lost.

If you are banned you are not welcome to re-join the PALnet Discord Server. You are not welcome to participate in any MSP service or function.

You are not allowed to create additional Discord accounts to try to get back in to the community, circumventing the ban. This will only serve to strengthen the resolve of the leadership team to keep you removed from the community.

At the discretion of the Leadership member who enacted the ban, or the Sheriff, ban restrictions can be softened or removed over time.

If you feel you may have been incorrectly treated or the ban was innapropriate you can bring it up to MSP-Probation Server. The team that handles that can work with you and the banning moderator to determine next steps.

Fiduciary Responsibility (NEW)

At times it becomes apparent that someone in the community poses a financial, physical, or emotional threat to the community. At times it is warrented to publicly out their behavior and their person. The intention isn't to harm the other, but the intention is to protect community members from further harm.

If the Moderator team thinks it's appropriate we will act through public announcement to alert others to financial scams, physical threats, sexual harrassment and assualt, and emotional abuse.

When we make this choice and act upon it then it is our responsibility to have evidence prepared to demonstrate our claim. On a case by case basis this may be redacted to only show a Steem user name, multiple accounts names, or it could actually contain a person's given name and address.

We take doxxing members seriously, but as a rule we care more about the people receiving harm than causing it. This isn't an action we'll take lightly, but people that cause harm will be exposed and the community will know to avoid them.

Process (NEW)

Everyone has a bad day at times. So breaking these rules can be bannable offenses, but aren't always treated that way immediately. We understand people on the Steem platform bring with them varying amounts of baggage and have different levels of coping and emotional support to handle life's challenges. Often times bad behavior is a call for help more than an intentional harm.

When it's evident that people are intentionally causing harm we'll ban without hesitation. There's no place for that here.

When community members seem to be having trouble adjusting to one of the handful of internet communities with enforced codes of conduct we'll try to work with them in a coaching environment. This will likely start off with friendly but stern DMs from mods privately to read through the rules or possibly cite rules where people are pushing the boundry. If that fails the moderators may escalate to discussing things in public channels. If that fails we may kick or ban as appropriate. The goal isn't to be punative, but to provide guidance and support to help bring people back within the rules and community standards. If they fail to respond well we're here to keep the peace and foster the community we call home.

At times beloved community members including senior leadership can have spells where we can't seem to get it right. In cases of highly active community members, leadership, and long standing members we'll take even greater care to coach and deescalate. That said it is the responsiblity of the moderating team to take extra care to point and precisely describe the behavior that we want to stop. This can be exceptionally challenging to tell a friend, loved one, or respected elder that they are breaking the rules (they may have even helped form them), but experience shows a friendly nudge is often not enough and an assertive formal communication from the group is necessary.

If people remediate along the way we're happy to back off and let folks just operate as they desire. If people fail to change their behavior we can work individually or collectively to ban, kick, or doxx depending on the severity of actions at hand.

Deescalation periods (NEW)

While formal judgements from the moderation team can often feel punative they are often meant to serve as deescalation. Putting time between incidents can lead to pauses of harm, reflection, healing, and time for various resolutions to take place. This is often lost on the recipient of a temporary suspension of group privileges, but experience shows that a brief cooling off period is not only warrented but helpful. It's possible people that aren't abiding by rules will have their actions and interactions limited in the community. If it's handled well, it's over quickly and leads to peace. If it's handled poorly it's a sign we made a good call. Please choose your reaction carefully.

Life within the Spirit of the Minnow Support Project:

Much of what makes MSP special is the time we spend together. We have bots, charters, whales, SP, programs, services, and operations, but what it really comes down to is our community.

It is essential that each community member contributes meaningfully and with a spirit of generosity to the group. These rules apply on the block, while in Discord, and through other forms of communication with MSP community members.

Depending on the case, we'll likely make disciplinary decisions public on the block, as well as what's required for rehabilitation. We reserve the right to not make all aspects public to protect privacy of individuals in the community. Our rules and expectations apply to all visitors as well.

We are very serious about these rules. If you decide to join or interact with this community you must be willing to be fully invested in it. If you voluntarily choose to be a part of our public community you must be willing to surrender a small measure of absolute personal liberty so we can work together peacefully.

Going forward anyone seeking membership to the community will be required to sign a post agreeing to the rules, promising to follow community standards, and add an autovote to @minnowsupport if still a minnow.

You are a making a voluntary and conscious choice to promise to yourself and to every other member of the community that you will adhere completely to our rules and expectations. You have the responsibility to hold yourself accountable for upholding these standards.

If you have questions, or concerns that you will be unable to live up to our rules and expectations, we urge you to speak with active board members so that we can figure out, together, what steps to take to help you find a digital home here or somewhere else if necessary.

We know that the folks who have elected to join the Minnow Support Project community are special. You have chosen to join the community because you want something different for yourselves. We hope that you are excited about living in a healthy, peaceful, abundant, and liberated community, which espouses strong values and helps one another.

For our part, we believe in you and we will try to provide the support you need in order to make the most of your Minnow Support Project, PALnet, and Steemit experiences.

These guidelines are intended to promote Peace, Abundance, and Liberty. We reserve the right to change or add these guidelines without notice. Changes and updates to these guidelines will be posted on the MS account.