Overview

We strive to keep the AI for Animals (AIA) Slack Community safe, focused and productive space for our community members.

Our Slack is an inclusive community and we will always aim to maintain a pluralistic constructive space within our focus on building a multidisciplinary field focusing on how AI can positively impact non-humans. We will do our utmost to help community members participate within the guidelines and will only reserve banning as the last resort option.

Please remember that while this is a free-to-join community, participation in the community is a privilege, not a right. We reserve the right to remove anyone at our discretion if we believe it's in the best interest of the community.

To keep our community supportive and impactful, we ask everyone to follow these guidelines. By joining, you agree to the policies below. Please note that these guidelines may be subject to change.

Guidelines

🚧 1. Respect the Moderators

Our moderators work hard to keep the space welcoming and productive. Some of our moderators are our team members and some of them are volunteers, who have other commitments outside of this role.

• We would like to ask you to collaborate with all our moderators to make their job easy and this space as impactful as it can be.
• If you don't agree with the moderation decision, you may respectfully raise a concern with a moderator once after which the moderation team will consider your case and either agree to change the rule or decline your request.
• When a concern is raised and a decision is provided, please understand that further debate on that specific decision is not encouraged. Moderators reserve the right to discontinue discussion once an issue has been addressed, should they determine that additional back-and-forth is unproductive.
• We value clear communication and fully welcome you to present your case during the initial review. However, once a decision is made, you are expected to respect it and refrain from further arguing the point. Continued challenge of the decision may lead to a final warning, and if it persists, to suspension or ban.

🧽 2. What Gets Removed or Flagged

• Posts or comments that are off-topic, disruptive, unwelcoming, or not aligned with AIA’s purpose and community guidelines may be removed at the moderators' discretion. We will usually DM the author of the post stating our reasoning.
• In our vibrant Slack community, the principle of fairness and the goal of maintaining a focused and organized environment are paramount. This necessitates a proactive approach to moderating posts that may not align with our 🤝Community Guidelines. That’s why we opt to remove posts and directly message (DM) the author with suggestions for editing and reposting, rather than merely asking for edits, helping ensure timeliness and reduce overwhelm in our community. Removals are standard practice, intended to maintain the relevance and order of discussions, not to pass judgment on the content or its creator.
• All our moderation instances are shared with other moderators, each of whom is welcome to review and disagree with them. By default, you can assume the moderation instance to be approved by our moderation team unless mentioned otherwise.

❌ 3. When You Might Be Banned

We want to give people the benefit of the doubt—but our priority is protecting the community. We reserve the right to immediately ban for:

• Hate speech, harassment, or discriminatory language
• Posting disturbing or otherwise harmful content
• Abusive or disrespectful language towards moderators or other AIA team members
• Recurrent or frequent off-topic, disruptive, or unkind behavior

It's up to the moderators to decide whether the content fits the above categories (please see Who Makes a Decision section below for more info). If moderation instances don't warrant an immediate ban, we will aim to give a final warning that a continuation of the behaviour will result in a ban.

In extraordinary instances in which the moderation team collectively (e.g. two lead moderators or one lead moderator and two other moderators) agrees for the ban to be of the best interest to the community, we reserve the right to remove anyone for any reason.

⚖️ 4. Our Ban System of Lasting Bans

A community member may be banned for repeat or egregious offenses. We have a temporary and a permanent ban option. Banned members will not be allowed to join again unless their appeal is approved, even if temporary ban has ended. It's up to them to appeal the ban at the end of the ban's term by emailing contact@aiforanimals.org - we will not be issuing reminders.

• Temporary ban: Removal with an option to appeal after 3 months.
• Permanent ban: Permanent removal without an option to appeal.

🧑‍⚖️ 5. Who Makes Decisions

Moderation decisions are made by the AIA team. Each moderation instance is forwarded to the whole moderation team, where they can review it and offer their feedback on how well it aligns with our guidelines. Our moderation is constantly improving and evolving based on the community’s needs.

Moderators can make banning decisions with the approval of at least one additional moderator.

The AIA team bears full responsibility and decision-making power over moderation or banning instances. The lead moderators’ decisions to ban are final and cannot be appealed against. It's up to the moderators whether to allow an appeal for a temporary ban. An appeal cannot be requested.

Once a community member is banned, their account will be deactivated and they will receive one email stating that they were banned and for how long. There will not be any further correspondence via email or any other channel about the decision.

Reporting and Feedback

If you or someone you know has been affected by an incident in the community, please let us know using this form. We’re here to support you.