Overview

We strive to keep the Sentient Futures (formerly 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. 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