Safe Space and Accessibility Policy Questions

[aceeccentric]

In writing up a draft of the safe space and accessibility policies for the ace community, I've come across a few questions that I want to get some feedback on before sending the draft out for editing (and then posting it for more editing).

• Do we want to include an age note? (Not allowing in anyone under 13 or something.)
• Do we want to include suspensions? (In addition to outright banning.)
• Do we want to include freezing and deleting content? (If something violates the safe space policy, do we want to have notes about freezing threads or deleting comments and posts? What would be the conditions to decide between freezing and deleting? Do we feel there's a difference between deleting entire posts and deleting comments or comment threads? Etc.)

For the accessibility policy, so far I've got:

• Image descriptions required when including images or linking to images
• Putting flashing animations behind a cut with a warning
• Descriptions required when including videos or linking to videos (even if the video has captions)

These are the most common accessibility concerns I've seen. I'm sure I'm either overlooking or unaware of more things, so if there's another concern you're aware of or that would be important to you, please let me know.

Name poll to come soon, also. I just wanted to make them separate posts and not do one right after the other.

Comments

[sciatrix]

I'm conflicted on the idea of an age note and lean, I think, on the side of either not including one or not heavily enforcing any note that is included. I feel like under-13s, if they're reading, could use the safe space.

I don't think I'm in favor of suspensions--in my experience, once you've gotten to the point of suspending a member, they're not going to get any better or change with time. Ban them and have done with it.

Re: freeze vs. delete--I'm a fan of freezing for archival and transparency purposes if we're going to pick one. Deleting someone else's posts, even in terms of moderation, carries a lot more potential for drama.

[aceeccentric]

I checked and Dreamwidth itself has a policy of needing to be 13 to use the site, so perhaps we could ... just leave the age note to Dreamwidth? And then if someone younger joins, possibly it's a Dreamwidth thing and not us? Your note about younger people needing a safe space struck me and I know I wasn't exactly sticking to "age appropriate" places at 13.

Vote for banning. I currently mod a fanfic community (that shall remain nameless) but it's not really the kind of place where suspension or banning comes up. So I don't have that kind of experience and it's good to hear from people.

Ahh, that's a good point and it makes me lean towards freezing myself. Perhaps if the offending material is in a post itself, the post could be edited to have the material behind a cut if it isn't already. (I think there's a setting for mods to be able to edit entries, anyway. I'd have to check. We could have a "frozen by mod" tag if not.)

[shiyiya]

The problem I see with just freezing material is that it would/could mean there's nasty triggery material sitting around in a community that's meant to be a safe space - even if it's behind a cut, seeing it would be a reminder of what it is.

[aceeccentric]

I suppose this particular point is another thing that needs to go to a vote. I'll leave this post up another day or two in case there's any more comments coming and then ask people about it more specifically.