Purpose

To provide guidelines when members of the society are using social media as representatives of the society.

Social Media and other external online properties (websites) play an important role in our community, allowing participants in our community to engage with each other. The Society may maintain accounts with any social media website or external online property, and should strive to maintain the Society’s best intentions and good standing by all means.

Policy

Through our social media, the Greater Vancouver Interactive Arts Society (GVIAS) aims to
engage our community in conversations and disseminate information about our operations,
including our major annual events Burn in the Forest, Dustcovery and ReCharge.

GVIAS values the spirit of a civil community discourse and open and inclusive dialogue. We
think that lively, on-topic public conversations are an essential part of our Facebook pages.
That said, we also have a responsibility to maintain our online spaces for the benefit of all our
community members, new and old. We recognize that discriminatory comments on our social
media can undermine open and inclusive dialogue by creating a hostile climate for systemically
marginalized members of our community. The comments made on our Facebook pages also
have the power to add to or detract from the page’s general vibe, have the potential to exclude
people from our spaces, and have the power to influence our in-person interactions. GVIAS has
a responsibility to moderate the posts and comments made on our pages to enhance the
experience of our community members, rather than chasing them away or causing them to
suffer harm.

Commenters are to conduct themselves as they would if they were guests at a party, where
spirited conversation is welcome, but unruly, rude, disrespectful, harassing or bullying behavior
is not. Our moderators will therefore remove posts that they believe run counter to the spirit of
civil discourse, including posts that violate any of our pinned rules, are disparaging comments
that name individuals, this policy, and/or the GVIAS Code of Conduct.

Own the intent and impact of your posts and comments; we’re each accountable for our words
and actions, regardless of the original intent. At the same time, try to be mindful of your own
feelings, and acknowledge how you react when confused, frustrated or just stayed up too late.

Comment Moderation

Posts are submitted for approval, and so there may be a slight delay in approving your post for
comments. Post approval is used to weed out spam, offensive posts and anything else that
goes against the page rules.

We will not censor comments because your point of view is different from ours. We will,
however, censor comments that we believe run counter to the spirit of civil discourse. We may
choose at times to turn off the comments feature on a specific post when it is approved, due to a
variety of factors including subject matter, timing, or the author just plain not having the ability to
engage in the dialogue at the time of the posting. If a post has been cross-posted across all of
our pages, we may turn comments on only on the GVIAS page.

GVIAS moderators and admins reserve the right to close comments on any active post within
the group, without any prior warning. Closing comments is usually used when a post discussion
becomes argumentative, abrupt or otherwise harmful or unduly time-consuming to moderate.
Please note that we may turn off comments on most posts after 3 weeks so that we can focus
our moderator efforts on contemporary conversations.

Civil Discourse

We expect all members of our community to treat each other with civility and respect. All interactions on GVIAS pages are subject to the Code of Conduct. If you’re aware of the expected behaviors as set out in our Code of Conduct and in our pinned rules, and reiterated here, and make an effort to be polite, you’ll never find one of your comments removed. The following is a parfor a post or comment to be removed:

• Overtly off-topic posts.
• Intentionally disrespectful or disruptive behavior.
• Snide, rude, threatening, disrespectful, defamatory personal comments about or directed at any person, be they other users, the moderators, the GVIAS board of directors or any other GVIAS volunteers, your own mother…we don’t care if you have a low opinion of someone — that’s your business. Get personal about it somewhere else.
• Harassment, sexual or otherwise.
• Spamming.
• Advertisements / self-promotions or other commercial posts.
• Your comments must be truthful. You may not impersonate a GVIAS Board or Committee Member. Falsely impersonating another person with the intent to mislead people who trust our pages for information from us will not be tolerated.
• Unnecessarily attitudinal or inflammatory language, or posts that attack a point of view without explaining why. Again, disagreement is okay, but there’s a difference between saying, “That idea will never work because I don’t think people will clean up after themselves the way you think they will,” and saying, “That idea will never work. It’s stupid, and anyone who believes that is an idiot.”
• Posts that contain vulgar, abusive or hateful language targeted at any group, be it ethnic, racial, religious, class-related, ability, sexual orientation, gender, etc. We hope this goes without saying.
• Trolling or posting deliberately disruptive statements meant to hijack comment threads or throw discussions off-track.

Note: repeat or egregious offenders and known trolls may be removed or banned.

Appeal/Reposting

All edits, post/comment removals, and user actions are at the sole discretion of GVIAS and its moderators, and are subject to appeal only if you can somehow establish that you understand the error of your ways AND if we are feeling particularly magnanimous and/or perky that day. Otherwise, post-removal decisions are final. We will endeavour to notify you as to why your post is being deleted, however such notification may not always be practical based on post volume. Often you’ll find that if you go back and attempt to say the same thing while trying to be a bit nicer, that very same opinion will be welcomed. You’ll never find one of your posts removed if you remain true to the policies and guidelines posted here. You won’t ever be censored just because we disagree with your opinion.
If you find yourself removed from a GVIAS page or group, please contact [email protected] to discuss the process for reinstatement.
This is a living document and may be updated over time. We welcome your help in upholding these policies. Please report unacceptable content by emailing [email protected] or contacting one of the moderators directly.

Last Updated: December 7, 2020