Agora’s community guidelines

Agora is where a campus talks to itself. These guidelines say what every campus on Agora asks of everyone on it, what campus moderators do when something breaks them, and what Agora itself will never do.

What the guidelines are for

Every account on Agora belongs to someone who proved a university address, and everything posted stays with that campus. That is what makes Agora a place to be yourself with your own campus, and it is why the bar here is the one you would expect in a room of people you will see again.

A report picks one of nine reasons, a moderator’s note names one of them, and a suspension is shown on a profile by its category. These paragraphs say what each reason means, so a decision can be read against the same words the member read. The guidelines are the same on every campus; a campus may add a few lines of its own, which its members see at the end of this page.

What every campus asks of everyone

1. Spam or scam. Selling belongs in a marketplace group; a pitch pasted into every other group does not, and nothing on Agora is ever a route to another person’s money, password, keys, ID.
2. Harassment or bullying. Treat people as people. When someone asks you to stop, that is the end of it; piling on is not what a campus is for.
3. Hate speech. Nobody here is attacked for who they are: race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age.
4. Violence or threats. Nothing that threatens harm to a person, calls for it, celebrates it.
5. Sexual content. Agora is a campus feed, and this is not the place for it.
6. Self-harm concern. Look out for each other: a post that reads as a person in danger of hurting themselves is read quickly by a moderator, who reaches for the campus’s own support first. If that person is you, your campus counseling service is closer than any moderator, and in the US the 988 Lifeline answers a call and a text.
7. Impersonation. Post as yourself: not as another person, not as an office, not as a student organization.
8. Academic dishonesty. Do your own work. Buying, selling and passing off graded work is taken as seriously here as in a classroom.
9. Misinformation. Say what is true. Do not present as fact what you know is false, least of all about health, safety, elections and another person.

What campus moderators do

Every campus has its own moderators and admins, chosen by the campus. They see every report its members file in one queue and act on the thing reported: remove it and restore it, warn and suspend the person behind it, and decide when no action is needed.

Every action is written to the campus’s audit log with the moderator’s name and a note, and the log is permanent.

A moderator acts on members. Another moderator is for a campus admin to decide, and a campus admin is for Agora staff to decide. Nobody moderates a report about themselves.

A suspension can be appealed from the suspended page. A campus admin who was not the one who acted reads the appeal and answers it; so do Agora staff.

The person you report never learns who reported them, and you hear what came of it.

What Agora will never do

• Agora will never be funded by advertising.
• Agora will never be anonymous: every account is a person at their campus.
• Agora will never be a university’s instrument for watching its students.
• Agora will never let one campus’s posts reach another.

At your campus

A campus may add a few lines of its own here, which its members see.