Community Policies and Guidelines

This page details the most recent updates to how we're managing our community, specifically the Slack channel, which is accessed through our Patreon campaign.

SLACK CHANNEL GUIDELINES

Our goal for the community is to create a welcoming and inclusive space for people to discuss our shows, the topics of our shows, and things adjacent to those topics. Every policy below is designed to further that goal.

REPORT PROBLEMS

If you have a community issue in our Slack channel, it’s up to you to bring it to our attention. To bring our attention to abuse, harassment, or something that does not feel right, please use the following form to submit an issue report. (This form is also available at duckfeed.tv/report.

Mods will be alerted to your problem, circle back with you, investigate, and address any disciplinary action required. If you do not feel comfortable using the form above and would rather report an issue directly to a mod on Slack, feel free to do so. This means you can reach out to any mod listed below, not just Gary or Kole. Your issue will still be escalated and handled at the mod's discretion.

ABUSE/HARASSMENT/CHILLNESS GUIDELINES

Our two concrete rules are don’t use slurs and don’t be a dick to another person.

The quickest way to get banned from our Slack community is to engage in hatred toward anyone based on their race, gender, gender expression, religion, and sexuality. In fact, you shouldn’t be hateful at all. Do not make broadly shitty comments about any of the above. 

“Not being a dick to another person” is a trickier thing to define, but we keep it vague because we know abuse when we see it. Our mods are invested with the power to make that judgement, and expect to be contacted if you act out of line. The guideline is that it’s better to be nice than it is to be right.

One thing that happens quite a bit is that people take comments about media they like personally. Debate about art and media can get heated. Engage in criticism and discussion, but do not do so in a way that is an attack on the people who like a thing. Conversely, if someone is criticising a thing that you like, they are not attacking you. If it extends into harassment, let us know, otherwise do not escalate disagreements that boil down to taste.

MODERATORS

Our Slack is pretty big, and we’ve selected a group of trusted individuals to help us moderate it. They hang around our channels, watch the issue tracker, and make sure the community stays constructive and cool. You should treat these mods with the respect you would give to Gary, Kole, and the other hosts on the network. They are trusted to resolve problems and help you out. Sassing a mod is grounds for punishment or banning.

Rather than having a mod that’s in charge of each channel, every mod has jurisdiction over every channel. You can tell who’s a mod either by looking at this list, or by checking to see if they have Mod Flair… a picture of a white duck on their avatar. Anyone who isn’t a mod who uses this flair to imitate a mod will be banned from the Slack.

A List of Mods:

  • Gary Butterfield (@cozy_snugglefield)

  • Kole Ross (@koleross)

  • Brayton Cameron (@braytoncameron)

  • Dennis Furia (@dennis)

  • Nick Glauber (@nickpancakes)

  • Jeremy Greer (@jeremygreer)

  • Jala Prendes (@jalachan)

  • Autumn Greer (@automatik)

  • Allison Baker (@allisonbyproxy)

  • Mootcycle (@mootcycle)

Slack and Patronage

Participating in our Slack is a reward for backing us at a certain tier on Patreon, and because of that it’s a privilege. If you manually reduce or stop your pledge, you will lose access to that privilege.

If your support stops because of a credit card or billing problem, or some other extenuating circumstances, you likely won’t be kicked right away. If you’re afraid you might be kicked for something that’s out of your control, please reach out to us right away.

DUCKBOTNIK AND SLACK STORAGE

Our friend and mod Mootcycle has developed a special tool for managing our Slack. In order to participate in the Slack, you must enable Duckbotnik. Due to storage concerns, this is non negotiable. It does lots of fun stuff and makes Slack a better place to be, but most importantly, it helps us delete old files.

As a large community, we’re constantly hitting the storage cap for our Slack Team. Every once in a while Duckbotnik will clean out old and large files that are consuming our storage. This Slack community is not intended for permanent storage of files. Don’t put anything there that you would be sad to see disappear. If Moot or another mod asks you to install Duckbotnik, please comply. If you have questions about Duckbotnik, please ask @mootcycle.

The best practice for sharing images on Slack is to just paste in a link to the image that’s hosted elsewhere. Imgur.com works as well as any other.

GUIDELINES FOR THE SLACK IN GENERAL

  • No-Content Posting (Don’t Do It). Very often, people will pop into a channel to post several links without comment. This happens in the middle of a conversation that’s already taking place. We will eventually have a bot that warns you when you do this, but right now our community guideline is to strongly encourage you to accompany any link you post with commentary, additional thoughts, or helpful context. Memes are fun. Opening a firehose of shitposting is only fun for the person doing the shitposting.

  • Look before you link. If you’re going to share a link in a channel, please scroll back a ways to skim and see if it’s already been posted. You could also do a quick search to see if it’s shown up recently. Additionally, treat channels in Slack like rooms in real life. It’s rude to interrupt.

  • Content Warnings. If you’re posting a link to something that contains sensitive content (violence, hateful speech, sexual stuff) please put “/nounfurl” in front of the link. You can also use /secret, which is a Duckbotnik feature. This will stop Slack from revealing the image or content behind the link. Additionally, warn people if the link leads to something that might cause an adverse or traumatic reaction.

  • When to drop it. It’s not your job to change anyone's mind here. Everyone doesn't need to be on the same page about trivial pop culture stuff, and after you've said your piece, it's OK to leave it at that, even if people don't agree with you. Further, it's OK to not like the subject of a particular conversation. If you find yourself getting annoyed, it's probably best practices to walk away from the screen, mute the channel or leave the channel. If you do decide to leave the channel, do not leave a sanctimonious, condescending, or otherwise belittling comment. It's best to simply leave, but if you feel the need to explain yourself, do so in a manner that is in line with our general community guidelines.

  • Solicitation. Do not post links to Paypal, GoFundMe, or other crowdfunding campaigns without express approval from a mod.

  • Slackbot Responses. Slackbot can be programmed to auto-respond to certain phrases. This can be funny if it happens every once in awhile, but it gets annoying if it happens all of the time. The mods reserve the right to go through and clean out noisome Slackbot triggers, and we ask that you pause to consider whether or not the Slackbot response you’re submitting will trigger too often or be disruptive to normal conversation. A good Slackbot response triggers rarely, would never come up multiple times in a conversation, and isn’t incomprehensible to most people. Slackbot responses that don’t follow these guidelines are likely to be removed.

  • Pop-up channels. We have removed the ability to create private channels, in order to make things easier to mod. If there is sufficient interest for a time-limited channel to discuss a particular thing (like a game, or an event) then a mod will create it. Feel free to use the report form above to request a pop up channel. Not every new game/movie/etc will get a pop up channel but it’s worth checking if you think it’s a good idea.

  • Giphy. We don’t enable Giphy because it’s noisy and it gets in the way of discussion. We will never enable it. React to things using emotes. It’s fun.

  • Old Accounts. It’s possible we’ll hit some invisible cap on the community size for our Slack team. When this happens, we might start disabling old accounts. If this happens to you and you want back in, just email Kole through the normal Contact channels.