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Community documentation
- 1: Management
- 2: Moderation
- 3: Server
- 4: Server rules
- 5: Roadmap
- 6: Support and financing
1 - Management
Management, philosophy, security & trust
Raison d’être
The datasci.social instance was set up on Nov 17, 2022, for this reason:
The goal of this server is to create a community of nice and diverse people who are researching human-centric data science and adjacent topics. For example human-centric data/network science, social data science, urban/geospatial data science, computational social science. Not welcome: bullies, harassers, big abusive/toxic egos.
This instance aims to counter the danger of surveillance capitalism screwing up social media and manipulating public opinion, as demonstrated recently by Twitter’s demise. We believe we can do things better in a “grassroots” approach. If you agree, then datasci.social could be a fitting place for you. And if you just came to post/discuss about research - or any other topic you find interesting - that’s perfect! 👍 See more on our about page.
Visit our support page to find out how to support us.
Management, security & trust
The community is currently managed by a volunteer team of data scientists. Server finances are managed by Michael Szell. Our running costs are financed by voluntary donations. Our roadmap is clear.
We adhere to the Mastodon covenant, and our community pages are openly improvable by the community on Github (via issue or pull request). On our community updates blog we communicate updates timely and transparently. Our server is hosted and managed by experienced Mastodon server admins following excellent industry uptime standards, see our technical server docs. See our privacy policy for how we deal with privacy and data.
2 - Moderation
Moderation team and policies
Team
All moderation and administration is done by our volunteer admin(istrator) and mod(erator) team:
| Name | Handle | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Ben F. Maier | @benfmaier | Admin |
| Erika Legara | @eflegara | Mod |
| Esteban Moro | @estebanmoro | Mod |
| Lucio La Cava | @luciolcw | Admin |
| Michael Szell | @mszll | Admin |
| Silvia De Sojo Caso | @sdesojo | Mod |
Our admin contact email is: datasci.social@proton.me
Individual-based moderation
Sign-up
Moderation for individuals begins with checking whether a new user provided an adequate reason during their sign-up application, as stated in our server rules. Inadequate reasons include any generic statements such as “joining to learn”, “networking”, “interesting instance”, “coming from twitter”, etc. We expect people on our server to actually read and follow our server rules and reserve the right to decline any such inadequate sign-up application. This process also provides a layer of protection for our server from spam bots attempting to sign up, which is a common issue on Mastodon.
We process sign-up applications as leniently as possible and are happy to welcome everybody, but please read the rules - they are to the point. We also aim to be as fast as possible; in the worst case it can take up to 12 hours, usually much faster.
Conduct
To report a post, click on the three dots below the post and select “Report”. Please include all relevant context to help us process the report.
When our team receives reports through Mastodon’s report interface, we decide whether to resolve without action or which action to take depending on severity and repeat offense. The action can range from deletion of offending posts, warning, temporal limiting an account’s posts from showing in feeds, or account suspension. If an account from a different server is suspended, that account is banned from interacting with our server.
If an action is required, the first action for minor offenses is usually a warning, ramping up in severity for repeat offenses. We aim to be as reasonable as possible, and we do not let racism, sexism, etc. off the hook - even if perceived as minor. Though we have done our best to formulate our server rules concisely and comprehensively, this list is not all-inclusive and there can always be unforeseen situations that need to be handled on an individual basis.
Please always use Mastodon’s report interface - reports communicated directly to mod/admin accounts (for example via direct message) will not be processed. If for any reason using Mastodon’s report interface is not possible, write us to our admin contact email address as a last resort.
Server-based moderation (blocklist)
Blocklists are a way that a Mastodon instance can handle unwanted content on the instance level. When a Mastodon domain is on our blocklist (see Moderated servers), this means that our admins have limited or completely suspended activity with the server at that domain.
How we curate our blocklist:
- Initial import from the trusted instance mastodon.social
- Adding or removing new instances as needed
Need to add can arise for example when many accounts from a specific instance are reported and if the inadequacy of that instance’s local moderation is known. We try to be reasonable: It can be important to block fast, but too indiscriminate blocking can also be harmful. If you have good reason we should add or remove an instance from our blocklist, please contact us at our admin email address and include clear context.
3 - Server
Technical information about the server and registration
Our server is hosted in the world’s largest data center in France and managed by experienced Mastodon server admins. To support our running costs, please see: Support
Registration
Registration is currently: open
Register here: https://datasci.social/auth/sign_up
Status
Current status: https://stats.uptimerobot.com/DllMwIoAWM
Historical uptimes
| Year | Uptime | Downtime, human-readable |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 99.995% | max. 3 minutes down in 6 weeks |
| 2023 | 99.908% | 40 minutes down per month, on average |
Outages
List of outages: /tags/outage
Current Mastodon version
4.2.12, since 2024-08-20
Miscellaneous
- Custom emojis: https://emojos.in/datasci.social
- mastodon.help directory: https://mastodon.help/instances?id=17318
- instances.social directory: https://instances.social/datasci.social
- Fediverse Observer directory: https://mastodon.fediverse.observer/datasci.social
4 - Server rules
Server rules
This page should always be held in sync with the server rules and therefore be edited only by an admin, so the github change log of this page serves as a rule change log.
- Please don’t be a jerk. We expect to treat each other respectfully.
- No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, or casteism
- No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies
- No harassment, dogpiling, doxxing, or impersonation
- No content that is considered illegal in Denmark or France
- No intentional sharing of false or misleading information
- No spam or commercial advertisements
- Nothing NSFW (not safe for work), such as sexually explicit or violent media
- SIGN-UP: This is not a generalist server but for people working or interested in human-centric data science, broadly defined. Please register here only if that is the case. To get accepted for sign-up, specify your fit in the “Why do you want to join?” field.
5 - Roadmap
List of our short-term and long-term plans
Roadmap post-2023
| Status | Time | Event |
|---|---|---|
| CONDITIONAL | If at any point active members grow too fast, close registrations temporarily, monitor server load, and wait for some time for the community to stabilize before deciding on any next steps. Cap the number of active members at a level (order of magnitude 1000), so the community stays manageable. | |
| CONDITIONAL | Depending on need: Adjust server rules and/or community documentation | |
| CONDITIONAL | Depending on need: Extend admin/mod team | |
| CONDITIONAL | Depending on need: Set up a platform for instance meta-discussions | |
| CONDITIONAL | Depending on interest/need: Set up a community-governance structure for community-driven decisions and financing, for example inspired by social.coop. It could be possible to arrive at a governance structure where there is never the danger that one person or a small group can screw up everything. |
Roadmap 2023
| Status | Time | Event |
|---|---|---|
| DONE | 2022‑12‑27 | Set up a blog for communication of instance updates |
| DONE | 2023‑01‑06 | Set up community documentation |
| DONE | 2023‑01‑06 | Assemble admin/mod team |
| DONE | 2023‑01‑06 | Adhere to Mastodon covenant |
| DONE | 2023‑01‑12 | Extend our server capacity one time to accommodate up to 500 active people |
| DONE | 2023‑01‑12 | Open registrations (to grow until 300 active members) |
| DONE | 2023‑02-28 | Set up a donation page to help covering running costs |
6 - Support and financing
How to support us, how we pay our bills
We have yearly running costs of several hundred € for server hosting, maintenance, data backups, and the domain name. To cover these costs we are relying on crowdfunded donations. If you want to support our operation please consider donating - every single € counts!
We appreciate any support - all goes directly to server hosting and maintenance and makes datasci.social possible!
Supporters
Gold Sponsors
Here we list all supporters who currently commit at least 15$ or 15€ per month.
none yet - be the first!
Sponsors
Here we list all supporters who currently commit at least 6$ or 6€ per month.
Benjamin F. Maier · Stephen Davies · Luca Rossi · Yong-Yeol Ahn · Esteban Moro
Backers
Here we list all supporters who currently commit at least 2$ or 2€ per month.
Egor Kotov
2023 Kickstarters
Here we list all supporters who commited any amount in 2023 and helped us kickstart our community.
Benjamin F. Maier · Stephen Davies · Luca Rossi · Egor Kotov · Yong-Yeol Ahn · Esteban Moro · Mikhail Popov
Media
When refering to us, feel free to use our server banner: