We have some community guidelines that might not be immediately obvious to community members and are therefore quite commonly violated. Here are the most common ones:

Here are some examples of what the Hive moderation team might do in response to a post that is not in line with these guidelines:

• We might ask you to clarify or edit the post, e.g. in cases where its relevance to animal advocacy is unclear (but existent), if its phrasing is off, or formatting too confusing.
• If the message is posted in the wrong channel, we might delete it and send you a copy with some guidance, so that you can choose a correct channel to post in.
• If the message is off-topic for Hive , or exceeds the self-promotion limits, we might delete it, give you a heads-up, and explain what could have been an acceptable alternative (e.g. "Post it later" or "Consider posting in a different community").
• In case of repeated or severe violations, we might disable the member's account and email them an explanation.
• For more information, please review our policy in detail here:

• Guideline: Approach discussions with a Scout mindset - aimed at discovering the truth rather than winning an argument. Focus on understanding the situation as accurately as possible. Aim to inform, rather than persuade and be open to changing your views. When you disagree with someone, approach it with curiosity; try to work out why they think what they think, and what you can learn from each other.
• Reason: Approaching discussions with a scout mindset and being genuinely curious makes it more likely for everyone involved to arrive at the most plausible conclusion. Additionally, not displaying such openness and curiosity may cause others to disengage from discussions if it doesn’t seem that you would change your mind anyway.
• Example:
• Rather than: “Plant-based defaults only work in unis.”
• “I am sceptical about plant-based defaults, because I have only seen evidence showing their effectiveness in universities or schools. Do you know of any studies in other contexts?”
• Notes: You may be always and genuinely open to change your mind, but it may not come across as such. Some pointers to display genuine curiosity are:
• Don’t be more confident about your claims than the reasons you cite warrant.
• Acknowledge and communicate your uncertainties.
• Acknowledge relevant counterpoints that others may raise.

• Guideline: Provide clarity about what you believe, your reasons for believing it, and what would cause you to change your mind. This is especially important for strong, bold, or crucial claims. You don’t need to be an expert or accredited in any way to discuss things. Just be aware and clear about your uncertainties and level of confidence.
• Reason: Being clear about what you believe, why you believe it and what would cause you to change your mind keeps discussions focused and avoids misunderstandings.
• Example:
• Rather than: “Welfare reforms are good”
• "I support welfare reforms, because of this experiment [link] and this historical case study [link] that show indicate thate reforms will lead to more momentum for the animal advocacy movement.. I am open to revisiting my stance if (1) there were more or better experiments/case studies showing that reforms lead to complacency or (2) if there was data suggesting that we are overinvested in welfare reforms (i.e., more than X% in financial resources and/or more than Y% in time or other resources).
• Notes:
• We don’t require community members to be as explicit in all their claims as the example above. Epistemic clarity is especially important for strong claims (e.g., absolute claims like “X is always because of Y.”), bold claims (i.e., claims that many people may disagree with) and crucial claims (i.e., claims about the core disagreement in a discussion). Furthermore, you should be open and expecting to providing epistemic clarity when asked.
• Your reasons for believing something don’t have to be of a certain scientific rigour. It is more important that you acknowledge and communicate your reasons. They can be anecdotal (e.g., “This is just my personal experience, but I feel like…”) or vague (e.g.,”This is an intuition, I can’t quite track it, but…”).
• Some relevant concepts are epistemic legibility, reasoning transparency, and Double-Crux

• Guideline: Try to focus on important questions, and the important parts of important questions, to keep content useful and to the point. Respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Try to identify the crux of your disagreements and discuss them explicitly. Don't derail conversations in irrelevant directions.
• Posts across the Slack should relate to farmed animals or strategies to reduce animal suffering as impactful as we can.
• Posts in specific channels should relate to the topicof the channel.
• Reason: We want to ensure productive and targeted conversations that are action-relevant. Derailing conversations, deliberately straw-manning other peoples’ positions and focusing on minor aspects of a proposition that are not relevant to the core of your disagreement will likely cause a discussion to be unnecessarily lengthy without any actionable or valuable outcome on either side.
• Example :
• Member 1: “I believe that we should promote vegetarianism more broadly.”
• Rather than Member 2: “That’s a bad idea, don’t you know how terrible the dairy and egg industry is? Besides, a vegetarian diet isn’t even healthy.”
• Member 2: “I can see how promoting vegetarianism could act as a good stepping stone for further diet change, but I have concerns about reinforcing beliefs around dairy and eggs being harmless. I think this might outweigh potential benefits.”
• Explainer: While technically possible, it seems unlikely that Member 1 intended to promote vegetarianism as an ideal or harmless diet/lifestyle. The strongest case for promoting vegetarianism might more likely rely on indirect effects such as long-term behavior changes.
• Notes:
• If you are unsure about what the strongest plausible interpretation or the core of the disagreement is, you can always just ask.
• Member 2: “Are you suggesting that vegetarian diets don’t cause that harm or do you have something different/indirect in mind?”
• or Member 2: “Could you explain further why you think this would be a good idea? Dairy and egg products still cause a lot of harm after all.”
• One test to ensure you are on-topic is “If I convinced them/they convinced me of this point I am tackling, would we agree on the original question?”
• For example, even if Members 1 and 2 agreed upon how terrible the dairy and egg industry is, or how healthy a vegetarian diet is, they might still disagree upon whether we should promote vegetarianism more broadly.

• Guideline: Stay civil, at the minimum. Don’t sneer or be snarky. Assume good faith.
• Avoid unnecessary rudeness, offensiveness, mockery, harassment or threats of violence. Hate speech or content that promotes hate based on identity.
• Avoid deliberate provocation, flamebait, or trolling.
• Misgendering deliberately and/or deadnaming gratuitously is not ok, although mistakes are expected and fine (please accept corrections, though).
• Examples. Beyond the obvious cases, such as insults, aggression or cynicism. There are several more subtle ways in which your communication may be perceived as hostile. These include:
• Using condescending language or tone, such as “This should be obvious”
• Dismissing someone’s argument without consideration, e.g., “That’s ridiculous.”
• Making passive-aggressive comments, like “I guess some people just don’t care about animal rights.”
• Making assumptions about someone’s character based on limited information, e.g., “I guess you are just not very open-minded.”
• Ignoring, mocking or discrediting someone’s contribution, e.g., “Your so-called experiments were flawed and non-sensical”
• Notes:
• Whether you are being kind or not
• Written communication is more likely to cause misunderstanding and might therefore more easily lead to heated debates. Assume good faith from other community members and be extra kind and clear. Often times, emojis 😊 are very helpful to communicate that you are still trying to be kind while having a disagreement.
• Small differences between community members are likely exacerbated and over-emphasized not despite, but because of our commonalities. Keep in mind that we are all here for the same reason.

• Materials advocating major harm or illegal activities, or materials that may be easily perceived as such.
• Deliberate misinformation or manipulation.
• Other behavior that interferes with good discourse.