We’ve received multiple requests in the LGBTQIA+ thread and in independent communications over the long weekend. We would like to at least provide clarity into our policies and our actions. We will go into detail shortly, but here’s a short summary:
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We start with the assumption that people mean well, as we’ve stated in our Community Guidelines.
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Intentional misuse of pronouns is not appropriate behavior on iNaturalist. We view this behavior as hate speech against gender as a protected attribute. We have also made it clear that we consider it disrespectful in our Community Guidelines.
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Four posts in this topic were flagged as inappropriate. One we judged inappropriate with regards to our Community Guidelines so we hid it. Another we judged to be disrespectful, but it also became an important part of the conversation, so we agreed with the flag but left the content up. The third we judged to be appropriate and dismissed the flag.
On to the details:
Who is speaking
I am writing on behalf of the iNat Community Circle, a group of paid staff who support our Outreach and Community Coordinator in issues relating to content and community moderation. This group is voluntary but open to any member of iNat staff. It currently includes both myself and iNat’s other co-director, Scott, along with Carrie and Tony. When I say “we” I am referring to the Community Circle. We formed the Community Circle in August of 2022.
Our Process
We delegate much of the moderation work on iNat to the Forum mods and iNat curators, but the Community and Support Coordinator represents staff in performing most official decision-making. When that person thinks an issue merits other perspectives, the Community Circle meets to make collective, consent-based decisions.
iNat has no police force monitoring every single thing that is said in every discussion we host. Volunteer and professional moderators respond when people flag content they find objectionable, and they do their best to apply our Community Guidelines and our own judgment to each case. Literally judging every single piece of content for appropriateness would require algorithmic moderation, a technology that we have not discussed but that I don’t think anyone on staff is comfortable with.
Regarding technologies and capabilities, flags on Discourse (this discussion platform) can be ignored, they can be rejected if the mods don’t agree the flagged content was inappropriate, or they can be approved with a variety of options, including hiding the content, leaving the content in place, suspending the author of the flagged post, etc. Discourse does not provide an option for mods to explain why they took the course of action they did aside from additional posts like this.
Our Decisions and Actions Here
Last Friday there were many posts in this topic, and three of the posts were flagged as inappropriate. Tony decided to put the topic in slow mode, which limits people to one post per unit time (he chose 1 every 30 minutes). The purpose of slow mode is to give everyone a chance to participate and have time to compose a considered response. He also asked the Community Circle for help, so we all read through the posts and met that afternoon to discuss the flagged posts and further moderation actions.
Three posts in this topic were flagged as inappropriate on Friday. The first was https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lgbtqia-and-inaturalist/23565/269, in which the author wrote,
As I was raised, referring to a human as “it” was to insult that person, to treat him/her/whatever as non-human. Therefore, I’m not going to do it.
We view the expression of misgivings about using a pronoun that has historically been used to belittle and demean people as appropriate, but we view the stated intent not to use the pronouns an individual has asked others to use as disrespectful, so we accepted the flag to express our agreement that the post contained inappropriate content, but we left the post up because there were many constructive responses to it, and we felt that removing it would remove important context for anyone reading the discussion. Furthermore, we applied our own guideline to “assume people mean well”, in addition to the explanatory context the author provided, and viewed the post as a mostly well-intentioned attempt by the author to engage in discussion by disclosing her own feelings. The part that was inappropriate did not cross the line into our definitions of hate speech or insult because they require intent to do harm.
The second flagged post made assumptions about how trans people think and feel which we viewed as insulting and not productive to the discussion about the use of pronouns, so we accepted that flag and hid the post. We cannot link to it here since it is hidden, and restating the inappropriate content would defeat the purpose of hiding it.
The third post was https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lgbtqia-and-inaturalist/23565/302. We view some of the phrasing as bordering on inappropriate, but largely in the service of honesty and not in an attempt to attack or offend anyone. We view this kind of honesty as a requirement for discussions that lead toward increased understanding of the diversity within any community. Furthermore, we could not find a way in which this post violated our Community Guidelines, in isolation or in the context of the author’s history on iNat. Thus, we rejected the flag because we view that post as appropriate.
A fourth post was flagged on Tuesday: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/lgbtqia-and-inaturalist/23565/271. Like the third, these are honest expressions of opinion and we see no violation of our Community Guidelines, so we rejected the flag because we judged the content to be appropriate.
Other Actions
Today the Community Circle met to decide how to respond to various requests we received over the weekend and new flags in the topic. These are the actions we decided on:
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Making this explanatory reply so everyone has insight into our process, our interpretation of our own policies, and our actions
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Specifying in this post that intentional misgendering is not tolerated in the thread.
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Updating our Community Guidelines to explicitly state that we view intentional misuse of pronouns as disrespectful