Rainbow Materia Guidelines
Some things to remember when taking part in the community
Some things to remember when taking part in the community
Every visitor to Rainbow Materia has a right to be safe, welcomed, and comfortable – regardless of their personal identity or circumstances.
Like all communities, Rainbow Materia has a set of guidelines that we ask all of our visitors to follow at all times, in order to keep the atmosphere healthy and to allow for a variety of voices and viewpoints.
These guidelines apply at all times, on all Rainbow Materia platforms – including our Discord, our social media accounts, and when interacting with us elsewhere on the internet.
This rule covers quite a few different things, so let’s break it down:
Rainbow Materia is an open and positive community. Any sort of abusive, belittling, or actively harmful language – known as flaming for short – is strictly forbidden, and you are required to be respectful of others at all times, even if you disagree with them.
Please remember that Rainbow Materia is an LGBTQIA2S+ community first and foremost, but we also welcome allies with open arms.
What this means in practice is that we’re not a place for bashing people outside the community, and our goal will always be to build a safe, tolerant space for anyone who needs one. While we fully understand the need to blow off steam and vent about larger society, please refrain from attacking (for example) all straight people, or all cisgender people.
We expect basic etiquette to be followed – for example:
While the community is often home to meaningful and serious debates, we expect everyone to be deliberate in how they approach them. While disagreements are part of any healthy community, be sure to respectfully criticise the ideas being put forward (whilst remaining open to them), not the people making them.
Not everyone holds the same opinions, and it is important to allow everyone in the community to have a voice. Be sure to respect these differences and allow others an equal chance to speak, even if you disagree with them.
We all react to different issues in different ways. It’s important that we acknowledge that and work to allow everyone to feel comfortable. We ask that you do your best to be respectful of this. This includes:
Some of our community members have health conditions which must be taken into consideration when posting here. For example, flashing images can cause epileptic seizures - which can be extremely dangerous. As a result, flashing imagery must not be posted anywhere on the server, even under a spoiler tag.
Please note that due to this rule’s severity, we reserve the right to issue permanent bans if we believe that the flashing imagery was posted intentionally.
Our goal will always be to build a safe, tolerant space for anyone who needs one. That said, we are well aware that tolerance is a two-way street. Our tolerance and kindness only extends to those willing to show us - and the entire Rainbow Materia community - that same tolerance and kindness.
This means that hate speech is strictly banned in all forms, and may result in instant removal from the community without warning. This includes (but is not limited to):
Please note that support for organisations, political parties or governments that support hateful views is also banned.
This is a SFW (safe for work) community, and as such everything here should be suitable for those aged under 18.
This means strictly no discussion or imagery of genitals or sexual acts, and no solicitation of other members. While we generally allow double entendres and puns, please remember to moderate your use of them - the odd comment is fine, but we don’t want to be turning the air blue with filthy humour.
Most of our interpretation of what is and isn’t safe for work follows Western cultural standards, but please be aware of the following notes:
As what is and is not acceptable under this rule may be open to interpretation, please contact staff if you have any questions about whether something is or is not allowed.
It should go without saying, but please don’t post anything illegal, such as pirated content – such as games, video, ROMs of copyrighted content, and so on – or provide instructions on how to find such content.
Please note that this includes fansubbed anime and scanlated manga.
When posting art or other creative content, please be sure to credit the original source. This can be done as easily as linking to where you found the content, or including the artist’s name alongside the content. This is so that work posted here is respectful to the original artist, proper credit is given to them, and so that we have an easy way to verify that the image is suitable for reposting.
Please note that memes are generally exempt from this rule due to their nature, as they take on a life of their own and are difficult to trace back to an original creator.
It is no secret that almost all LGBTQIA+ people have their lives politicised at every turn, and as a result, one of the main goals of Rainbow Materia is to offer a sanctuary where visitors are invited to be themselves, without having to explain or justify their own existence.
As such, we ask that topics of a political nature are handled with sensitivity and tact at all times. While this doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to discuss politics at all, it does mean that such discussions be taken with kindness, respect, and tolerance for those around you.
As many in our community have been directly harmed by toxic politics, please do not attempt to start political or ideological debates anywhere on Rainbow Materia.
Please do not abuse functionality provided by Discord or our Discord bots. This includes:
@everyone or @here either directly or via a botThese guidelines should be taken as an indication for how to act here at Rainbow Materia, not as commandments cast in stone. Please treat everyone else here as if they are working in good faith, and be sure to act in good faith yourself in return.
As part of this, we may sometimes need to issue warnings for behaviour that does not fit the spirit of the community, even if it’s technically within the letter of the guidelines. We will only do this in cases where the community is actively being harmed.
As part of our expectation that you act in good faith, we ask that you do not try to manipulate these guidelines to justify doing something that should reasonably not be allowed, or try to argue semantics to get out of punishments for breaking the rules.
Please note that our Discord server, like all other Discord servers, follows the Discord Community Guidelines. We reserve the right to submit reports to Discord if necessary. You can click here to read the Discord Community Guidelines.
These guidelines may be updated at any time, including if an omission or loophole is discovered. These changes may happen for a number of reasons, and are often to clarify the enforcement of a particular section, or to address issues that may not have come up before.
Whenever we update the guidelines, we will post an announcement describing the changes, and will keep a log of updates to this document accessible at all times.
Please note that by using Rainbow Materia, you agree to follow the latest version of these guidelines
If you have any questions about these guidelines, or want clarification on how we would enforce them in any given situation, please reach out to a member of staff and we will be happy to help.
There are a few ways to contact us if you need to:
Our primary means of contact is via @Feo Ul#2288 on Discord. Feo Ul is our modmail bot, which means that DMs sent to them will be opened as tickets that anyone on the staff team can review and respond to.
This means you’ll get a quicker response, as any appropriate staff member can respond and discuss your issue with you, without needing you to guess who’s available to help.
If you would prefer to be assisted by someone with particular experience, please specify in your message and we will honour your request if at all possible.
If you’d like to contact a member of staff directly, you can send any of us a Direct Message via Discord. You might choose to do this if you wish to speak to someone in particular, or if your issue is sensitive. Please note that contacting a staff member directly may mean that you take longer to receive a reply.
We maintain a #🗨community-feedback channel to allow the community to make suggestions and ask questions in an open space. If you wish to contact us to give us feedback, suggestions, or discuss how the community is structured and operated, you are welcome to use this channel to do so.
The Rainbow Materia staff may occasionally have to step in to enforce our guidelines if they are not being followed. How we act in these cases varies based on the severity of the behaviour, and whether it is causing harm or not.
We do not operate any sort of three-strike system, as they do not allow us to be flexible in our moderation - sometimes we may wish to be more compassionate than a system allows for; conversely, we may need to take swifter and stricter action to address an issue immediately.
Instead, we use the following steps in order to determine how to act when needed:
| Situation | Staff action | |
|---|---|---|
1 | There is an ongoing or escalating situation, and staff present need time to decide upon an appropriate response. | Apply slowmode or targeted timeouts to allow for room to make clear and considered decisions. |
2 | There is a clear demonstration of overt trolling, hate speech, or harassment. | Consider an immediate ban or timeout. |
3 | There is evidence of direct harm or offense - for example, hate speech, harassment, or wilfully triggering others. | Decide whether to apply a ban or to timeout and warn, as appropriate. The length of the timeout may vary depending on the situation. |
4 | A members’ behaviour is against the guidelines, and they have previously received warnings for the same or similar behaviour, or have actively continued the behaviour despite being asked to stop. | If a member has been asked to cease disruptive behaviour and is continuing, apply a timeout as needed, and consider issuing a warning or ban. If a member has a previous informal warning, consider issuing a formal warning. If a member has a previous formal warning, consider escalating to a timeout, or a ban if there is no sign of improved behaviour. |
5 | A member has posted something against the guidelines without urgent or repeated circumstances. | Decide whether to give an informal or formal warning, depending on the severity of the guideline break. |
6 | A member has been directly harmed by another member’s behaviour. | If the behaviour happened in a public space, confirm any staff actions taken in that same space. Reach out to the affected member via modmail or DM to offer support. |
7 | A member has been issued a temporary ban or timeout which has involved them being removed from the community. | Attempt to reach out to the member and inform them that they are now welcome back in the community. Monitor the situation as appropriate. |
Not every situation can be resolved in the same way, and what might be appropriate for one situation may not work for another. As such, we have two different types of warnings that we can use as needed: informal warnings and formal warnings.
Informal warnings are where a staff member contacts you to let you know that your behaviour is outside our guidelines, so that you can adjust accordingly. As the name implies, this will usually take the form of a light reminder about what we expect - for example, if we ask you to spoiler an image, or to move a discussion to a more appropriate channel.
These warnings are given so that you know we’d like you to stop a particular behaviour - they won’t affect your ability to use the community. However, if you repeatedly do the same things that we gave you an informal warning for, we may choose to give you a formal warning instead, as described below.
Formal warnings are used when we need to correct a more severe break in our guidelines. These warnings will be communicated to you directly by a member of staff as described below, and will be clearly marked as being a formal warning. You will also get a notice from Mitsuha, our moderation bot, that the warning has been recorded.
It is very important that you heed a formal warning. If we give you a formal warning and you repeat the same behaviour, we may need to escalate to a timeout or ban.
Whenever we take action to protect the community, we will endeavour to tell you what we are doing and why we are doing it as quickly as we can. How we do this depends on what we’re doing,
In the case of channel-wide actions such as slowmodes or channel locks, we will let you know what we have done within that channel.
Informal warnings will usually be shared with you in response to the behaviour we’re warning for - for example, if we need to ask you to spoiler tag an image, we’ll usually tag you in the same channel as that post so you can easily see the context.
In some cases, we may choose to contact you directly instead, using the process defined below.
If we need to issue you a formal warning, timeout, or ban, we will attempt to do this using our modmail system. This involves us sending you a Discord direct message via our modmail bot, @Feo Ul#2288.
However, a member of staff may need to send you a direct message from their personal account if needs be - for example, if your privacy settings prevent Feo Ul from sending you a DM. You may be sent a friend request from the staff member issuing a warning, timeout, or ban in this case. Note that we will keep a record of all communication made this way in case we need to review it in the event of an appeal, or if the behaviour is repeated.
If we are unable to reach you privately, we may need to tell you about the action we take in a public channel. If this happens, we will let you know what has happened in brief, then invite you to contact us for full details, to ask questions, or to appeal the warning. Please note that any follow-up communication must be done via DM or another private medium to allow the channel to be used by others for its intended purpose.
In addition, we may need to let others affected by the behaviour know what has happened, in order to support them or to help with conflict resolution. In these cases, we will only give brief, directly relevant details: for example, we may say that we have given out a warning, but we wouldn’t share details on any other warnings we have given.
Any staff conduct, as well as punishments such as warnings or bans, can be appealed by contacting @Feo Ul#2288 on Discord. This opens a modmail with the staff team, who will independently review your appeal. If the appeal regards a specific staff member, they will not be part of the appeal process.
If our review shows that a staff member acted in error when issuing a warning, timeout, or ban, it will be removed from the system and will no longer count against you.
Named such after this magnificent comic. ↩︎