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ChiveChive

Community Guidelines

Effective date: March 2, 2026

1. Our Mission

Chive exists to advance scholarly communication through decentralized, community-governed infrastructure. These guidelines establish expectations for behavior on the platform to maintain a productive, inclusive environment for researchers, reviewers, and contributors.

2. Our Pledge

We pledge to make participation in Chive a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.

3. Expected Behavior

  • Use welcoming and inclusive language
  • Respect differing viewpoints and experiences
  • Accept constructive criticism gracefully
  • Engage in scholarly discourse with intellectual honesty
  • Focus on what is best for the community
  • Show empathy towards other community members

4. Unacceptable Behavior

  • Harassment, trolling, or insulting/derogatory comments
  • Personal or political attacks
  • Public or private harassment
  • Publishing others' private information without explicit permission (doxxing)
  • Plagiarism, data fabrication, or research misconduct
  • Spam, excessive self-promotion, or off-topic content
  • Hate speech or discrimination against any group
  • Tag spam (abusive, irrelevant, or excessive tags on eprints)
  • Authority abuse (creating fake authority records, vandalizing established records, or adding offensive variant forms)
  • Facet misuse (deliberately misclassifying eprints with incorrect PMEST facet values)
  • Edit warring (repeatedly reverting knowledge graph edits without seeking consensus)
  • Any other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional academic setting

5. Content Standards

Eprints

Submissions should be scholarly in nature. Chive is a platform for academic research, not a general-purpose publishing tool.

Reviews

Reviews should critique the work, not the person. Focus on methodology, evidence, and conclusions.

Acceptable: "This paper's methodology is flawed because the sample size is insufficient for the claims made."

Not acceptable: "The author clearly doesn't understand basic statistics and should go back to school."

Tags

Tags should be relevant to the eprint they are applied to. Promotional tags, profanity, and irrelevant terms are not permitted.

Knowledge Graph

Contributions to the knowledge graph (field proposals, authority records, facet classifications) should follow established classification standards. When disagreements arise, seek consensus through discussion before making repeated changes.

6. Community Participation Levels

Chive has graduated participation levels, each with increasing permissions:

Guest

Read and browse eprints.

Registered User

Submit eprints, write reviews, and add tags.

Verified Author

Endorse eprints and vote on knowledge graph proposals.

Trusted Contributor

Propose knowledge graph nodes, approve edits, and propose facet classifications.

Moderator

Review reports, take moderation actions, and resolve edit disputes.

Core Team

Policy decisions, governance, and platform administration.

7. Enforcement

Reporting

If you experience or witness unacceptable behavior, you can report it through the platform's report mechanism or by emailing admin@chive.pub with:

  • Your contact information
  • Names or identifiers of individuals involved
  • Description of the behavior
  • Links to relevant content
  • Any additional context

Reports will be reviewed within 2 business days.

Consequences

Moderators may take escalating action depending on severity and history:

  1. Warning -- a private, written warning explaining the violation.
  2. Content removal -- the offending content is removed from Chive's index. The content remains in the author's PDS.
  3. Temporary suspension -- 7 to 30 day suspension from Chive.
  4. Permanent ban -- permanent removal from Chive.

Critical violations (hate speech, research misconduct, plagiarism) may result in immediate content removal or suspension without prior warning.

8. Appeals

If you believe a moderation action was made in error, you may submit an appeal to admin@chive.pub within 14 days of the action. Include:

  • The original report or action reference
  • Your reason for appealing
  • Any new information relevant to the case

Appeals will be reviewed by a different moderator within 7 business days.

9. Scope

These guidelines apply to all Chive-operated spaces, including:

  • The Chive website and application
  • Eprint submissions, reviews, and comments
  • Knowledge graph contributions and discussions
  • Tags and endorsements
  • The Chive GitHub repository

10. Attribution

These Community Guidelines are adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 2.1, with additions specific to scholarly communication and the AT Protocol.

11. Changes

These guidelines may be updated from time to time. Changes will be posted on this page with an updated effective date.