Introduction
Symposia is dedicated to and promotes:
- Kindness
- Equality
- Respect
If you believe that you have experienced or if you witness any form of harassment on our platform, please alert us immediately at team@artsymposia.com.
Purpose
Symposia is committed to providing a safe, welcoming and friendly environment for all users and participants, regardless of race, age, color, religion, creed, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity or expression, including status as a transgender individual, physical or mental disability, alienage or citizenship status, military status, including past, current or prospective service in the uniformed services, genetic information, predisposing genetic characteristic, marital status, domestic violence victim status, familial status, and actual or perceived sexual orientation.
Expected Behavior
We expect all Symposia users and participants to create a safe community for all other users and participants.
As a member of the Symposia community, you are expected to:
- Participate in an authentic and active way and, in doing so, contribute to the health and longevity of our – your - community
- Collaborate and avoid conflict and confrontation – we are all here to help one another and to learn from one another
- Not demean, discriminate, or harass other users and participants
- Be mindful of your fellow users and participants
- Alert us if you notice a dangerous situation, someone in distress, or violations of the community guidelines even if these potential or actual issues may seem inconsequential
Unacceptable Behavior
We consider the following behavior on the Symposia platform, unacceptable:
- Violence, threats of violence or violent language directed against anyone
- Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, ageist or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language
- Posting or displaying, and use of Symposia to post or display, sexually explicit, pornographic or violent material
- Posting or threatening to post other people's personally identifiable information
- Personal insults, particularly those related to gender, age, creed, sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability.
- Unwelcome sexual attention, such as (among other behavior) sexualized comments or jokes
- Deliberate intimidation or stalking
- Sustained disruption of critique rooms
- Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior, through or without the use of Symposia
- Posting or taking credit for art that is not yours.
Mission
Symposia’s mission is to nurture artists and empower them to create value for themselves and for society.
Artists come to Symposia to get feedback on their work and get advice from artists and creatives in an open, positive and supportive environment. Our community team and company actively promote Kindness, Equality, and Respect to help achieve our vision of a world where an artist's only limitation is their imagination.
Community Values
Kindness
Equality
Respect
Principle of Reciprocity
Seek to benefit the community, and you’ll benefit yourself.
What does this mean? Think about the community’s cause and interest when deciding what to post and comment. Share ideas that will resonate with other members at some higher level. If every artist on the Symposia platform uses this as a guiding principle, you can rest assured there will be someone there to answer your question when it arises.
Your Identity
We believe that identity is a powerful tool that can help drive productive and honest conversation, as well as facilitate meaningful relationships.
Like other social networks, discovering and sharing requires being comfortable with allowing others to know you’re a member of the community. Your critiques can be hosted anonymously to conceal your name, but your presence on Symposia is public.
Your private critiques are not seen by anyone but you and who you invite to the critique.
Symposia is a place where you can have open and honest conversations about your artwork or art practice, as well as connect with other artists. No matter how you are looking to use Symposia, our privacy options will always safeguard the content you create.
Zero-Tolerance Standards
Symposia is a unique social platform where you can access an open network of artists. The platform’s open network approach and privacy features are critical in achieving a safe and welcoming community.
With the help of its community, Symposia actively moderates content and suspends users who do not respect the professional nature of the network.
Content should always aim to be professional in nature and relevant to the discussion.
In order to preserve the professional relevance and value of Symposia's communities, content that includes the following will be automatically removed:
Plagiarism
As you share your creativity and original work on our platform, we want to remind you of the importance of respecting intellectual property rights. Plagiarism, or the act of taking credit for someone else's work as your own, is strictly prohibited on the Symposia app.
If you post or take credit for a work that is not your own, it will be subject to removal. You can only share original content that you have created yourself.
If you are inspired by another artist's work in the public domain, it's okay to discuss it with the community, but it's required to clearly state that the work belongs to the original artist. The post will be removed if it is not clearly credited.
Let's all work together to create a respectful and honest community that values and celebrates originality and creativity, while respecting the intellectual property of others.
Content Review
Symposia is neutral towards expressions of opinions, except when those expressions violate or undermine our core community principles of Relevance, Openness, Accountability, Safety, and Connectivity, or our Zero Tolerance Standards.
We view abuse and harassment as a form of censorship - when you abuse someone online, you silence them through your speech. This is different from engaging disagreement, and we expect any member of the Symposia community to be able to discern the difference.
Our definition of trolling involves making deliberately provocative statements to elicit angry responses and derail discussions. We have a zero-tolerance policy toward this behavior.
Content on Symposia can be flagged for review by community members or our content moderation team and/or their automated tools.
Slur or Offensive Stereotype
Trolling
Privacy Concern
Professionally Irrelevant or Spam
Abuse
Excessive negativity not intended to be productive
Safety concern
Enforcement
Every reported incident is reviewed by Symposia. Depending on the circumstances, we reserve the right to take the following actions:
- Alerting you that you’ve been reported and asking you to adjust your contributions to the community.
- The demotion of your content in the community to make it less likely that other users will see it.
- Removal of your flagged content.
- Temporary or permanent suspension of accounts.
- Removal of privileges from, or adding restrictions to, accounts.
- User dismissal from the community.
Suspensions from Symposia can be indefinite or last a set time period depending on the severity of the offense or the number of offenses incurred. Repeated offenses or an egregious first offense can result in permanent or indefinite bans from the community.
Critique Conduct
It is important to maintain a positive and constructive community space to make sure community morale is preserved. We believe every artist should feel responsible with their actions and measure the impact their words have on overall community.
This is why content that doesn’t adhere to Symposia's Community Guidelines and affects community morale can be reported by the community and removed, such as:
- Mean-spirited comments
- Excessively negative statements devoid context or reasoning
- Questions about other non-art related subjects
- Name calling, or strong references to specific people
What might feel good to an individual (like venting) might have a negative ripple effect on the entire community. We believe there are other ways for you to solve issues, like having constructive conversations about the same important topic.
Here are examples to show how you can move from affecting community morale to having a productive conversation.
