How do I join?

You can register here.

You don’t need to write a whole essay. However, please answer the question fully, and try to read and engage with at least some of the philosophy of Beehaw. We’ve grown a lot in the past week and are primarily interested in users who really care for the philosophy of our community. If you don’t answer the question fully, you will likely be rejected.

How can I contact you?

You can send us an email!

How long should I expect to wait to be approved?

Anywhere from a few minutes to 48 hours.

You should get notified whether you’ve been approved or denied if you’ve used an email to sign up. Make sure to check your spam folder to be safe. If you did not use an email to sign up, try logging in after about 24 hours, and then again after 48 hours to be safe.

If we receive an influx of users, you may get caught in registration limbo by failing to answer the questions, and/or it may take longer to get back to you than the 48 hours listed here.

If you have issues of this sort, please send us a message on Mastodon or through email!

I’m in! How can I keep Beehaw running, or otherwise contribute?

Our instance is 100% user-funded. You can one-time donate or become a monthly donor here. You can donate anonymously either way.

As far as we’re aware cryptocurrency is accepted by OpenCollective, it’s just more laborious and you’ll probably have to contact them to clear it.

If you have volunteer labor or advice you’re willing to give us on how to keep the site running smoothly, we also generally appreciate that. Our Matrix and Discord communities are the best way to offer that stuff to us.

How do I help keep the community running smoothly?

Be considerate! Think about the things you say and how you want to say them; be kind and charitable; don’t assume the worst of people; but above all: Be(e) nice!

It might seem trite, but genuinely we’ve found there is no better distillation of what we want to accomplish here than that ethos. If something makes you feel like that ethos is being violated, err on the side of caution and report it (on desktop it’s the flag button in the three dot menu on any post). It can’t hurt. So far though we’ve found most people kinda know what we mean, and we’re hopeful you’ll be able to pick up on that too.

As for non-moderation ways you can keep things running: Contribute to discussions! Share stuff you find interesting! Contribute your expertise and help out folks when they ask for it! It’s okay—and very understandable—to lurk based on the toxicity commonplace on other social media. We are really do try to make this space as welcoming as possible to everyone here and we hope you’ll find it a safer place to come out of your online shell.

What else should I know?

We always take feedback. While we can’t promise any changes, you can provide thoughts and comments on just about anything on the site in Beehaw Support, or on Discord or Matrix (where we maintain real-time chat). We try to get a sense of what the community wants and needs all the time, so we’ll frequently be asking for input from you to help inform our decisions.

  • Downvotes are disabled on this instance and will probably always be. we find them unproductive.
  • Communities cannot be made by users on here. we do take feedback on what gets made and when to make communities, as a part of the above point. you can always find a running list of communities we have here, or under the Communities button on desktop.
  • We are all volunteers, and this is not a job for us. we would like to not have it be one, so we can just be members of the community with all of you. please help keep it that way!

In the very, very long term, we aspire to become a co-op or similar, as a part of fulfilling our ethos.

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Last updated 12 Mar 2024, 15:13 -0700 . history