Community Roles and Moderation

Supporting safe, respectful, and accountable participation

Community activity depends on clear roles, responsible conduct, appropriate moderation, and proportionate accountability.

The Commons is intended to support serious academic, professional, institutional, community-based, and public-interest dialogue. It should enable participants to exchange ideas, question assumptions, share evidence and experience, form working relationships, and develop knowledge without harassment, discrimination, manipulation, unauthorized disclosure, or improper influence.

Community Roles and Moderation explains the responsibilities of participants, coordinators, moderators, working-group leads, project leads, advisers, contributors, and Commons administrators.

It also explains how the Commons supports constructive discussion, addresses concerns, manages conduct, and protects people, projects, information, and the integrity of knowledge activity.

Moderation is not intended to suppress legitimate disagreement, critical inquiry, or informed challenge.

Its purpose is to ensure that participation remains respectful, relevant, safe, accountable, and consistent with the Commons’ Principles and Values.

Purpose and Scope

Community Roles and Moderation establishes the responsibilities, boundaries, and standards that support safe, respectful, intellectually credible, and accountable participation across the Community layer of the Commons.

Community brings together Members, Community Groups, Critical Issues, Working Spaces, Events and Learning activities, discussions, resources, and related forms of shared participation. Such activity may involve people with different knowledge, responsibilities, institutional affiliations, professional standing, cultural backgrounds, political views, lived experiences, interests, and levels of authority.

These differences can enrich inquiry. They may also create risks where roles are unclear, power is uneven, conflicts of interest are concealed, confidential information is disclosed, disagreement becomes personal, or participants attempt to exercise authority they do not hold.

Clear roles and proportionate moderation help the Commons to:

• Make participation expectations understandable.
• Distinguish Commons Membership from Group participation and Working Space access.
• Protect participants from harassment, discrimination, intimidation, exploitation, and improper influence.
• Support constructive disagreement and critical inquiry.
• Protect personal, confidential, sensitive, restricted, culturally protected, or security-sensitive information.
• Clarify who may coordinate, moderate, facilitate, review, advise, edit, or make decisions.
• Ensure that formal matters are directed to the appropriate research, editorial, governance, Membership, project, legal, safeguarding, data, or Partnership process.
• Preserve the integrity, usefulness, accessibility, and public-interest purpose of Community activity.

Moderation is not intended to suppress legitimate disagreement, critical inquiry, informed challenge, or evidence-based criticism.

Its purpose is to maintain a Community environment in which participation remains respectful, relevant, safe, proportionate, and consistent with the Commons’ Principles and Values.

Community Roles

Commons Members and Participants

A Commons Member is a registered person, or an authorized representative participating through an Institutional Membership arrangement, whose access is determined by the relevant Membership level and permissions.

A Community participant may read, follow, discuss, attend, contribute to, facilitate, advise on, or otherwise take part in Community activity according to the access conditions of the relevant Group, Working Space, Event, Critical Issue, or other Commons setting.

A registered Commons Member who has joined a Community Group may participate more fully in that Group’s activity. A Member who has not joined a particular Group may have limited access according to that Group’s stated conditions.

Participation does not automatically confer authority to represent the Group, speak for the Commons, make decisions, access restricted information, approve research, direct a project, influence publication, commit resources, or enter a Partnership.

Participants are people who join, read, discuss, share resources, attend relevant activities, or otherwise contribute to a community activity

Participants may be public visitors, registered non-members, Individual Members, authorized representatives of Institutional Members, volunteers, advisers, project participants, or other approved contributors.

Participants may:

• Read and contribute to relevant discussion.
• Share appropriate resources.
• Ask questions.
• Offer professional, academic, community, or lived-experience perspectives.
• Participate in events and working groups.
• Identify gaps, risks, opportunities, or possible next steps.
• Suggest relevant links to research, publications, Repository records, events, or other Commons activity.
• Request clarification.
• Raise a concern through the appropriate route.

Participants should:

• Contribute in good faith.
• Treat others with dignity and respect.
• Remain relevant to the purpose of the relevant activity.
• Distinguish evidence, interpretation, professional judgment, personal opinion, practice knowledge, community knowledge, and lived experience where relevant.
• Attribute ideas, evidence, data, resources, and contributions appropriately.
• Respect privacy, confidentiality, consent, access restrictions, data obligations, and cultural protocols.
• Disclose relevant conflicts of interest.
• Recognise differences in role, authority, experience, knowledge, and power.
• Raise questions, concerns, and disagreement constructively.
• Respect the responsibilities of coordinators, moderators, editors, reviewers, and administrators.
• Refer formal matters to the appropriate Commons pathway.

Participants must not harass, threaten, intimidate, discriminate against, degrade, exploit, misrepresent, or personally attack others. They must not plagiarize, fabricate, falsify, make unfounded allegations, disclose protected material, misuse personal data, circumvent access conditions, or present informal discussion as formal Commons policy, approved research, a Journal Publication, institutional decision, or authorized project commitment.

Community Group Coordinators

Community Group coordinators support the purpose, continuity, and appropriate development of a Group.

They may welcome participants, maintain the Group description and scope, encourage relevant activity, connect people and resources, support Events and Learning, identify unanswered questions, help Members find appropriate next pathways, and work with moderators or Commons administrators where concerns arise.

A coordinator does not own the Group and does not automatically have authority over research, editorial decisions, Membership, funding, institutional commitments, project approval, data access, or governance matters.

Working Space and Working Group Leads

Working Space and Working Group leads support defined activity within agreed terms.

They may clarify scope, coordinate meetings and communications, maintain appropriate records, track actions and milestones, identify risks, support participant access, prepare agreed outputs, and refer decisions to the responsible authority.

They must operate within the approved purpose, timeframe, access conditions, and governance arrangements of the Working Space or project.

Moderators

Moderators support safe, respectful, relevant, and accountable participation.

They may remind participants of standards; redirect off-topic activity; request clarification, attribution, or declaration of interest; address spam and duplication; restrict, hide, preserve, or remove content; issue warnings; temporarily restrict participation; and refer serious concerns to the Commons administration or an appropriate authority.

Moderators should act consistently, proportionately, and within the scope of their authority. They should consider the purpose of the space, seriousness of the concern, risk to people or information, applicable confidentiality or safeguarding requirements, and whether clarification, correction, redirection, restriction, or immediate escalation is required.

Moderators must not use their role to silence good-faith criticism, protect preferred viewpoints, favour particular people or institutions, or make decisions beyond their authority.

Critical Issues Editorial Roles

Critical Issues may involve Critical Issues Editors, Issue Curators, reviewers, invited contributors, editorial advisers, and other defined role holders.

These roles are distinct from ordinary Community moderation.

Editorial role holders may approve propositions, define editorial scope, invite or approve contributors, appoint reviewers, manage conflicts of interest, assess submissions, make publication decisions, manage approved responses or rejoinders, address corrections and withdrawals, and arrange appropriate Repository preservation.

Editorial authority does not replace formal research, institutional, legal, governance, or Partnership authority. Likewise, Community moderation does not determine whether a formal Critical Issues contribution is suitable for publication.

Advisers, Reviewers, and Contributors

The Commons may invite advisers, reviewers, specialists, speakers, community representatives, data stewards, facilitators, translators, accessibility contributors, or others to provide defined input.

Their role, authority, access, attribution, confidentiality, consent, and conflict-of-interest arrangements should be clear.

No person should be assumed to represent an entire community, profession, institution, identity, place, discipline, or experience merely because they have relevant expertise or lived experience.

Conduct, Boundaries, and Disagreement

The Commons welcomes reasoned disagreement. Serious academic, professional, institutional, and public-interest inquiry requires the ability to question evidence, assumptions, methods, interpretations, practices, priorities, and proposed actions.

Constructive disagreement should focus on ideas and evidence; represent the views of others accurately; explain the basis of challenge; recognise uncertainty and complexity; allow reasonable opportunity for response; and avoid assumptions about motive where evidence is absent.

The Commons does not permit content or conduct that promotes hostility, hatred, exclusion, discrimination, degradation, collective blame, harassment, or violence on the basis of religion or belief, ethnicity, tribe, nationality, race, colour, ancestry, language, gender, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, age, social origin, or another relevant personal characteristic.

Participants must not use slurs, dehumanising language, degrading stereotypes, claims of inherent group superiority or inferiority, or collective allegations against identifiable groups.

The Commons may examine religion, belief, ethnicity, tribe, race, gender, culture, identity, inequality, discrimination, conflict, public policy, and historical experience as serious subjects of inquiry. Such examination must be evidence-informed, context-sensitive, respectfully expressed, and attentive to the dignity and rights of people affected.

The Commons also does not provide a platform for electoral campaigning, political-party advocacy, partisan mobilization, lobbying presented as scholarly inquiry, personal attack, defamatory claims, or unsupported allegations.

Commons Administration

The Commons administration is responsible for the formal management and oversight of Community. spaces.

Its responsibilities may include:

• Creating, configuring, reviewing, merging, archiving, and closing Community Groups and Working Spaces.
• Setting or approving access conditions.
• Appointing, supporting, reviewing, or removing coordinators and moderators.
• Maintaining relevant guidance and participation standards.
• Managing serious moderation concerns.
• Supporting accessibility and inclusion.
• Managing user accounts and permissions.
• Maintaining records of significant decisions.
• Referring matters to governance, editorial, research, data, legal, safeguarding, or institutional processes where appropriate.
• Ensuring that Community. activity remains connected to the wider Commons.

The Commons administration should act proportionately, consistently, transparently where possible, and within its delegated authority.

Conflicts of Interest and Improper Influence

Participants and role holders should disclose interests that may affect, or reasonably appear to affect, their judgment or participation.

Relevant interests may include employment, consultancy, funding, ownership, institutional affiliation, intellectual-property interests, personal relationships, competing proposals, prior involvement, public advocacy, or relationships with partners, providers, funders, or affected communities.

A conflict of interest does not automatically prevent participation. It may require disclosure, recusal, independent review, alternative moderation, separation of duties, restricted access, or another appropriate safeguard.

No participant, institution, partner, funder, provider, editor, reviewer, or role holder may use Community activity to pressure others to reach predetermined research findings, editorial conclusions, provider selections, project decisions, governance outcomes, or public statements.

Constructive Disagreement

The Commons welcomes reasoned disagreement.

Academic, professional, and public-interest knowledge work depends on the ability to question methods, assumptions, claims, interpretations, and proposed actions.

Constructive disagreement should:

• Focus on evidence, ideas, methods, reasoning, or stated positions.
• Represent the views of others accurately.
• Ask questions in good faith. Explain the basis of disagreement.
• Recognize uncertainty and complexity.
• Avoid personal attack.
• Avoid assumptions about motive where evidence is absent.
• Respect confidentiality and applicable processes.
• Allow reasonable opportunity for response.
• Recognize that different forms of knowledge may be relevant to different parts of a question.

Disagreement should not become a means of silencing people with less institutional power, dismissing lived experience, protecting vested interests, or obstructing legitimate inquiry.

Reporting, Response, and Review

Participants should report concerns promptly through the appropriate Commons route.

Concerns may include harassment, discrimination, identity-based hostility, threats, intimidation, unauthorized disclosure, privacy or data concerns, breach of confidentiality, plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, misrepresentation, conflict of interest, safeguarding concerns, improper influence, misuse of a Group or Working Space, moderator conduct, access barriers, or conduct that threatens the integrity of Commons activity.

Moderation responses should be proportionate. They may include an informal reminder, request for clarification, request for evidence or attribution, redirection, editing or removal of inappropriate material, temporary hiding of content, warning, restriction of participation, removal from a Group or Working Space, temporary suspension, referral to a formal process, or permanent removal in serious or repeated cases.

Serious matters may require referral to Commons governance, editorial processes, institutional authorities, safeguarding procedures, data-protection processes, legal advisers, project leadership, or another competent authority.

Participants affected by a significant moderation, access, role, or conduct decision should have access to an appropriate review route. A review should consider authority, process, relevant information, conflicts of interest, proportionality, and any significant new evidence, while respecting confidentiality, safeguarding, legal, data, and institutional requirements.

Moderation and role-related decisions should be capable of review where appropriate.

A participant who believes that a moderation decision, access restriction, role decision, or conduct finding was unfair may use the relevant review or appeal route.

The review process should consider:

• Whether the decision was made by an authorized person.
• Whether applicable standards and procedures were followed.
• Whether relevant information was considered.
• Whether conflicts of interest were managed.
• Whether the response was proportionate.
• Whether new information has emerged.
• Whether confidentiality, safeguarding, data, legal, or institutional requirements affect what can be disclosed.

Not every disagreement with a moderator or coordinator requires formal appeal. However, serious decisions affecting access, membership, role appointment, safety, reputation, or significant participation rights should have an appropriate review mechanism.

Community Roles and Moderation are working well when participants understand their rights, responsibilities, and limits; when Membership, Group participation, Working Space access, and formal authority are clearly distinguished; and when role holders act within defined terms.

They work well when constructive disagreement is possible, identity-based hostility and discrimination are prevented, conflicts are disclosed and managed, protected information is safeguarded, serious concerns are addressed fairly, and moderation protects people and inquiry without becoming a means of control or exclusion.

Community Participation and Lived Experience explains how the Commons supports meaningful, ethical, inclusive, safe, and non-extractive participation by communities, affected groups, and people with relevant lived experience.