There's a bit of a storm happening around the criteria for joining http://fediscience.org - the Mastodon instance for scientists, on which I'm hosted.
It's been noted that the requirement to be a publishing scientist (who has published in the past 5 years) will exclude many junior scientists, retired sciences, and those who have maybe switched to teaching.
I agree with these concerns and wonder if the criteria can be changed to be more inclusive?
@pwgtennant more old white guys gate-keeping knowledge, access, and opportunity with academic dog whistles.
@pwgtennant not you but sure sounds like SSDD from those calling themselves senior scientists.
@pwgtennant @hikenwoodwork Do please spare a thought for the two admins who volunteer their spare time to run fediscience.org. They've been extremely busy these last couple of weeks.
They have always stated clearly this instance is for publishing scientists, and chose a simple way to operationalize that, so they don't spend forever making judgment calls, and don't end up with unmanageable growth. The whole point of the fediverse is that each instance can remain small and manageable.
@steve @pwgtennant @hikenwoodwork It is a practical issue, and I think what we as users need to do is to propose easily operable criteria (if they were to be changed at all). What I don't like is when well-known tropes such as ivory towers, gatekeeping etc are simply re-iterated. On that note, I suggest that everyone drop their explicit mention of "PhD" or "Dr" in their profile names for the sake of less academic fence building and more inclusiveness 🙂
@steve @pwgtennant understood. Apologies as I may have let my disdain for structural challenges speak first. I know it has been a very busy time for all admins.
@hikenwoodwork I'm not going to make inferences about the age or ethnicity of the server hosts. Unless you mean me! I do think it would be good to make things more open if possible.