Server rules

Below is a summary of rules you need to follow if you want to have an account on this server of Mastodon:

1. Prove you Read the Rules: Your application must include the CONFIRMATION PASSWORD at the end of the full Etiquette. Applications without it will be rejected unless sufficiently detailed.
2. Be Decent: Do not insult, doxx or harass. Do not spread conspiracy theories and misinformation.
3. Be Sentient: Do not create bot or brand accounts without permission.
4. Be Active: Crossposting is only allowed if you regularly check your account.
5. Be Lawful: No content illegal in Germany, no sexual content without content warnings, no sexual content involving animals, minors, or sexual assault.
6. Be Mindful: Respect the needs of other users. Use content warnings and describe your media.
7. You should still read the full etiquette on this instance's website. These rules are merely a summary.
8. The password to add to your application is: Confelicity.

Welcome to the Dragon's Cave!

The Dragon's cave is a small dragon-themed community of mostly visually impaired folks. Everyone is welcome, however, as long as they are a kind and friendly person. You can expect posts about accessibility, development, gaming, privacy, and other technology related topics, but also food, music, poetry, short stories, and other things of interest.

Are you curious about why you should join this instance over all the others out there? Here are some of the things we offer:

• A cool domain name (at least if you like dragons, but who doesn't?)
• Roars, rather than posts, to fit the draconic theme.
• A small and pleasant local community — with an option of local-only posting if you're feeling shy — as well as plenty of friends awaiting you in the vast Fediverse outside of it.
• Three mostly-benevolent staff members who regularly check and respond to reports, questions, and requests.
• A larger character limit, 2000 instead of 500, so you will always have enough space to express your opinions clearly.
• A few useful features added by the Mastodon fork Hometown (developed by Darius Kazemi), such as the aforementioned local-only posting and bigger character limit, as well as exclusive lists, two more themes, and better formatting of posts from other software in the Fediverse.
• A small collection of custom emojis, which we'll gladly expand upon request.

If this has convinced you, please familiarize yourself with our etiquette and then send us an application! Since we recieve a large volume of spam signups, we would appreciate if you told us a little about yourself and why you wish to join. Remember to include the confirmation password that proves you have read the rules, which you can find below them.

The Dragon's Cave Etiquette

We want this instance to be a welcoming and comfortable space -- idealy for everyone, but most of all for those who are marginalised and cannot as easily find one elsewhere. To achieve this, keep the following five rules in mind. As it would be impossible to include everything, consider them a basic moral framework, which the administrators will use to act upon each individual issue in good faith. However, if you already have the urge to test the limits of these rules, or disagree with some or all of them, this instance is not for you.

1. Be Decent

Do not harass, insult, or otherwise intentionally harm other users of any kind, local or federated. Do not discriminate against people based on any of the various things that make humanity so beautiful and diverse, including but not limited to: age, appearance, body shape and size, disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, race, religion or lack thereof, sexual orientation, etc.

This instance is not the place to debate the existence of so-called reverse racism, or to respond to systemic critiques with the "not all X" defense.

Do not deliberately spread misinformation, including pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Given the dangers of the current situation we find ourselves in, COVID-19 related misinformation will be dealt with especially strictly; do not post or boost any misinformation minimizing the virus's impact, accusing the medical community or affected people of lying, or discouraging social distancing, vaccinations, and the wearing of masks.

2. Be Sentient

Avoid creating advertising or bot accounts on this instance without permission. There may be exceptions, but it is best to consult with the administrators before going ahead. Please consider instead joining one of the specialized instances for bot accounts, which are a better place for your account's visibility and discoverability, as well as the health of our instance's timelines and federation.

3. Be Active

Cross posting (using software to post the same content on multiple social media services) is only allowed if you regularly check your account here and interact with notifications. Please set cross posts to Unlisted or stricter. Do not crosspost content from other people, such as retweets, unless you have their consent to share it on other platforms.

4. Be Lawful

Do not post or link to content that could get us hit with a violation of copyright. Only post personally identifiable information if you have explicit permission to do so. In general, if you are not sure whether or not to share something, it is likely you should not. Keep in mind that this instance is hosted in Germany and thus abides by its laws.

Please post any sexual content as Unlisted or stricter, and make sure to add an appropriate content warning. If you regularly find yourself wanting to post content of sexual nature, this may not be the best instance for you. Do not post any sexualized depictions of animals, minors, or sexual assault, regardless of whether they are real or fictional.

5. Be Mindful

Politics, Religion, and other controversial topics should be posted behind a content warning. Be mindful of people you interact with, as they may have had experiences drastically different from yours, including severe psychological or physical trauma. Content warnings are no inconvenience for you as a user, and will provide a much higher well being for individuals that might want to read your content, but prefer not to get involved in those topics due to various reasons.

What SHOULD contain a CW?: AI content, alcohol or drugs (especially when talking about extreme entoxication or disparaging sobriety), anything of a sexual nature (this should also be Unlisted or stricter), covid-19, physical and mental health, recounting violent or alarming encounters, religion, trauma, war.

Things that are considerate to CW: Eye contact (For images), food, family, long threads, talking about other social media, trending topics, unusual things for you to post about.

Please try to describe your media posts to the best of your ability to accommodate disabilities such as blindness and deafness. If you cannot do so, there is nothing wrong with asking for help. Currently, tagging @ImageCaptionsPls@a.gup.pe is the best way to do so.

The Confirmation Password

You have reached the end of our etiquette. Thank you for your diligence! The password you should add to your application is: confelicity. We chose it because it is a sadly uncommon word, meaning "pleasure in another's happiness."

Instance Administration

Dragon's Cave is moderated by three people: Talon, Estelle and Mayana. We do our best to take care of the instance, but we are just volunteers, and only human. If you come upon any objectionable content, please report it, and we will respond as soon as possible. Additionally, feel free to reach out to us if you would like us to change something about the rules above, the instance moderation actions below, or anything else related to the instance.

If possible, please mention the administration account and not our personal accounts.

Donations

This server is run by volunteers. If you'd like to help keep it running, feel free to donate on Ko-Fi

We are currently looking into setting up a recurring donation service. Once we have one, it will show up here.

Operating costs

Here is a list of all the monthly and yearly expenses to run the Dragon's Cave.

• Server: 42 euro/month
• Email: 36 euro/month
• Media storage: about 5 to 6 euro/month
• Domain: about 17-18 euro/year
• Total: About 85 euros and 30 cents/month

These costs are subject to change depending on the scale of the instance.

Emoji Credits And Descriptions

Most of the custom emoji on this instance are from Mutant Standard, and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All the Mutant Standard emoji are gender-neutral.

Some of the dragon emoji were drawn by Chr@scalie.business and are provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. They are cute, sweet minimalist flat style emojis of yellow, western-styled dragon heads. You can read the descriptions of individual emojis on Chr's Github.

The rest of the dragon emoji are from Volpeon and can be found here.

The eyeless smileys -- descriptions here -- were kindly gifted by LJWrites@rage.love. The eyeless blobcats were made by Pixouls@post.lurk.org; they can be downloaded on their Github.

Lastly, the interaction permit/refusal emoji (at, boost and favorite OK and no), as well as the local_only emoji, which makes it possible to post locally even on clients that otherwise don't support it, were made by Pfx.rage.love. You can find their descriptions in these toots.

Moderated servers

Hometown generally allows you to view content from and interact with users from any other server in the fediverse. These are the exceptions that have been made on this particular server.

Filtered media

Media files from these servers will not be processed or stored, and no thumbnails will be displayed, requiring manual click-through to the original file:

Limited servers

Roars from these servers will be hidden in public timelines and conversations, and no notifications will be generated from their users interactions, unless you are following them:

Suspended servers

No data from these servers will be processed, stored or exchanged, making any interaction or communication with users from these servers impossible: