Decentralized
Friendly
Anti-Corporate
Outside of a Dog is a generalist Bookwyrm instance. We welcome users from all over the world, commenting on books in any language. Audiobooks are books. Comics are books. Cookbooks are books.
Please read our Code of Conduct to see if this instance is a suitable fit for you.
Outside of a Dog is operated by @futzle@old.mermaid.town.
Outside of a Dog welcomes people of any location, ancestry, gender, religion, etc. While the server is located in Sydney, we are not an Australian-focussed instance.
Registrations are currently open. You will need to provide a reason to join, which will be read by a human. Members can also generate invitations.
Many thanks to scholar.social and mastodon.social, from whom I took/adapted many policies.
The following guidelines are not a legal document, and final interpretation is up to the administration of Outside of a Dog; they are here to provide you with an insight into our content moderation policies:
These provisions notwithstanding, the administration of the service reserves the right to revoke any user's access permissions, at any time, for any reason, except as limited by law.
User-submitted content, including profile information, avatars, uploaded media, posted content, replies and any other information submitted to Outside of a Dog remain the property of the user who submits it (provided they owned it to begin with). As much as is legally possible given the nature of this service, it is the policy of Outside of a Dog that users retain complete creative and legal control of their own submitted material.
Outside of a Dog is committed to providing long-term service to the academic community, and has no plans to shut down.
In the case that Outside of a Dog shuts down, users of Outside of a Dog will be given an advance warning at least six months before the site is closed.
While we strive to provide continuous service and avoid errors and data loss, Outside of a Dog provides no guarantees regarding uptime and cannot be held responsible in the case that account data is lost or corrupted. It is recommended that you export your own data archive periodically. Backing up your account is your own responsibility. Users whose accounts are suspended for breaking our Community Standards will not be given an opportunity to download a copy of their archive.
Yes. Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computer's hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow). These cookies enable the site to recognize your browser and, if you have a registered account, associate it with your registered account.
We use cookies to understand and save your preferences for future visits and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future.
We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information for marketing purposes or to generate revenue. We may release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. Australian law does not always permit us to tell you if we have released your information to law enforcement; in particular, warrant canaries are illegal in Australia.
We are hosted on Linode in Sydney, Australia. Media is stored on Linode in Singapore.
Researchers who wish to study Outside of a Dog or our users by collecting data using the API or through any other means that does not involve an "opt-in" from individual users are required to submit their protocol, analysis plan and all relevant ethics approval documentation from their institutional review board or departmental internal review documentation by email to: deb at mermaid.town. You may also be required to submit code you plan to execute so that it can be tested to ensure it does not degrade the quality of service to other users.
At the admin's discretion, you may be asked to submit your research protocol, and the institution that is providing ethical review, even in the case that it is an opt-in survey. Failure to disclose your research plan may result in closure of your account, or having your network banned from our service.
Outside of a Dog will suspend other instances in cases where an instance publishes material that is illegal for us to publish.
Instances that consist entirely of spam-bots, follow-bots, or who appear to be scraping the Fediverse or doing other potentially malicious data-mining will be suspended.
Blocking of other instances will also occur in cases where another instance's policies are fundamentally at odds with those of Outside of a Dog. This includes, but is not limited to: explicit anti-queer hate/racism/sexism, the embracing of Nazi hate, exploitative depictions of children, toleration of harassment, etc.
Other instances may also be blocked in cases where the admin of another instance has abdicated responsibility for moderating their users' behaviour, either in a public statement or on their instance "about" page.