Community rules

Use only your own verified account. Give Yakkademia accurate information about your university and whether you are Academic / Research or Professional Services / Technical. Do not lend an account, impersonate another person, or attempt to bypass verification.

Members may participate under their verified real name or their persistent Yakkademia username where the product allows it. Do not try to unmask, triangulate, expose, threaten to expose, or publicly speculate about the verified person behind a username.

If you happen to know or strongly suspect who someone is, keep that knowledge separate from the discussion unless that person has identified themselves there.

Robust disagreement is welcome. Harassment, threats, discriminatory abuse, stalking, targeted humiliation and repeated unwanted contact are not. Do not use Yakkademia to organise retaliation against someone for something they said under either their real name or username.

Do not post allegations of serious wrongdoing as fact unless you have a sound basis for doing so. Distinguish clearly between fact, interpretation and opinion. Avoid unnecessary names or identifying detail when the discussion does not require them.

The Sussex beta is not intended for sensitive personal disclosures. Please discuss issues and ideas without publishing special-category personal information about yourself or another identifiable person, such as health information, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs, trade-union membership, sexual orientation or similarly sensitive personal details. This restriction will be revisited after the beta privacy review.

Invite-only conversations are visible only to eligible members who join them through the product. Members should not repost private-conversation content or identify participants outside that conversation without permission. Yakkademia does not promise that any online communication can be absolutely secret, and lawful disclosure obligations can still apply.

Poll choices are private and results are shown in aggregate. Do not attempt to discover how another member voted.

Petitions require stronger identity evidence. Before signing, the product explains that a verified real name will appear in the convenor’s final petition and may be supplied to its stated recipient, but will not be public on Yakkademia. Signatories may withdraw during the 48-hour finalisation period; below-target submissions include only explicitly reconfirmed names. Do not use petition information for an unrelated purpose.

A published signature target cannot be lowered after signatures begin. The convenor may extend a below-target petition, close it without submission, or request explicit reconfirmation for a smaller submission. Once the final document exists, withdrawal cannot recall copies already downloaded. Any post-petition private conversation is opt-in.

Do not scrape member content, probe for protected identity mappings, automate account creation, abuse invitation codes, or attempt to access content outside your role, institution or private-group permissions. If you find a privacy or security weakness, report it rather than testing it against other members.

Reports are about content and conduct, not an entitlement to learn who is behind a username. Routine moderation should be possible without revealing username ownership. Exceptional privileged access is intended to be reason-coded, auditable and subject to Yakkademia's privacy-governance controls.

Yakkademia may remove content, restrict a feature, suspend an account or end membership when reasonably necessary to protect members, the service or legal compliance. Serious privacy abuse — particularly attempts to expose protected identities — may justify immediate suspension.

This is a small beta. Features, wording and moderation processes will change as we learn. Privacy boundaries — who can see which content and identity — are not treated as casual experiments: changes that materially affect them should be made deliberately and communicated clearly.