Aegis Initiative:Submission Guidelines

Do you think you have a problem person or organization who is a genuine threat to geek spaces? Have you read the rules and best practices? Are you in possession of information that you think would implicate someone? Is there eminent danger to yourself or others? Call the police then. Otherwise, we would be interested in hearing about it. But to keep us from being slowed down heavily by bad submissions, the following guidelines have been made to keep things in check.

Evidence Must Be Substantive

A single story from a single person does not a threat make. We are looking for threat who have had a track record of unrepentant behavior that cannot necessarily be enforced by law enforcement. Sexual harassment, for example, is not something typically handled by law enforcement, but it also is not a pleasant intrusion either. Someone telling you to fuck off or being "cringe" is not cause for our attention (we are not your personal army, after all), nor is someone who has made minor mistakes and has worked to correct them.

Evidence Must Be From Primary Sources

A little birdie telling you things does not a threat make. We need the victims themselves and their stories to be made the focus, and to know who those victims are. We do this to cover ourselves from a legal perspective, should the worst happen. Screenshots of redacted persons will not be accepted, nor will overzealous cropping of screenshots. Once the submission is processed and an article is written, redactions of names where appropriate will be made.

Evidence Must Be Easy To Follow

Wild conclusions, Non Sequitur, and demeaning language does not a submission make. A random collection of screenshots will be rejected out of hand as we cannot go through and piece everything together ourselves with our limited budget of time. Accusations of mental impairment without substantive proof (hint: self-admission) are not permitted as part of our documentation.

What should be in a submission?

Largely anything you think is relevant. The three things that are required to include are a bit of an overarching summary of the evidence, a description of evidence pieces (you can bundle some of these together if needed) plus the evidence itself. If, for example, you have someone being a bully on social media, a summary of the players involved in conversations, some backstory on the conversation, as well as screenshots of the perpetrator acting would do just well. Creating a singular text document (even with photos) is not a submission, as its highly prone to forgery.

A word of warning

Upon publication of an article, we cannot guarantee that someone with time and effort will not reverse-engineer the process of redaction or anonymous writing and come after you in retaliation. If you have concerns about this, please include it as part of the submission. If you have extreme concerns about this but would like to submit anyway, we will at least hold your evidence for you and not publish anything.

Technical Details

We cannot accept uploads to our server, as this could be compromising. We suggest uploading your information elsewhere in a way that it is easily viewed, like a cloud service. Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive are probably the easiest for us to use, and you likely already have an account for it. Do not zip up files to upload, as this does not help us view said files and can lead to rejection. Submissions consisting solely of links to other websites (especially social media) are not useful, as privacy settings may prevent us from viewing the information. This is especially true for Instagram/Facebook/Meta/Whatever stories, as their volatile nature hampers collection. Finally, use this form.

Post-Submission

You have submitted and we have got the information. Now what? Our team will look it over and assign a general rating to the information provided. You may or may not receive a response, but when you do it will largely be one of three items:

Accepted

This is a good submission and would be a candidate for producing an article. This does not guarantee that we will make one, as general threat assessment may warrant against this. We will at the least include your submission in our archive for later reference.

Accepted, Provincially

The submission may be good, but there may be something that prevents us from acting with it. These can include limited scope (say one incident from one person) or a threat that has not been in the community for a long time. We will archive it, but are unlikely to create an article unless more substantive information comes in.

Rejected

The submission did not follow the guidelines well enough to be useful, and will be not acted upon. If found to be in bad faith, for whatever reason, this may also warrant an addition to the burn list, whereby all future submissions from said person will be ignored, even if the evidence provided is of substantially excellent quality.