Since we're growing a bit, I thought it would be a good time to clarify our stance on political discussion, how we will moderate political speech, and what we mean by an "apolitical" instance.
Political bias tends to be magnified within smaller communities online, tinting the user experience and may make the experience for some feel welcoming and push away others. As instance admins, so long as user content does not break our instance-wide rules, we will not take action against user speech in posts or comments, federated content from outside this instance, and moderator positions in specific communities. It is our view that, aside from a basic set of rules that ensure some continuity between communities on this server, it is the job and responsibility of individual moderators to set more restrictive rules for their individual communities. To be clear: instance-wide rules do not take a stance on what types of political speech are allowed on a user level. However, moderators are welcome and encouraged to set community-specific rules that restrict what types of speech are allowed.
Our "apolitical" descriptor comes from Rule 2, which allows administrators to ban communities with an overt political focus. This means that certain communities, such as those heavily centered around political candidates, political movements, parties, or ideologies, are not allowed on this instance. As administrators, we will not play favorites on where this applies: if a community here is created with an undeniable political focus, we will remove that community. As an example, a group of middle-aged men talking about cool things on the Internet is fine, but a group of middle-aged men promoting conservatism is not. "Political" here does not refer to marginalized groups on their own, but rather communities that make an explicit effort to promote policy that caters to a specific political slant. For example, an LGBTQ+ community that focuses on artwork would be a great fit for this instance, but an LGBTQ+ community that focuses on promoting anarcho-syndicalism would not. There are plenty of examples I could use to illustrate this point, but I hope this makes it clear.
The point of NormalCity's existence is to promote a neutral platform where people can gather to discuss topics relating to creativity and technology; we do not have an interest in telling users how they should think. However, this does not mean we wish to encourage strong political messages on a community level, as those are simply outside the scope of this instance. We welcome moderators to set rules restricting what types of speech are allowed in their communities, as we understand different communities here will naturally have differing opinions on what should and shouldn't be allowed.
In short, NCL's administrators will not police political speech on the part of users with instance-wide rules, but we welcome moderators to do so in their own communities. We do not allow communities to form here that have an overtly political focus, but "political" does not mean banning marginalized groups who gather here for a topical (creative or technology-related) reason. We hope this clarifies how we view the political speech here on NCL and hope these policies help to ensure our instance and the communities that live here stay true to their purpose.
TL;DR We’re not banning political discussions that spring up in topical communities here, and we’re also not banning moderators from using their best judgment to moderate.