Artizen is a community of artists, scientists, coders, and builders of every kind who believe in the power of human creativity to transform our global culture. Our community is founded on a few core values:
to be helpful and supportive of one another;
to be open to new ideas and new people and to openly share our own ideas;
and to be kind even to those we disagree with.
By coming together as a community we can amplify our impact and provide more sustainable support for the creators we love. We’ve just got a few rules that we hope you’ll keep in mind along the way!
Be honest and authentic
Our community is built on trust. All communications and content posted on Artizen and in our other community platforms must be accurate, honest, and authentic.
Member profiles: Your Artizen profile must provide accurate, honest, and useful information about yourself. You can not create fake accounts or pretend to be or impersonate someone else.
Project submissions: Your project descriptions must not mislead people or misrepresent facts, and you must be candid about the current state of your work, realistic about what you plan to accomplish, and honest about the capabilities of you and your team.
Messages, comments, or updates: All communications you make on Artizen's Discord, Telegram, and other communication channels must be honest and authentic. Basically, don't lie, and just be yourself.
If you see any member profiles, projects, or other content that doesn't seem honest and authentic within the Artizen community, please let us know at [email protected].
Build relationships
Creative endeavors are based on relationships. When you talk to other members of our community, never start by asking them for a favor. Instead, start a conversation. Take the time to research members before you message them. Read their bios. Check out their past work. Understand what they do professionally, what their interests are, and how you might support one another. The aim should be to build a new relationship and not to engage in a transactional quid pro quo such as "I’ll vote for your project if you vote for mine." Here are some guidelines for making new friends in the Artizen community:
Be respectful and helpful: When building new relationships in the Artizen community, always be respectful and try as hard as you can to be helpful. Work to understand what goals the other person hopes to achieve and then look for ways to help them along their path.
Ask a question: Curious about how someone solved a difficult technical, artistic, or business problem? Ask them about it. Struggling with a challenge that you think someone might be able to help with? Ask for advice, people generally like to be useful.
Ask for feedback: A great way to form new relationships, especially with industry leaders, is to start by asking for feedback on your work. What elements of your project are unclear or underdeveloped? What elements are working? What elements could be stronger? Listen closely to what they have to say and make sure to let them know if you update your project based on their feedback.
Give a genuine compliment: If you find someone who has worked on a project you love or supported an initiative you care about, write to them with a heartfelt compliment. But don’t bullshit someone. Give props to folks whose work you genuinely dig.
Ask for support
Only once you’ve established a relationship with someone in the Artizen community is it appropriate to ask for their support. Here are some guidelines for asking for support:
Personalizing your outreach: It’s good to have a template to work from – some language that you’ve drafted for outreach – but don’t just copy and paste the same message. Take the time to personalize each one.
Asking for intros: It's appropriate to reach out to a member of our community, introduce yourself and your work, and politely ask for an introduction to someone you think they might know. When you do this, make sure that you state why you want the introduction, what business you have with the person, and why you think they will get value out of the interaction. There are lots of guides online for etiquette around warm intros. Search around and find a strategy that works for you.
Asking for a meeting: Generally, it is not appropriate to ask for a meeting the first time you reach out to someone new. Typically you want to first message them to gauge interest in whatever opportunity you'd like to explore with the person. If there's interest, then you can suggest scheduling a meeting to discuss more.
Asking for money: It's not appropriate to message someone you don’t know and ask them to invest or otherwise fund your project. First, you need to get them interested in your work. Once you have engaged with someone and they seem genuinely interested in your work, then and only then is it appropriate for you to transition the conversation towards what material support they might be willing to give to you and your work.
DON'T SPAM
If you message someone on Artizen or any of our community spaces such as Console or Telegram and you don’t hear back after the second follow-up, please don’t spam them. It means they are either busy, didn’t get the message, or for whatever reason are not interested in engaging. It doesn’t help your case to keep messaging them and will be considered spam if you send more than two unsolicited messages without a response.
Spam includes link-bombing, promoting a project where it shouldn’t be promoted, and sending unsolicited @’s on Twitter, to name a few. We've built our community to enable people to build new relationships, ask questions, and support one another — not for spam. Seriously, no one likes spam, so just don't do it.
If you have received spam please let us know at [email protected].
DON'T BE A JERK
Artizen is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, or religion. Anyone who engages in harassment may have their account flagged, suspended, or terminated, or in extreme cases may be reported to the appropriate authorities.
Harassment includes but is not limited to:
Unwelcome sexual attention or off-topic sexual images or behavior;
Offensive comments related to a person's identity or lifestyle choices;
Threats of violence or incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm;
Sustained disruption of discussion;
Stalking or continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease; and
Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect other Artizen community members or other vulnerable people from intentional abuse;
Above all, please be respectful to each other. People are different. That’s what’s beautiful about the internet and creativity: communities of varying types can assemble and flourish. We want the Artizen community to be a vibrant and safe venue for a diverse range of artists, fans, and industry leaders to come together to support art that positively impacts culture.
If you have experienced harassment please let us know at [email protected].
If you see something, say something
If something seems off, let us know by emailing us at [email protected]. Our team reviews every report we receive, and we take action when we see someone violating these guidelines. Sometimes that just means giving a warning; sometimes it means revoking certain privileges or accounts entirely. The best way to avoid anything like that happening to you? Don’t spam, and don’t be a jerk.