The Society for Old Testament Study (SOTS) strives to be a community that welcomes and supports people of all backgrounds and identities. This includes but is not limited to the characteristics protected by the Equality Act 2010: Age, Disability, Gender, Marriage and Civil Partnership, Pregnancy and Maternity, Race, Religion or Belief, Sex, Sexual Orientation.
SOTS uses social media as a complementary channel for communication among members. Ideally, this encourages and perpetuates the intellectual exchange reflected in its meetings and also provides opportunities for sharing information beyond meetings. In order to ensure that social media offers a positive and affirmative experience for all and particularly those who are quoted or referenced, we request that social media users adhere to the following guidelines.
- Questions and comments should always relate to the scholars’ research and ideas only—not to their person or their mode of presentation, on the premise that diversity is a strength of our Society.
- Be generous with compliments and feel free to share interesting links to projects and materials, highlighting colleagues’ research in a positive way. The tone of tweets and other social media should always be polite and respectful, as if you were speaking in person to the other individual.
- Questions, comments and constructive feedback should be made on social media in a courteous manner. When quoting or citing others’ work, we ask users of social media to uphold our scholarly values of intellectual collegiality and accuracy, and to respect context at all times to avoid misrepresentation and misappropriation.
- If a presenter has a Twitter handle or equivalent on other social media, mention it. Also include the conference hashtag (e.g., #sots18) so others may find tweets relating to the conference and their work quickly.
These guidelines reflect our common aspiration to create a collaborative and shared environment. They apply primarily to pages and accounts run by the Society or by officers of the Society, but members are encouraged to adhere to them also on their own accounts when interacting with the Society or any of its activities. On accounts run by the Society, the Society (normally in the person of the Information Officer) reserves the right to delete posts. We expect the policy to be followed in spirit as much as in the letter. In the case of inappropriate social media use, please inform a member of the SOTS Committee (www.sots.ac.uk/committee), such as the Information Officer, and please do not engage with tweets that may be in breach of these guidelines.