Tech and Science Community

Server structure

Overview

A community for people who read the paper before the headline. Lobby has #welcome, #rules-and-sources - cite what you claim, no medical advice, no unsourced hype - an announcement channel and #pick-your-fields for the six field roles. Topic Channels is the main floor: #the-commons for everything, then space and astronomy, computing and AI, life sciences, physics, mathematics, earth and climate, chemistry and materials, engineering and making, and history of science. News Feeds is read-only and fed by Notifications - space, tech, research and podcasts - with an open #news-discussion beside them so the feeds stay clean. Papers and Articles is where the reading happens: #paper-club is a forum with a thread per paper tagged Preprint, Peer-reviewed or Explainer, #long-reads takes articles, #journal-club-signups fills the weekly call and #reading-schedule is written by Curators. Q&A gives questions a forum of their own, #ask-a-question, tagged by field and marked Answered, plus #study-help, #fact-check and #explain-it-simply. Projects and Showcase holds #build-logs, #sky-photos and #code-and-data. Voice is a Common Room, a Journal Club room, Observation Night, a Lecture Hall stage and AFK. Curators run the feeds and the paper club with Helper permissions and share a staff area with Moderators. Contributor is a Leveling reward for answering questions rather than only asking them.

When to use it

Your members share news links faster than anyone can read them, the same misconception gets argued every month, and good explanations get buried under the next link. This layout separates feeds from discussion, gives every paper and every question a thread that can be found again, and gives Curators a place to keep the feeds and the reading schedule honest.

What makes it different

• Four read-only news feeds with one shared #news-discussion, so links and talk never mix.
• #paper-club is a forum with Preprint, Peer-reviewed and Explainer tags, one thread per paper.
• #ask-a-question is a forum tagged by field and marked Answered, so answers outlive the day.
• Six mentionable field roles put 'who here does chemistry' one ping away.
• Curators run the feeds and the reading schedule with Helper permissions, not moderator powers.

Recommended Vetox setup

• Notifications

  Point RSS and Podcast Notifications at #space-news-feed, #tech-news-feed, #research-news-feed and #podcast-feed; the channels are read-only so only feeds post there.

• Self-Roles

  Post a Self-Roles panel in #pick-your-fields with Space, Computing, Life Sciences, Physics, Earth and Climate, Maths and Paper Ping.

• Reminders

  Schedule a Reminder in #journal-club-signups two days before each call, mentioning Paper Ping with the thread link from #paper-club.

• Leveling

  Award Contributor as a Leveling role reward with extra XP in #ask-a-question, so answering earns more than asking.

• Auto-Mod

  Use Auto-Mod to hold link-only posts in the topic channels for review; links belong in the feeds or with a sentence of context.