Community Guidelines

OrbitSub, operated by OrbitSub, a sole proprietorship owned and operated by Karan in New Delhi, India, and registered as a micro enterprise under the Udyam (MSME) scheme of the Government of India ("OrbitSub", "we", "us", or "our"), is a collaborative workspace and scholarly network built for rigorous research, constructive peer feedback, and open intellectual inquiry. These Community Guidelines ("Guidelines") set out the behavioural and content standards that apply across every surface of the Service—including published research, drafts, Live Rooms, inline suggestions, comments, reactions, Communities, user profiles, and Direct Messages. These Guidelines form an integral part of our Terms of Service.

1. Treat Fellow Researchers & Collaborators with Respect

1.1 Zero Tolerance for Harassment & Abuse. Do not harass, bully, threaten, intimidate, stalk, dox, or publicly humiliate any person, or coordinate others to do so.

1.2 Non-Discrimination & Protected Characteristics. Do not attack, demean, dehumanise, or promote enmity or hatred against individuals or groups on the basis of religion, caste, race, ethnicity, nationality, indigenous status, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, neurodivergence, medical condition, or age.

1.3 Critique Ideas, Not People. Rigorous methodological critique, statistical rebuttal, and scholarly disagreement are vital to science and humanities. Personal insults, targeted ad hominem abuse, and malicious brigading are not permitted.

1.4 No Threats or Glorification of Violence. Do not threaten, incite, or glorify physical violence, assault, or harm against any person, institution, laboratory, or group.

2. Uphold Research & Academic Integrity

2.1 No Fabrication or Falsification. Do not fabricate empirical datasets, falsify experimental outcomes, manipulate images or charts to mislead readers, or invent non-existent bibliographic citations or DOIs.

2.2 Proper Attribution & Anti-Plagiarism. Credit the ideas, discoveries, words, code, and data of others accurately. Use clear quotation marks or block quotes for verbatim text and cite primary sources properly.

2.3 Honest Representation of Credentials & Authorship. Do not misrepresent your identity, academic degrees, institutional affiliations, ORCID identifier, or authorship contribution. Do not list co-authors on published research without their knowledge and consent (gift/ghost authorship).

2.4 Responsible AI Disclosure. Follow our AI Use Policy. Never present unverified Orbit AI outputs as empirically verified facts, and include any AI disclosure statements required by your institution, target journal, or funding body.

2.5 Conflicts of Interest. Disclose any material financial, commercial, or institutional conflict of interest that a reasonable reader or peer reviewer would expect to know when evaluating your research.

3. Protect Human Safety & Comply with the Law

3.1 Zero Tolerance for Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (CSAE/CSAM). We maintain absolute zero tolerance for any content that sexualises, exploits, or endangers minors (anyone under 18 years of age). Any violation results in immediate permanent Account termination, preservation of forensic records, and mandatory reporting to law enforcement and designated national authorities.

3.2 Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery & Adult Content. Do not post pornographic or sexually explicit material, or share intimate, nude, or sexually suggestive images of any person without their explicit consent (including synthetic or AI-morphed imagery). Urgent takedown requests for such material are actioned within 2 hours under our Grievance Redressal Policy.

3.3 Suicide & Self-Harm Prevention. Do not promote, encourage, or provide instructions for suicide, self-injury, or eating disorders.

• If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis: In India, free, confidential 24/7 support is available via Tele-MANAS by calling 14416 or 1800-891-4416. Internationally, please contact your local emergency services or visit findahelpline.com.

3.4 Dangerous Materials & Illegal Acts. Do not publish actionable blueprints or instructions for manufacturing weapons, explosives, chemical or biological agents, illicit drugs, or for executing cyberattacks or other crimes.

3.5 Violent Extremism & Terrorism. Do not praise, support, fundraise for, or recruit on behalf of terrorist organisations or violent extremist movements, or threaten the sovereignty, unity, integrity, defence, or security of India or any other state.

3.6 Deceptive Synthetic Media. Do not publish deepfakes or deceptively manipulated audio, video, or imagery that falsely depicts real individuals saying or doing things they did not say or do.

4. Respect Privacy & Confidentiality

4.1 No Doxxing or Unconsented Personal Data. Do not publish another person's private residential address, personal telephone number, government identification numbers, banking details, medical records, or private correspondence without their explicit permission.

4.2 Respect Unpublished Manuscripts & Embargoes. Do not leak, republish, or appropriate another researcher's private draft, confidential peer-review feedback, or embargoed dataset without authorisation.

4.3 Live Room Confidentiality. Treat private Live Rooms and their 6-character room access codes as confidential to the invited collaborators. Do not share room codes publicly unless authorised by the research owner, and do not record or screenshot private collaborative sessions to harass or expose participants.

5. Respect Intellectual Property

Only upload and publish Content that you own or have the lawful right to share (including under statutory fair dealing or fair use exceptions for scholarly criticism and review). See our Copyright & IP Policy for full details on citation norms and DMCA / Copyright Act takedown procedures.

6. Collaborate in Good Faith in Live Rooms & Suggestions

6.1 Owner Governance. The owner of a research project controls room permissions (Editor vs. Viewer roles), locks/unlocks sections, and decides which inline suggestions (Suggestion) are accepted or rejected. Respect the project owner's editorial decisions.

6.2 Constructive Suggestions & Comments. Inline suggestions and threaded comments should be used to improve scholarly quality, clarity, and accuracy. Do not flood a document with spam suggestions, vandalise collaborative drafts, or use comment threads for commercial promotion or personal attacks.

6.3 Fair Co-Author Credit. Do not remove legitimate contributors from a project's acknowledgements or author list in bad faith after incorporating their substantive work.

7. Community Governance & Moderation

7.1 Topic & Institutional Communities. OrbitSub enables users to create and join scholarly Communities (Community) organised around disciplines, laboratories, journals, or research themes.

7.2 Community Rules & Automod. Community owners and appointed moderators may establish supplemental community-specific rules and automated keyword/pattern filters (CommunityAutomodRule), and may remove posts, lock threads, or ban users from their specific community. Supplemental community rules must never permit conduct that violates these platform-wide Guidelines or the Terms of Service.

7.3 Founding 500 Members. Our first 500 verified early adopters carry a permanent Founding 500 badge (#1–#500) and a 3× vote weight on public product roadmap and feedback boards. Founding 500 status is a recognition of early community stewardship and confers no exemption from these Guidelines.

8. Direct Messaging Standards

Direct Messages (DirectMessage) between users must comply with these Guidelines. Do not use Direct Messages to send unsolicited bulk commercial promotions, phishing links, harassment, or unwanted sexual advances. You may block or mute any user at any time from their profile or message thread; attempting to circumvent a block using an alternate account is grounds for permanent suspension.

9. Platform Integrity & Anti-Spam

1. No Spam or Manipulation: Do not post repetitive promotional content, SEO link spam, or cryptocurrency/financial scams, or artificially inflate views, likes, bookmarks, follower counts, or feedback board votes.
2. Authentic Accounts Only: Do not operate sockpuppet accounts, impersonate other scholars, or create new accounts to evade a moderation restriction, suspension, or permanent ban.
3. No Unauthorised Scraping: Do not deploy automated scrapers, bots, or crawlers against community feeds, user profiles, or published manuscripts outside our robots.txt rules.

10. Reporting Violations & Enforcement

10.1 How to Report. You can report any published research, comment, community post, Live Room behaviour, or user profile directly inside the Service using the Report action, or by emailing team@orbitsub.com with the URL and context. For urgent statutory complaints, see our Grievance Redressal Policy.

10.2 Enforcement & Appeals. Violations of these Guidelines may result in content removal, visibility restrictions, feature limits, temporary suspension, or permanent Account termination, as detailed in our Content Moderation Policy, which also sets out your right to appeal any moderation decision.

These Guidelines are effective from 1 October 2026 and were last updated on 25 October 2026.