Appendix for the moderation of collective email communications

NB: Only the French version of this charter is authentic.

The current moderators are: Nicolas Bachelard, Paco Bacrie, Sylvain Gay, Adrien Mathieu, Victor Passé, Janosch Laubé-Rainer and Clément Allard.

Contact via moderators[at]clipper.ens.fr

Article 1

Mailing lists make it possible to contact the various promotions of the ENS (lettres@clipper, phy16@clipper, etc.) as well as all people who have an account on the clipper server (tous@clipper.ens.fr). The moderation of these mailing lists is delegated by the École's IT services to the 'moderation team' whose members are called 'moderators'.

The moderators are also in charge of the « Délégation Générale - ENS » Facebook account. Their role in this respect is solely to moderate the « ENS Ulm en scolarité » Facebook group, i.e.:

• accepting or refusing membership requests ;
• assessing whether posts reported by members contravene the stated rules of the Facebook group and deleting them if necessary.

In this task, the moderators follow the modus operandi described in Article 5.

Article 2

The Délégation Générale (hereafter DG) appoints the moderators on the recommendation of the moderating team. The moderators must be currently-enrolled students, as defined by Article 3 of the DG's Internal Regulations. The DG must ensure that there are active moderators in the moderating team at all times.

Article 3

The moderating team must report on its activity to the DG at least once a year at a meeting. The DG may dismiss members of the moderating team.

Article 4

An e-mail processed by the moderating team can be either:

• Rejected or ignored
• Published on a platform like blogs.eleves.ens.fr and mentionned in the moderating team's summaries sent to all students
• Forwarded to the list to which it was sent to or to any other list deamed more appropriate by the moderators

In the first case, the moderators are not obliged to inform the sender the reason for its refusal.

In the second and third cases, the moderators are authorised to erase from the message the elements directly addressed to them, in addition to any attachments which shall be replaced by an address they can be downloaded at. No other modification of the text's body can be made without the consent of the sender.

Article 5

The moderating decisions for emails must be made with the mutual agreement of the moderating team. If no consensus can be reached within a reasonable time period, then the decision is made by a majority vote. In the case of a disagreement between the sender and the moderating team regarding the moderation of a particular e-mail, and only if no agreement is reached even after a discussion with the moderating team, the sender may request arbritration from the DG.

Article 6

The moderating team differentiates between different types of mailing lists:

1. Promotion lists, organised by department and year (ex. phy15@clipper, eco16@clipper) and which are considered to be of low readership. The moderation of these lists should only prevent the diffusion of spam from outside of the École. Their moderation should by no means be a form of censorship. 
2. Yearly or departmental promotion lists (ex. phy@clipper, maths@clipper, 14@clipper), which are considered to be of moderate readership. Their moderation must prevent the diffusion of spam, and the moderation team is granted the right to not forward non-academic emails that do not concern the entirety of the department or of the targeted readers. 
3. Large audience lists (ex. tous@clipper, sciences@clipeer, lettres@clipper). The moderating team decides whether to forwards emails or not according to the terms of the present regulations. Any non-spam email that is not forwarded can be made public. (GA of 23/03/2023)

Sending an email to a large number of lists of moderate readership (or low readership) can be considered, in certain cases, as a way of bypassing the conditions for sending an email to lists with a large audience (or moderate readership). This is particularly the case when all the recipients of an email include all the people concerned by a list with a higher circulation. In this case, moderation can treat the email in question as if it were actually intended for the more widely distributed list. (GA of 23/03/2023)

Article 7

The moderating team can reject any e-mail under the following conditions:

• The e-mail contains an attachment ;
• The e-mail is not in plain text, contains HTML or any other formatting which cannot be read by all email clients ;
• The e-mail violates French law ;
• The e-mail contains hateful or discriminatory statements ;
• The French version is absent or incomplete ;
• The e-mail sent to a list with a large audience does not include an English version, or a statement in English explaining why it does not concern non-French speakers ; (GA of 19/10/2023)
• The e-mail sent to a list with a large audience does not use inclusive language.

The moderation team must also, within the limits of its competence, prevent cyber attacks by systematically refusing any phishing or ransomware mail (real or pretended), as well as any mail containing unsafe links.

Article 8

The purpose of moderate and large mailing lists is to provide their members with administrative or academic information, or information regarding the existence of certain initiatives, clubs, associations and collectives within the community of the ENS. They also enable representative bodies of the said community, such as the elected members of the Administrative and Scientific Councils (in French : CA/CS) or the DG, as well as the health ambassadors, to notify the students of certain matters. The moderating team will decide to forward or publish emails based on these criteria. Moderate and large audience mailing lists are not intended to be a forum for debate. The moderating team can refuse to transmit any contentious email that does not concern the entirety of the community of the ENS.

Article 9

The lists to which all people with a clipper account are subscribed when their account is created are called “tous lists”. These are:

• the seminaires@clipper list, dedicated to seminar announcements ;
• the academique@clipper list, dedicated to announcements concerning academic life and career guidance, in particular announcements concerning double degrees, masters degrees or competitions, whose posting on an unsubscribable list will be deemed not to cause any breach of equality;
• the associatif@clipper list, dedicated to cultural activities, hobbies or commitments outside the academic or school environment;
• the tous@clipper list, dedicated to the most important communications that do not fall within the scope of the previous lists, in particular communications on health, safety, material life and university authorities, as well as administration newsletters.

An e-mail sent to one of these lists may be distributed to another by the moderation team. This decision may be taken without consulting the sender or notifying the sender in accordance with the criteria defined above.

Article 10

A 'group of students' (in French and hereafter: groupe d'élèves) refers to any club, association, student seminar or any cultural, sporting, political or trade union collective which has a real presence in student life at the ENS. Every groupe d'élèves has the right, each year, to transmit an introductory email to one of the tous lists, in which they are invited to provide contact information and an internal emailing list.