VocaLounge is a Mastodon instance centered around Vocaloid, UTAU, and anything to do with vocalsynth culture, dedicated to fostering a lively and active social media community. Anyone is welcome to join, whether you’re a content creator or a fan, or simply just want to come chat with a bunch of vocalsynth people! For more information on what Mastodon is and how it works, you can read about it here and check out the Mastodon documentation. You can also check out some tips on using Mastodon to its full potential here!

VocaLounge was made with the following primary goals in mind:

To provide a warm, safe, positive space for vocalsynth community members to socialize;

To provide a comfortable and accessible space for people to try out Mastodon/fediverse, even if they ultimately choose to migrate elsewhere;

To help vocalsynth community members, who span a wide range of interests across a wide range of instances, stay connected and accessible to each other.

If you like VocaLounge, consider donating to sustain server and hosting costs via LiberaPay or ko-fi.

※このインスタンスは主に英語ですが、 お問い合わせの場合、サイト管理者の@Lystrialleが日本語で話す事が出来ます。

We are a primarily English-speaking instance, and our moderation team is also English-speaking. We are open to non-English speakers joining or federating with us, but our team may not be able to actively vet non-English content to the same degree we normally would, and in the case of a potential concern we may request external assistance to help translate and interpret. Our web admin @Lystrialle also speaks conversational Japanese and will be willing to directly assist in any inquiries relevant to the Japanese side of our community.

Code of conduct Etiquette

Although this is a vocalsynth-themed instance, off-topic posts are fine! Post to your heart's desire about any topic you like, whether it's photos of your cat, or what you had for lunch today, or even fanart of your favorite video game!

In general, we recommend you make extensive use of hashtags whenever possible, to help others easily find what they’re looking for (ex. #vocaloidart, #vocaloidoriginal, etc.). This especially applies to non-vocalsynth posts, both so that they can federate to other instances, and so that they can be properly caught by user filters.

Please be mindful of others and use CWs and the “sensitive” media marking for potentially sensitive content, plot spoilers, or anything else that should be kept behind a warning.

If you expect to be posting a long thread, please consider posting any contents after the initial post as unlisted, to prevent the entire contents of the thread from filling up the timeline without context.

While we encourage everyone to have fast-paced fun at their leisure, please also be mindful of the local timeline and try not to be overly spammy/disruptive.

We ask that personal disputes are settled over private conversations when possible, and that users report anything they see in violation of the rules. We also encourage use of the muting and blocking functions to curate their own feed, regardless of whether moderator intervention is requested or not.

Prohibited behavior

We follow the Mastodon Server Covenant, especially part 1: “Users must have the confidence that they are joining a safe space, free from white supremacy, anti-semitism and transphobia of other platforms.” Therefore, we hold a zero-tolerance policy towards intolerance that would prevent this from being a safe space for our members. Unwelcome harassments or microaggressions of this sort, whether carried out on VocaLounge or outside, will result in removal from the instance.

In general, we also would like to create a civil atmosphere free of ad hominem attacks, harassment, disrespect, or violations of privacy. Engaging in such deliberate behavior, whether on VocaLounge or outside, in such a way that makes other users feel uncomfortable or threatened, will be subject to disciplinary action.

Attempts to circumvent disciplinary action by making alternate sockpuppet accounts will result in immediate removal from the instance.

Content policy

As this is meant to be an all-ages instance, pornography is not allowed. Material potentially NSFW (not safe for work) -- anything you wouldn’t want your parents to see on your screen, including extreme gore/violence -- must be properly kept behind a CW. (For our policy on interacting with instances that may allow 18+ content, see our federation restriction policy.)

In order to protect the rights of content creators that are so integral to the vocalsynth community, unauthorized reprints or reposts of other people’s work are not allowed. This extends to posting of links that lead to reposted work, as well as usage of art in icons and banners. Willful disregard of this rule, or findings of explicit art/content theft, will result in removal from the instance. We suggest that users use VocaDB (for videos and audio) or SauceNAO/TinEye (for images) if they wish to properly track down the source for any works they would like to share and recommend to others.

"Nightcore" mixes of songs will be considered tantamount to a repost.



Provided compliance with the policies of the involved parties and companies, posting of official commercial and publicity artwork is allowed.



Photos of merchandise (official or indie/doujinshi) are considered fair game, although they should be credited when feasible. Sharing photos of artbooks (official or doujinshi) is allowed, but publicly uploading scans of them will be considered piracy and subject to removal.



We will not request removal of works uploaded by a user authorized to post them (for instance, commissioned art or authorized reposts). We will generally hold good faith that people claiming authorization have indeed acquired the necessary permissions, but we will honor any artists' requests to have their work taken down if they object to its presence here.

As our community is dependent on the resources and creations supporting us, many of which come from small independent creators, public advocacy of piracy and links to or instructions for downloading pirated material are not allowed and will be subject to removal.

Usage of materials or works in ways that violate the original creator's usage policy (e.g. unauthorized edits or usage of MMD models against their original terms of usage) will be subject to removal and potential disciplinary action.

As per the culture of our community, we are naturally friendly towards fanwork, but we reserve the right to take down material at the request of the original work's creator.

Bots that cycle posts (i.e. post the same thing at set intervals) must post them as unlisted or followers-only; they may not be posted to the local timeline. (If your account is a dedicated bot, we recommend you make it on botsin.space instead.)

Automated crossposts from Twitter (such as with the Mastodon Twitter Crossposter or Moa Bridge) are fine, but crossposting for Twitter retweets and quotes must be disabled (for various reasons, including high potential for reposted artwork). Failure to comply may result in silencing (removing an account from view of anyone not following it) or disabling of the account's functions.

Our moderation team will do everything within the range of feasibility to monitor VocaLounge's environment and ensure rule compliance; however, since we are ultimately a bunch of humans and cannot realistically catch everything at once (especially from the federated feed), we ask that our users please assist us in reporting rule-violating content in order to bring it to our attention.

We will treat users possessing good faith with respect and sympathy, and actively work with them to ensure rule compliance. We also understand that there may be "borderline cases" where subjective judgment about rule adherence will be required. In said cases, final decisions will be left to the moderation team.

Federation Federation with VocaLounge

We recognize that vocalsynth community members come from a diverse range of backgrounds and hobbies, and that some will likely want to be connected to our instance from a different one. We have a federation ambassador account designed to help vocalsynth community members from other instances federate into our instance; following it will allow them to appear in our federated feed, and making their hashtagged posts searchable to VocaLounge users. Please note that as of this writing, this account is manually operated, and will follow back in accordance with VocaLounge rules.

We are actively friendly towards other vocalsynth-centric instances (such as Vocalodon). If you are an admin or moderator of one, or are interested in making one, please contact one of our administrators (@Lystrialle or @MystSaphyr) if you are interested in discussing interaction between our communities. Due to our community's roots in music and art, we are also actively friendly towards other creative and artistic instances and are happy to discuss any inquiries about federation or community interaction.

We also hope to ensure that content from our instance does not cause problems for other instances, and our admins are happy to converse with the staff of other friendly instances in the hopes of maintaining good relations.

Restrictions

Mastodon provides us with a variety of functions to place differing levels of restrictions on content coming from certain instances, ranging from requiring click-through to see media from an instance, to hiding an instance’s posts user from direct view to anyone not following them, to outright blocking anything coming from an instance. In most cases, we wish to encourage content to freely flow to and from our instance and throughout the fediverse, allowing people’s works and ideas to branch out into the world. However, our priority is first and foremost to continue maintaining the safety of our users who may not wish to be accidentally exposed to something harmful to them without warning, and to maintain VocaLounge's nature as a safe space.

If we determine at any point that an instance actively cultivates a culture of hate speech or content that is threatening to our users, to the extent that affiliation with said instance fundamentally indicates affiliation with said culture, we will immediately block off communication to and from the instance. We will block off communication with any instance with moderation that does not sufficiently regulate users from stealing or reposting content from ours, violating our users' privacy, or otherwise abusing their ability to interact with our users. We will also immediately block off servers or users with a central dedicated theme of content that would violate our policy.

While we will not necessarily discourage interaction with people from instances with less stringent rules than ours, we recognize that said disparity may, in practice, lead to fundamental differences in said instances' cultures, and that federation and interaction will often lead to unchecked exposure of said cultures to our users and our users to theirs. We will continue to monitor interaction with said instances in order to ensure everything that enters VocaLounge is compliant with our own rules. If we notice a high likelihood of rule-violating content coming in unchecked, we may place various restrictions to slow down interaction with our instance or block media to prevent server storage of media potentially against our rules. If we determine that an instance has a repeat track record of harassment, poses a fundamental danger to our community climate, or threatens the safety of our users, we may, as a last resort, eventually escalate to blocking off communication with the instance entirely.

Our moderation team is dedicated to actively moderating server interactions and ensuring a balance between good communication while not potentially damaging our community health, and is committed to taking action depending on what we consider to be necessary for the safety of our users and our user community. If you have any concerns about the content coming from a particular instance, or concerns about any restrictions we've placed on a particular instance, please let a moderator know so we can look into what can be done.

Other site info

Follow @staff for updates on the site’s overall status, and @ambassador if you would like to federate with us.

For technical inquiries related to the site’s functions, contact @Lystrialle or @MystSaphyr. (Our hosting is graciously provided by Masto.host.)

For inquiries related to moderation (reports or concerns about content on this site or federating instances), contact @ravnervn, @VocAddict, @ephemeralduet, or @Vocazone.

Credits

Instance official icon and banner by @MystSaphyr

LGBTQ+ emoji by amethicc

Legal