Content Policy and Moderator Code

Not allowed anywhere

• Sexual content involving minors, in any form. We remove it, close the account and report it as the law requires.
• Threats and incitement: threatening violence against anyone, or encouraging others to commit it.
• Harassment: targeting a person with repeated unwanted contact, abuse or pile-ons, or publishing someone’s private information.
• Hate: attacking people for who they are, including their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or serious illness.
• Encouraging self-harm. Talking about your own experience and seeking help is welcome.
• Illegal content and transactions, and sexual or intimate images of anyone shared without their consent.
• Spam and manipulation: bulk or repetitive posting, vote manipulation, and coordinated or multiple accounts.
• Undeclared bots: automated accounts must say so in their profile.
• Impersonation of people or organisations in a way meant to mislead.

Use the composer’s Spoiler and NSFW labels. NSFW marks posts some people won’t want to see at work or in public; each community decides what it marks, and its moderators can mark or unmark any post.

Political communities

Political communities may hold strong views. Debate the ideas: the rules above apply to everyone equally, whatever side a community or a member takes.

How we enforce it

Anyone can report a post, comment, message or community look. Reports go to the community’s moderators, and serious ones (threats, illegal content, content involving minors), and every report in a community without moderators, go to the site team. Outcomes range from removing content to temporary or permanent restrictions. You can appeal a moderator’s decision in the community and a site decision through Report a problem.

Moderator Code

Moderators are elected by their community for a fixed term and can be recalled. When you hold a seat you agree to:

• Enforce this policy and your community’s published rules, and nothing else. Cite the rule you act on.
• Act in the open: removals, restrictions, pins, locks and rule changes appear in the public moderation log, and reasons you write for members are seen by them.
• Never act against a candidate in your community’s open election, or against someone who signed a recall of you. The site refuses these actions; trying to get around it ends a seat.
• Keep private what members tell modmail and what moderator notes hold; never use them outside moderation.
• Answer appeals fairly, and step aside from decisions about yourself or people you are in a dispute with.

Elections and candidates

• One person, one ballot. Voting, nominating or signing a recall with more than one account, or buying or trading votes, is not allowed.
• Candidates’ statements and answers must be their own and follow this policy. Campaigning in a community banner is allowed and logged.
• Don’t pressure members to reveal how they voted. Ballots are secret and the site never shows them.

How governance works explains terms, elections, recalls and appeals in full.