Moderation and code of conduct

Every post is held until a person has read it. This page says how that works and what we ask of you.

How it works

1. You post. Your message is held as pending. It is not visible to anyone else.
2. A moderator reads it and approves, hides, or deletes it. A post that nobody reviews within 30 days is deleted automatically.
3. Approved posts appear in the discussion for that book.

Moderators are the author and anyone he asks to help. [TODO Shree: confirm who moderates.] There is no promised response time. [TODO Shree: confirm how often the queue is read, and say it here in plain terms.]

What posting means

When you post, you let this site show your message here until it is removed. You keep ownership of what you write. You can ask for a post to be removed at any time on the Contact page.

What we ask

• Be useful. Say what you saw, tried, or disagree with.
• Disagree with the idea, not the person.
• Stay near the topics of the book you are discussing.
• Write for a reader who does not know your organization. Leave out names.

What gets removed

• Harassment, slurs, threats, or attacks on a person, including the author and other commenters.
• Private information about anyone, including a named employee, or a description of a colleague that makes them easy to identify.
• Confidential information belonging to your employer or a client.
• Advertising, recruiting, and anything posted to sell something. Web addresses are shown as plain text and are not clickable. A post with more than two web addresses is rejected.
• Spam, repeated posts, and text copied from somewhere else without permission.
• Legal, medical, or financial advice stated as fact, and claims of wrongdoing by named people or companies that you cannot support.
• Anything illegal.

What moderators can do

• Approve a post so it appears.
• Hide a post. It stays in the record but is not shown.
• Delete a post. The text and name are erased. A note that it was removed stays in the moderation log.
• Ban a visitor for 7, 30, or 90 days. A banned visitor can still submit the form and will see the usual "held for review" message, but the post is not kept. Bans work on a network address, so they can catch other people on the same network. If you think you were banned by mistake, use the Contact page.

Posts labeled "Author" or "Moderator" come from the people who run the site and skip the review step. Those two names, and "Staff" and "Admin", cannot be used as a display name.

Reporting a post

Every published post has a Report button. A report does not remove anything by itself. It adds the post to a Reported list that moderators check, and moderators can dismiss it. You do not need to give your name.

Takedown and appeals

If a post about you, your work, or your organization should not be public, or if a moderator got a decision wrong, write to us. The Contact page says what to include.

Changes

This policy may change. The version here is the one in force.