Reporting a staff member

If you wish to report a member of staff, you should contact another staff member based on the roles of whomever you're making a report for:

• Admin Board: Contact a Community Manager or another member of the Admin Board
• Community Manager: Contact a member of the Admin Board or another Community Manager
• Community Team: Contact a Community Manager or a member of the Admin Board
• Developer: Contact ModMail or a Moderator directly
• Moderator: Contact a Community Manager or ModMail

Who can see a ModMail thread?

In most cases, ModMail threads are only visible to Moderators and Community Managers. However, the Admin Board may request access to a ModMail thread they can't usually see, in order to provide oversight over the Community Team and to ensure that its members are following Quilt's processes and policies. This may or may not be the result of someone bringing a potential issue to their attention.

Staff application threads will always be visible to the Admin Board and entire Community Team, as they also take part in the voting process.

For threads containing reports against staff members, we may choose to share an anonymized and stripped-down version of the thread with the community team, if required as part of an action resulting from the thread.

For bad-faith or malicious threads, we reserve the right to share the thread further - for example, with our contacts at Quilt's Community Collab Program.

In all other cases, we will ask for your permission before sharing your thread with anyone else.

Food Policy

To avoid causing harm via stigmatization, conversations about food and drinks are not limited to any particular part of our community spaces, and our users may freely discuss this subject.

To avoid setting a standard that harms community members dealing with eating disorders, we ask that you do not request content warnings from other users posting food (unless it's otherwise problematic). However, you are free to content-warn any content you post, if you wish to do so.

We recognize that this policy isn't ideal for everyone, and may make our spaces less suitable for a small group of people. However, we understand this to be the best approach for minimizing harm to our community members, and that must be a priority when designing our community policies.

Syncing bans from Discord to other platforms

We prefer to take a strict and firm approach to moderation on Discord, as it is primarily a social space and has the largest potential for harm when we don't deal with issues promptly. However, we do run spaces on other types of platform, and we feel that it's more prudent to approach their moderation with a lens that's more appropriate for the content that's expected on those platforms.

For users that have been removed from Discord for smaller issues that are not likely to cause problems elsewhere, we believe that we should avoid preventing them from voicing their opinions on Quilt's development or from receiving support. However, we will sync bans between Discord and our other community spaces in the following cases:

• The banned user's activity on another platform would impact the comfort and safety of vulnerable users there
• The user was banned for spamming, trolling or bigotry
• We don't want the user to be associated with our projects or spaces

We reserve the right to make this judgement on a case-by-case basis, but we're always happy to take feedback on how we can improve this approach.

Who can use PluralKit?

We only allow our members to make use of PluralKit for accessibility purposes, and we allow all good-faith usages under that definition. For example:

• ✅ Allowed: Use of PluralKit to distinguish between members of plural systems, regardless of system origin or whether the system is currently questioning
• ✅ Allowed: Use of PluralKit to swap between different personas or sets of pronouns - for example, when exploring one's gender identity
• ❌ Disallowed: Use of PluralKit for role-playing
• ❌ Disallowed: Use of PluralKit to impersonate someone else, or to intentionally bypass Discord account blocks

Seasonal branding

While we'd love to create and make use of more seasonal branding to better represent the cultures of our community members, we don't have the resources to do so by ourselves. Additionally, the members of some minority groups in our community have requested that we avoid doing this for their cultures - this is their choice, and we will not ignore their wishes.

If you have an idea or want to help out with seasonal branding for your own cultures, you're welcome to contact us and have a discussion. However, please note that the submission of a piece doesn't necessarily mean we'll use it - we advise that you talk with us before starting work to ensure that your efforts won't be wasted.

We will not consider seasonal branding for events that celebrate bigotry or are contrary to our community's values - for example, Columbus Day or "straight pride" events.

Minecraft sub-communities

If you'd like to play Minecraft with other Quilt community members, then you are welcome to create a thread on Quilt's community Discord server, as long as you agree to the following:

• The Minecraft server must have a whitelist enabled
• The Minecraft server must follow our Code of Conduct, Community Rules and Minecraft's EULA
• The Minecraft server's staff team must be able to provide the Discord account associated with a player on request - You and your staff will be held accountable for any rule violations made by players that cannot be identified
• We are unable to add a Discord bot to the Discord server (for example, to relay chat between the thread and Minecraft server)
• Your thread must not exist to redirect users to another Discord server or community space - the thread must be the primary community space for the Minecraft server
  • We will allow for an exception to this rule if your Minecraft server outgrows its thread - in which case, if you're moving to another Discord server, you may post an invitation within the thread and pin it
• Your Minecraft server's name may not contain Quilt's name (or the names of its projects) without permission from us
• Your Minecraft server's branding (for example, artwork) may reference Quilt's branding and mascots, but must not be a direct copy of our assets - basically, don't try to make your Minecraft server appear as if it's an official Quilt server

You and your staff will be held responsible for any violations of the above, including any lack of moderation. We reserve the right to shut down any thread like this as needed.

Staff membership applications

Any user can either apply or be contacted through Direct Messages by a staff member to candidate to a staff position. An interview may be held by the staff, over video or text.

A vote will then be held, lasting 3 days. The vote passes if more than 75% of the votes casted are positive.

Conflicts of interest

A conflict of interest is a situation where a staff member's personal interests are likely to influence their actions and decisions in a manner that is detrimental to the community, staff teams or health of the project.

Some examples of situations like this may include:

• Being in a strong position of influence of power over another community member, or vice-versa (for example, a large streamer holds a lot of influence over their fans)
• Being in a romantic or sexual relationship with another community member, or a member of their family
• Holding strong negative feelings towards a community member (for example, a grudge)

If you find yourself in one of these situations (or any other situation that may cause a conflict of interest), we ask that you state your conflicts of interest before providing your opinions, or abstain from voicing them.

We also require that you abstain from any votes in which you have a conflict of interest that prevents you from fairly judging the vote.

Staff activity requirements

While all of our staff teams are voluntary, we do require that our staff members remain active within the community. This is important for a variety of reasons:

• Admin Board: As the Admin Board performs important work across the whole project and we have a limited number of seats for them, we require that Admin Board members carry out their responsibilities when they can - if Admin Board work stagnates and holds back the project, then we will suggest an election to replace inactive members
• Community Mangers: A Community Manager must remain active for the same reasons that Moderators must - but it's also worth noting that Community Managers have access to sensitive permissions in our community spaces, and we'd like to avoid any security issues that may be caused by leaving any dormant accounts with that level of access
• Moderators: A Moderator must be active within the community in order to understand its needs, and to maintain a level of familiarity that we believe is necessary to moderate effectively