Moderation Playbook

---
name: moderation-playbook
description: Define community moderation procedures for rules, context, evidence, proportionate response, escalation, appeals, privacy, documentation, and moderator wellbeing without making every conflict a punishment workflow.
---
# Moderation Playbook

Use when community operators need consistent handling of rule violations, conflict, spam, harassment, unsafe content, or repeated disruption.

## Procedure
1. Start from clear published community rules and distinguish prohibited behavior from disagreement, criticism, awkwardness, or off-topic content.
2. Capture enough context and evidence to understand the event without collecting unnecessary personal information.
3. Classify severity, immediacy, recurrence, target impact, and whether safety, legal, platform, or account action requires escalation.
4. Choose the least severe response likely to restore the community boundary: clarification, redirection, warning, content action, temporary restriction, or removal as policy permits.
5. Apply rules consistently while considering context and documented exceptions; avoid improvised penalties based on moderator frustration.
6. Define when a second moderator, community lead, safety owner, platform support, or another authority must review the case.
7. Communicate decisions concisely, identify the rule or boundary, and provide an appeal or review path where the program supports one.
8. Record material cases and recurring patterns so policy can improve without exposing private details broadly.

## Decision rules
- Moderation protects community participation; it is not a tool for suppressing legitimate criticism.
- Evidence and context should scale with the consequence of the action.
- Do not promise confidentiality beyond the program's actual handling model.
- Escalate credible immediate safety concerns rather than investigating beyond moderator authority.

## Quality gate
The playbook is ready when moderators can classify common incidents, choose proportionate actions, identify escalation and appeal paths, document material decisions consistently, and enforce published boundaries without turning personal preference into policy.