Moderation Policy

TheFoundationsOf.us uses moderation to protect people, improve evidence quality, and keep public claims careful.

What may be moderated

• Personal information about living people.
• Email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, raw DNA data, or private account details.
• Claims presented as settled when they need source review.
• Harassment, slurs, threats, doxxing, impersonation, spam, or fraud.

Review outcomes

• Approved as submitted.
• Edited for privacy, clarity, labels, or source trail.
• Moved to a Fact Check or Corrections workflow.
• Held for owner review or declined.

How moderation adds value

• It preserves useful source leads while removing private details that should not be public.
• It turns broad disagreement into a reviewable claim, source question, or correction path.
• It keeps public pages from becoming evidence-free identity disputes.
• It creates a repeatable standard for why a submission was approved, edited, held, or declined.

Appeal or clarify

If a submission is held or edited, the useful next step is clarification: identify the source, the exact claim, the public wording risk, and the privacy concern. Repeating the same conclusion without a clearer source trail will not move a claim forward.

Moderation decision record

A useful moderation action should leave a traceable reason: privacy edit, source-label edit, claim-strength edit, duplicate/unsupported decline, fact-check route, correction route, or owner-review hold.

Moderation decisions should preserve source value where possible while protecting living people and preventing overclaiming.