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Rules against bad behavior

We understand that it is not possible for everyone to get along with everyone. Drama will inevitably happen over and over again. This article will not prevent bad behavior from happening, but it is a reminder of the things we do not tolerate, the sanctions we can apply, and our recommendations on what to do if you are involved in a conflict or are witnessing bad behavior. We need everyone to make an effort to keep the peace and love in Tatoeba.

We do not tolerate

  • Insults: saying something offensive about someone or some people.
  • Harassment: bothering someone repeatedly.
  • Accusations: stating that someone is doing something with bad intentions.
  • Blaming: saying that a problem is due to someone’s fault.
  • Provocation: writing something that intentionally makes other people angry.
  • Retaliation: replying to insults, harassment, accusations, blaming or provocation with something that doesn't help.
  • Bad faith: lying, deceiving, being dishonest.
  • Sabotage: intentionally damaging the corpus.

Generally speaking, we do not tolerate any kind of behavior that harms the collaborative and civilized atmosphere of Tatoeba.

Recommendations

If someone is causing you trouble, we recommend that you simply ignore the person and report the behavior to the admins. Do NOT try to reply to any provocation; this will most likely cause more trouble.

If you see someone being the target of a bad behavior, we also recommend you to simply report the behavior. Do not try to defend the target. If you feel you cannot stand there and do nothing, then you may send a PRIVATE message to express your support to the targeted person. But please, avoid any public intervention, it will most likely cause more unnecessary drama.

The admins you can contact, in the order in which you should contact them:

  1. alexmarcelo
  2. Trang
  3. sysko

Sanctions

Admins will first send warnings to the author of the inappropriate content, asking them to delete it themselves. (The content could be a comment on a sentence, a message on the wall, a sentence itself or something written on the user's profile page.) The admins could be mistakenly perceiving acceptable content as inappropriate, so this gives a chance to the author of the content to justify it. If the author refuses to cooperate without any acceptable justification, admins will hide the content. It will remain visible only to the author and to the admins. Everyone else will only see a message stating that the content was hidden because it didn't comply to our rules.

Admins may take the decision to hide the content without requesting first that the author delete it themselves in cases where the content is really harmful and would be better removed as fast as possible, or in cases where the offenders already had such prior warnings.

If, after everything, the warnings happened to be insufficient, and the behavior of the offenders is too much to handle for the time that admins can dedicate to such things, then one or several of the following sanctions will be applied:

  • Removal of the right to post comments on sentences for a certain period of time.
  • Removal of the right to post messages on the Wall for a certain period of time.
  • Removal of the right to add new sentences for a certain period of time.
  • Removal of the right to link/unlink sentences for a certain period of time.
  • Removal of the right to tag sentences for a certain period of time.
  • Deactivation of the account for a certain period of time.

The list is not exhaustive. Another sanction may be applied.

The exact sanction and the period of time of the sanction will be decided specifically for each case. There is no general rule about this. We will try to be as fair as possible, but we can never be completely fair.

Related links

In case you are interested in reading the previous articles on this topic:

These articles are only here as a reference, however. Our official policies regarding bad behavior are explained in the present article.