Community code of conduct

FamilySearch Community Code of Conduct

The FamilySearch Community is a helpful gathering place for those with family history interests to learn, ask questions, get product support, and share ideas. Our Community Code of Conduct encourages a safe, welcoming, and a positive environment for participation. Membership in the Community is granted with the expectation and requirement that each member will abide by the Code of Conduct.

These behaviors are expected and encouraged 😊

1. Be kind, friendly, respectful, and welcoming.
2. Show understanding and patience.
3. Be constructive and relevant.
4. Increase value and contribute to a positive environment in every post.
5. Post as if you were communicating with your dear grandmother. If you wouldn’t say it to her, then don’t post it.
6. Stay on topic; keep the content of the community clear, concise, and centered on family history. If you need to change topics, begin a new post.
7. Participate only in constructive, congenial, healthy debate or discussion.
   

These behaviors are unacceptable and not allowed ☹

1. Commercial use of FamilySearch’s content.
2. Self-promotion, selling, or spam including, but not limited to, messages with the intent to sell a product or service.
3. Comments or content that is rude, condescending, obscene, mean, hostile or contains demeaning sarcasm, profanity, or unkind language.
4. Trolling (to instigate conflict or arguments), insulting, name-calling, threatening, labeling, ridiculing, belittling, or attacking any person, organization, or location.
5. Bullying or making community members feel intimidated.
6. Posting conjecture, gossip, or debate about priorities, motives, processes, policies, or competence of FamilySearch or its personnel.
7. Using aggressive formatting techniques, such as ALL CAPS, repeated characters, or excessive boldface and punctuation.
8. Posting personally identifiable information including, but not limited to, phone numbers, email addresses, passwords, helper numbers. (This is for your safety.)
9. Thread bumping (posting with the purpose of bringing the thread to the top), posting the same comments in multiple discussions, or repetitive comments.
10. Debate or discussion of topics that are not relevant to family history (like politics or religion).
11. Plagiarism or violations of the law.
12. Any violation of the FamilySearch Terms and Conditions.
    

Adding Images in the Community

We submit all of the images posted to our Community to a special review process for appropriateness and possible copyright violations. If an image is in violation of our policies, an automated message with the image link will be sent through community messaging. More information can be found in the Upload Guidelines and Policies and the FamilySearch Content Submission Agreement.

Enforcement

Our Code of Conduct will be enforced. Enforcement decisions are made exclusively by FamilySearch moderators. Moderation is subjective and requires judgment. You may not agree with what constitutes a violation of this Code of Conduct, but members shall comply with a moderators’ instructions and decisions.

Consequences may include, but are not limited to the following actions:

1. Reminder to obey the Code of Conduct.
2. Warning of inappropriate behavior.
3. Posts or discussions may be edited, closed, or removed without notification.
4. Arguments or disrespect toward any moderator may be deleted and will result in a warning.
5. Temporary or permanent suspension of participation privileges in the FamilySearch Community, FamilySearch.org , or both sites, for severe or repeated violations.