How moderation works

Moderators keep the community spaces of Home Assistant friendly, useful, and safe. They are members of the community who give their time so that everyone else can get help and share ideas without having to deal with spam, abuse, or flame wars.

Each platform has its own moderation team: the forum, the Discord server, and the subreddit. They all work from the same foundation, the code of conduct.

The Home Assistant code of conduct applies in every community space: GitHub, the forum, Discord, social media, and events. It also applies when someone officially represents the community in public, like posting from an official account or speaking at an event.

It is based on the Contributor Covenant. In short, it asks everyone to:

• Show empathy and kindness toward other people.
• Respect different opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
• Give constructive feedback, and accept it gracefully.
• Take responsibility for mistakes, apologize, and learn from them.
• Focus on what is best for the whole community, not only for yourself.

And it rules out, among other things, harassment in public or private, trolling, insults, personal or political attacks, sexualized language or attention, and publishing someone's private information without their permission.

The code of conduct gives the people who enforce it, called community leaders in the text, the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, posts, code, issues, and other contributions that do not fit the code of conduct. They explain their moderation decisions when that is appropriate.

In practice, moderators:

• Handle flags and reports from the community.
• Remove spam, and posts that break the code of conduct or the rules of the platform.
• Move topics to the right place, merge duplicates, and close topics that have run their course.
• Calm heated discussions before they turn personal.
• Take action against people who keep breaking the rules, following the steps below.

Moderators also keep the privacy and security of the person who reported an incident. The code of conduct requires it.

On top of the code of conduct, each platform has its own guidelines for how it works. The forum, for example, asks people to:

• Search first, and read the documentation, before asking.
• Write in English. Translation tools are fine.
• Share configuration and logs as text in a code block, not as screenshots.
• Not tag people to demand an answer, and not ask for support in private messages.
• Not post answers generated by ChatGPT or similar tools.
• Not delete a question after it has been solved, so others can learn from it.

The full text is in the forum guide on how to ask a good question. Discord and Reddit show their rules on the server and the subreddit.

The code of conduct describes four steps. Moderators pick the step that fits what happened, so a serious incident can go straight to a ban.

Step	When	What happens
Correction	Inappropriate language, or other unprofessional or unwelcome behavior.	A private, written warning that explains what was wrong and why. A public apology may be requested.
Warning	A violation, through a single incident or a series of actions.	A warning with consequences if it continues. No interaction with the people involved for a set period.
Temporary ban	A serious violation, including sustained inappropriate behavior.	No interaction or public communication with the community for a set period.
Permanent ban	A pattern of violations, harassment of a person, or aggression toward groups of people.	A permanent ban from any public interaction within the community.

During a warning or a temporary ban, the person also may not interact with the people involved. That includes unsolicited contact with the moderators who enforced it. Breaking those terms can lead to the next step.

Moderators are people, and they can get it wrong. If you think a decision was unfair, do not reopen the discussion in public.

There is no formal appeal process yet. Until there is, this is how to raise it.

If you got a warning or a temporary ban, the no-contact rule above applies to the moderators too: wait until the period ends before you bring it up. Otherwise, contact the moderators of that platform in private, explain calmly why you disagree, and give them time to look at it. The code of conduct has the full enforcement guidelines.

You can't apply to become a moderator. Other moderators nominate you, and the community managers of the Open Home Foundation consider the nomination and decide. The best way to help moderation is to be the kind of member moderators already rely on: help people, stay calm, and flag problems instead of fighting them. Interested in more? Ask the moderators of your platform.