How-to guides
File & manage an incident
Report an incident (anonymously if needed) and move it to a decision.
Incidents are how your space records code-of-conduct complaints, safety reports, and conflicts, then moves each one from a report to a decision. Any member can file; admins and board members triage. This recipe walks the whole path, including the anonymous option and the appeal-to-a-proposal exit.
Before you start
- File a report: any member of the space.
- Change status, record a disposition, scope update visibility, appeal:
adminorboardrole. - A reporter always sees their own incident and its non-board updates, even without a privileged role.
File a report
- Go to /incidents and click File a report (or open /incidents/new directly).
- Enter a Title (short summary, up to 200 characters) and describe What happened in the body, when, where, who was present, what was said or done.
- Set Category (free text, e.g.
general,safety,harassment,theft) and Severity. - Optionally check any Subjects, members the report concerns. Subjects are stored on the record but are not notified and do not gain read access by default.
- Optionally check File anonymously (see below).
- Click File report. A named report opens at its detail page; the incident starts in status
received.
Severity is one of:
| Value | |
|---|---|
low | |
medium | default |
high | |
critical |
File anonymously
Checking File anonymously omits your name from the record and the activity log. In exchange you get a one-time tracking token shown on screen.
- The token is the only way to look the report up later, it is never emailed or displayed again. Save it immediately.
- Check status any time at /track by entering the token. That view shows the report, its status timeline, a disposition once one exists, and updates that are not board-only.
- This is not cryptographic anonymity: an admin with direct database access can still see the row exists.
Triage and move the incident
On the incident detail page (/incidents/[id]), admins and board members get an Update status control. Statuses:
| Status | Meaning | Timestamp stamped |
|---|---|---|
received | Filed, not yet acknowledged | , |
under_review | Acknowledged, being handled | acknowledged_at |
decided | A disposition has been reached | decided_at |
appealed | Reporter has appealed the decision | , |
closed | Resolved and archived | closed_at |
When you select decided or closed, a Disposition / reasoning box appears. What you write there is visible to the reporter and is surfaced on the public tracking view. Deciding also records you in the incident's decision-makers.
Post updates with scoped visibility
Use Post an update to add information, ask a question, or share a decision. Admins and board members choose a visibility for each note; reporters post at all_parties.
| Visibility | Who can read it |
|---|---|
reporter_only | Admin/board and the reporter |
all_parties | Admin/board and the reporter |
board_only | Admin/board only, hidden from the reporter and the tracking view |
Each incident also has a discussion thread at the bottom of the page for members who can see the record.
Appeal a decision
Once an incident is decided, the reporter sees a Request membership appeal form. Filing an appeal:
- Creates a draft proposal of type
membership_votewith a simple-majority threshold, linked back to the incident. - Flips the incident to
appealed. - The action itself requires
adminorboardaccess.
The proposal opens as a draft so the language can be refined before voting, you still open it for voting yourself. From then on it behaves like any other proposal; see Run a proposal. A link to the appeal proposal appears on the incident under Appeal.
Incidents are never deleted, the platform has no delete path, so the record is retained for the space's history.