Community rules
Short, named and complete. These rules apply to every contribution in the Maker Lab: machine notes, questions, answers, window sign-ups and booking labels.
What is written here stays here.
Confidentiality. People write about unfinished prototypes in this community. Do not pass on what you read here: not in a talk, not in a post elsewhere, not in conversation outside the lab. This is not a matter of politeness: under section 3 of the German Patent Act, a description that has become public destroys the patentability of an invention. One careless mention can cost a venture money and legal protection.
The reverse also holds: do not write anything here that you would not want a closed circle of inducted people to read. This area is not public, but it is not your notebook either.
Five named limits.
This list is exhaustive. Anything not covered by it stays, even if it is inconvenient, blunt or wrong. HWR is a public body bound by fundamental rights; there is no house rule by gut feeling here.
- Illegal content. Anything that breaks applicable law.
- Spam and advertising. Including your own services, including as an aside.
- Insults and abuse. Criticism of a thing is welcome; attacks on people are not.
- Other people’s personal data. No names, addresses, photos or messages of third parties without their consent.
- Safety-critical misinformation. Bypassing a safety device, or recommending it, endangers others. Such posts are removed regardless of intent.
Hide, don’t delete.
Every measure needs a cause, reasons and a notice to both sides. Nothing is hard-deleted; every change stays traceable in the history of the post.
Every member can report a post via Report content. A report is tied to your account; the author does not learn who reported it, only the moderators do. If you want to report something from outside, write to maker@startup-incubator.berlin; that address is the contact point under Art. 11 and 12 DSA and is treated in exactly the same way.
Reporting has graded effects. For three reasons the post is hidden immediately while it is being reviewed: potentially illegal content, disclosure of other people’s personal data, safety-critical misinformation. It stays visible to its author and to the moderators. For spam, insults and “other” it stays visible and the report simply enters the moderation list. If a report stays undecided for 48 hours, the post is hidden provisionally as well. This is expressly not a decision about it, and the author is told exactly that. After 72 hours the community switches itself to read-only.
Each person can report the same post only once, and at most five open reports are kept per post. Anyone who has produced more than three rejected reports within thirty days no longer triggers the automatic hiding. Their reports are still reviewed. Otherwise the button would become a switch for turning off inconvenient posts.
The first three posts of a new account are reviewed before publication. Anyone inducted in the lab skips this queue entirely: the induction is the trust check and does not happen twice.
Repeated breaches can lead to a time-limited mute. Reading and booking remain possible; the workshop itself is never affected by community moderation.
When you leave.
This rule is stated here before you write your first post. If you request deletion of your community account, your posts remain and stay readable; what is removed is the link to you. Your name is replaced by “Former member”. The reason: a full deletion would tear holes into conversations other people rely on: an answer without its question is worthless.
Everything stored about you can be downloaded as a file at any time: in the hub under “My data”. That is also where you file the deletion request.
Whoever writes here does so under their own name. There are no pseudonyms.
What exactly is stored, and for which purpose, is set out in the privacy statement. The basis for use as a whole is the terms of use.