Code of conduct · draft

How we treat each other here.

Draft. Will be revised through use, and through review by a lawyer familiar with cooperative / nonprofit structures before founder-vouching the first 50 accounts. Suggestions welcome via the contact link.

Who Hands is for

Hands exists for people doing or supporting community-rooted building, repair, design, and care work in Portland. Designers, builders, tradespeople, organizers, residents, tenants, students, neighbors — and the organizations that hold them.

What we ask of you

• Be specific. Listings work when they say what they actually mean — what is offered, what is needed, where, by when, for how many hours.
• Be honest about scope. If you're offering 2 hours, say 2 hours. If a build day needs licensed trades, say it.
• Don't misrepresent credentials. If you list a license number, it must be your actual current state license. Anyone can verify it at the issuing board. Misrepresentation is grounds for suspension.
• Follow through when you commit. Claiming a listing is a small contract with someone you may never meet. Take it seriously. If you can't follow through, say so as early as you can.
• Confirm completion honestly. Skill exchanges settle when both parties confirm. Confirming work that didn't happen is fraud against the ledger.
• Close out listings. When something has moved or finished, mark it done. Leaving stale listings open is the slow death of every community board.
• Pay attention to who is helped. Skill exchanges and gifts go toward people who need them — especially renters, workers, and unfunded organizers. Don't volunteer-wash extraction.
• Vouch carefully. When you vouch someone in, you're putting your reputation behind them. If a vouchee gets suspended or banned, your future vouches will be reviewed more carefully.

What Hands does not host

• Commercial recruiting, advertising, or for-profit job postings (use a board built for that).
• Harassment, discrimination, dehumanizing language. Listings or accounts that target groups derogatorily are removed without notice.
• Scams, dropshipping, fee-extraction schemes, "free trial" hooks, multi-level marketing.
• Surveillance, doxxing, sharing of contact information without consent.
• Listings that would functionally violate housing law or labor law (e.g. demanding unpaid licensed work, or offering paid work under the table where doing so would harm the worker).
• Token speculation, arbitrage, or attempts to convert tokens into other currencies. Tokens are a record of mutual aid; they are not money.

How moderation works

Hands is moderated by humans, not algorithms. v1 has one moderator (the founder); v2 adds a small mod team. Decisions follow this order:

• Reports come in via the report button on any listing or profile.
• A moderator reviews and either dismisses, asks for more information, or acts (warning, listing removal, account suspension, account ban).
• Every moderation action is logged. The user receives a reason.
• If you disagree, you can ask for a second look. v2 will introduce a documented appeals process; v1 just routes appeals back to the moderator who acted, with the request that they get a second opinion before re-deciding.

Voucher accountability: if someone you vouched in gets suspended or banned, your future vouches will be reviewed more carefully and may be paused after a second incident. This is meant to make vouching a real commitment, not a friction-free invitation.

Privacy and data

Hands stores: your email, display name, ZIP (or partner-attestation / no-fixed-address marker), the "what brings you here" sentence (visible only to moderators), your role badges, your listings, your vouches, and your token transactions. We do not store, hash, or handle: photo identification, government IDs, phone numbers (unless you choose phone-based 2FA, which we don't currently support), or device fingerprints beyond a peppered hash of your IP for new-device alerts.

Your token transaction history is public on your profile — this is the accountability layer that lets the ledger work. Your email address is never public; replies via the listing-contact form go through Hands so neither party sees the other's email unless they choose to share it.

Hands does not use analytics that profile users. Whatever metrics we add will be self-hosted, anonymous, and disclosed in the colophon.

Where this comes from

The structure borrows from Discourse's community guidelines, Mutual Aid Disaster Relief's principles, the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance's working norms, and the Sustainable Economies Law Center's templates for time-bank governance. None of these are quoted verbatim; they are sources, not law.