Telegram Community Rules

Read this first

• People may try to scam you here. They will pose as admins or team members, send you direct messages, and offer you things that do not exist.
• No admin or team member will ever DM you first about money. There are no: investments, airdrops, free HOT/HoloFuel, early swaps, wallet checks, or "verification."
• Do not click external links from strangers. Do not connect your wallet to anything sent to you in a DM. If someone approaches you this way, report them to an admin with /report.
• Holo, Holochain, and Holo Ventures are not responsible for what individuals do in or around these groups.

General expectations

1. Talk to people as you would face to face. Disagreement with members, admins, and team is normal. Just don't escalate.
2. This applies in both directions. Team members and admins are held to the same standard as everyone else, and there is a route below for telling us when they fall short of it.
3. The intention is to encourage conversation about the topics at hand. Full stop.
4. The details vs. the general expectations. The rules are longer than we would prefer but the details help with clarity when issues arise. The rules exist to keep the group useful for people who want to discuss Holo and Holochain — stay on that and you won't hit them.

Your account

5. Set a Telegram @username if you want to post/write messages. Without one we cannot easily tag you, moderate you individually, or direct you somewhere. A kick is not a ban — you can rejoin immediately once it's set. Instructions are at the end of this document.
6. Your display name must be a name. At least three characters, in any script. No URLs, no phone numbers, no strings of symbols. If your name is represented by a non-latin script, and fails the minimum character count, please contest the automated ban.
7. One account per person. Using additional accounts to support your own position, or to evade a mute or ban, means action against all of them.
8. No impersonation of members, admins, or the team. Doing so will result in a permanent ban.

What you can't post

9. No spam. Repeated messages, volume that crowds out conversation, unsolicited promotion, mass DMs. Spam-only accounts are banned immediately.
10. No links. Resharing Holochain, Holo, Holo Ventures, Unyt are fine. No outside advertising. No referral links.
11. No trading, lending, or private-sale solicitation. No OTC offers or requests, no loans, no lending platforms in the group or by DM to members.
12. No recruiting. Don't DM members to pull them into other groups or projects. Sharing genuine Holochain community groups is fine.

Conversation

13. Attack arguments, not people. Abuse, name-calling, pile-ons, post-warning DM harassment, and attacks on competence/appearance/character will be moderated.
14. Criticism is welcome; bare assertion isn't. Valid criticism isn't deleted and errors are corrected publicly. For example, "this is a scam" isn't an argument; laying out your reasoning as a legitimate question gets an answer. The difference is whether you've given anyone something to engage with.
15. Say what you know and how you know it. Presenting unverified claims about the project, team, or finances as fact is misinformation; such posts may be deleted and result in your account being muted.
16. This is not a space for you to vent. Posts with no claim, question, or proposal will be removed.
17. Contribute something on topic. A purely negative record of comments with nothing substantive will earn a mute. Comments that have no direct relationship to the topic will also earn a mute.
18. A point made once has been made. Repeating answered claims is disruptive, and will be moderated.
19. Answers take time. Team and admin priorities won't always match yours. Sometimes there will not be an answer. Tag questions with #question — admins and team watch that tag, and unanswered ones get carried into the next AMA.
20. Admins moderate. Some admins are also team members. Either way, what an admin says in conversation here is not an official statement about the token, the migration, timing or value. Official announcements come only through the announcement channel. Most admins are volunteers — please treat them with respect.
21. Don't misrepresent what's said here. Discussing or criticizing elsewhere is fine; cropped/edited screenshots, quotes stripped of replies, fabricated messages, casual remarks passed off as official, or posting private DMs/personal details will result in an immediate ban.
22. A note on other groups. We moderate what happens here, not what you say elsewhere. But reputation travels with you. If you spend your time attacking the team or the project in other rooms and arrive here as a different person (or the same), don't be surprised if people treat you accordingly.

Prohibited outright

23. Immediate ban, no warning. Anything illegal, racism, slurs, sexual or violent imagery, suicide/self-harm content, and crude memes of that kind.

How moderation works

24. There are three different actions.

• Kick: You're removed but can rejoin straight away. Used for missing usernames and unanswered captchas. It is not a punishment.
• Mute: You can read everything, but can't post for a set period. This is our default response to conduct concerns.
• Ban: You lose access to the group entirely.

25. The moderation ladder: warning → mute → ban. One warning, then mute. Mutes run 24 hours, then 7 days, then 30 days. Bans are appealable for reinstatement after 12 months.
26. Permanent, no reinstatement: spam accounts, impersonation, sustained harassment of an individual, rule 18 breaches.
27. Review: write once to the designated contact [email protected] w/ “Telegram Concern” in the Subject. An uninvolved team member replies within seven days and that decision is final. Messaging individual admins or team members about sanctions does nothing.
28. Moderation by Combot and Humans. This channel is auto-moderated by Combot - including Combot Anti Spam (CAS) - an automated system designed to detect spammers in Telegram groups. It is human-moderated by both Team members and Community Volunteers. Please respect ALL admins.

The big picture

29. The rules exist to keep the group useful. If you talk to people as you would face to face and focus on discussing Holo and Holochain — you won't hit them. Looking forward to chatting with you!