Acceptable Use Policy

These are the rules for what belongs on Fenceline. They apply to every post, comment, and review, and they are the policy our moderation decisions cite. They restate, in plain language, the parts of our internal moderation policy that affect you as a contributor. They are part of, and read together with, our Terms of Service.

Everything on Fenceline is the first-hand experience and opinion of the residents who post it. The community reads we build from it (the vibe tier, the strictness and toxicity meters, the dues, fine, and response figures) are aggregations of that subjective experience. They are protected opinion about how an association operates, not verified statements of fact, and not professional, legal, financial, or real-estate advice. We do not independently confirm any individual review or figure. Treat a read as a starting point, not a verdict, and check anything that matters against the association's own records.

Fenceline exists so residents can speak plainly about the HOA they actually live under. Leniency runs at the institution.

• Criticize the association, hard. Hostility, contempt, profanity, and hyperbole aimed at the HOA, the board as a body, or an unnamed role (the president, the manager, the ARC) are welcome. "These people are petty tyrants over the wrong brown mulch" is exactly what this place is for.
• Tell your own story, specifically. Concrete, first-hand accounts are the whole point: a $50 trash-can fine 40 minutes past pickup, three weeks to approve a white storm door, a lien over $410 of disputed fines. Name amounts, dates, and rules, not private people.
• Find your neighbors and organize. Rallying residents to show up at a meeting, compare notes, or push back on a rule is a good outcome, not abuse. Turnout at a Thursday board meeting is a feature.

Protection runs at the person. The list below is enforceable: content that does these things can be removed, and the account behind it restricted. It is ordered hardest first.

• Naming or identifying a private individual. Do not pair a private person (a board volunteer, a manager, a neighbor) with a specific accusation or identifying detail. HOA volunteers are private citizens, and an accountability framing does not exempt it: "board president Karen Wilcox denied my ramp then approved her buddy's pergola" crosses the line where "the board denied my ramp" does not. Actual public officials (an elected official, a city code inspector) can be criticized by name.
• Private information (doxxing). Never post someone's home address, unit number, phone number, personal email, workplace, license plate, or schedule, or hint at surveillance of them ("I know where every board member parks"). This is the hard, viewpoint-neutral line and the fastest-handled report.
• Threats, incitement, or targeted harassment. No threats of violence against a person or their property, no calls to action against a named individual, and no pile-on campaigns aimed at one person. Venting metaphor aimed at the institution is fine; a credible threat aimed at a person is not.
• Hate against a protected class. No slurs or dehumanizing content targeting people for race, religion, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or another protected characteristic.
• Faking, manipulating, or astroturfing the reads. Do not impersonate anyone, invent an experience you did not have, or use fake, duplicate, or paid reviews to move a community's tier or meters. The reads only mean something if they are honest. A board writing its own five-star reviews is manipulation.
• Spam, scraping, or breaking the service. No spam, no off-topic flooding, no bulk scraping, and no attempts to overload or break the site.
• Unlawful or infringing content. Nothing that is illegal, or that infringes someone else's intellectual-property or privacy rights.

• Reports route to a person, not an auto-delete. Nothing is removed by report count alone. A report lands in a review queue where a human decides. That is deliberate: in a contentious HOA, the loud faction will report posts they simply dislike, and flag-count removal would hand them a mute button. We judge the content, not the report.
• Some posts are checked automatically when you post. New posts are scanned as they go up for the few things that put a real person at risk: a home address or phone number, a credible threat, or a specific factual accusation against a named private individual. On a clear match the post is held out of view until a person reviews it, the same reversible hold a reported post gets, and its author is not penalized. Nothing else is affected, and if the check cannot run your post still goes up. Criticizing the HOA, the board, or the rules is never what this looks for.
• We arbitrate process, not truth. When a named subject contests a post about them, we do not adjudicate whether it is factually true. We can mark it "disputed" so it stays visible as the author's opinion with a neutral note that its accuracy is contested. We take no position on who is right.
• Removal is always a human call. Automation can do two things and no more: close an invalid report so the content stays up, and place a reversible hold on a post that looks like it doxxes, threatens, or defames a private person, so it sits out of view while a person reviews it. A hold is not a removal. The post is not deleted, its author can still see it, and a person then either confirms the concern or restores it. Nothing is ever permanently taken down except by a person, and every removal is recorded with a reason.

If you believe a post about you is false, exposes your private information, or names you as a private individual, use the process on our Report content & takedown page. Anyone can also report content in-product from the menu on any post, comment, or review.

We may update this policy as the product evolves. Material changes will be reflected in the date above. Questions about it can go to hello@fenceline.homes.