This article forms part of the Stitch Community Guidelines. If you haven’t read the overview of the Community Guidelines yet, please do so before reading this article. In particular, please make sure you are familiar with the community definitions of what constitutes encouraged, discouraged, and prohibited behavior in the community, as well as how Stitch’s member feedback system works to promote constructive behavior across the community.

An overview of the guidelines can be found here.

This article consists of:

Stitch is committed to making sure that our community creates a positive, welcoming, and supportive environment for all members. The vast majority of Stitch members are incredible, but the one downside of having a platform that makes it easy to connect with other people is that it only takes one person doing the wrong thing to make things unenjoyable (or worse) for other members.

That's true on pretty much every social media site, of course, but Stitch is different from most sites in that our sole mission is to enrich the lives of our members. Many behaviors that are acceptable on social media platforms are simply not acceptable in the Stitch Community.

In terms of guidelines, there isn’t very much to it. You just need to:

It’s important to note that as Stitch is a community, the above guideline applies to every interaction you have, not just what happens on the Stitch platform. That includes:

You might be surprised by the last point above, but Stitch’s Community Guidelines don’t just cover moderation of what appears on the Stitch website, but cover the behavior of the community as a whole, with the goal of ensuring a safe and welcoming environment for all.

OK, that’s all well and good, you may ask, but how does Stitch manage this sort of thing, particularly interactions that happen off the platform?

We’re glad you asked.

If you haven’t read our overview of community-based moderation, it’s worth having a read now. In summary, we rely on members to give us feedback about the interactions they have with each other, regardless of whether those interactions happen on Stitch or somewhere else. We don’t rely on a single member’s feedback, but by aggregating the anonymous feedback from a large number of members, we are able to identify when someone is behaving in a way that is not consistent with the Stitch Community values.

Once you have connected with another member in Stitch, the system gives you the option to give us feedback about the interactions you have with other members. This can include both online and in-person interactions.

In most cases, you'll be telling us positive feedback, and helping reinforce behavior that is in line with Stitch's community values: being respectful, kind, welcoming, supportive, and fun. Here is what the feedback prompt looks like:

You can learn more about how member interaction feedback works in this article.

Stitch aggregates all the ratings that every member receives, to determine an overall interaction rating. We use this to identify the rare instances where a member consistently behaves in a way that is out of step with the standards the community expects from all members.

To ensure you maintain the highest possible member rating, we recommend you:

To check your member rating, along with your other Stitch achievements & recognition, go to Profiles & Settings from the More menu on the home page, then select Achievements:

You will see your member rating listed at the top of the page, as shown in the image below:

Your member rating will show one of the following values:

The rules are pretty simple. All members of Stitch need to ensure they maintain an acceptable member rating if they want to continue to be part of the community. If their rating drops too low, they will first receive a warning, and then be either temporarily or permanently removed from the community.

If your rating is “Excellent” or “Great”, it means the overwhelming majority of members who have given feedback on their interactions with you have rated it as being consistent with the Stitch Community values & guidelines. Good on you — keep up the good work!

If your rating is “Good” or “OK”, it means most members have given a positive rating about their interactions with you, but we might not yet have enough positive ratings for you to receive a “Great” rating. In this case, just keep on being mindful of sticking to the encouraged behaviors with every one of your interactions, and keep on engaging with other members in the community, and you should get to a higher rating in no time.

If your rating drops to “Warning”, it means enough members have reported negative interactions with you for it to be a concern. Anyone who reaches Warning status will start seeing a warning inside the Stitch interface wherever they communicate with other members like this:

This message cannot be removed while you remain on Warning status. If you reach Warning status, it’s vitally important that you use every interaction with other members as an opportunity to exhibit one or more of the community encouraged behaviors, and improve your overall member feedback rating.

If you don’t, you may reach a rating of “Unsatisfactory”. At this point, the Stitch Support team will conduct a review of your account, and you can expect to be either suspended or permanently removed from the community.

It’s important to note that very few members reach Unsatisfactory status. That means most members don’t need to worry about what their member rating is. But it is vitally important that you provide ratings for all the interactions you have in the community, both good and bad. It only takes one or two members who are doing the wrong thing to have a negative impact on Stitch for everyone else.

If you have any questions or concerns, please check out the Guidelines FAQ, or any of the articles in the Community Guidelines.