Office of Community Moderation

The Toxic Off-Ramp

Our game plan for handling mean and toxic behavior in our communities

Companion to E2-CM-001 and E2-DC-001 · Effective October 28, 2026

Kindness is the rule at E2. That promise only means something if we act when someone keeps breaking it. This page is the plan: what counts as toxic, what tools Discord actually gives us, the exact ladder we climb before anyone is removed, and the graceful exit we offer along the way. It covers all of our Discord communities together: E2, The Studio, and The Island.

Our goal is not zero incidents and it is not drama. Our goal is fast, fair, boring resolution, so the community barely notices the machinery working.

The short answer

Can we just delete someone? Not their Discord account. Nobody can do that except Discord itself. What we can do is remove a person from our servers, and Discord gives us four tools for it. Used in the right order, they are the whole off-ramp:

What counts as toxic

We judge patterns, not moments. Everyone has a bad day, and one sharp comment is a conversation, not a case. A pattern becomes toxic when it keeps making the room worse for other people, for example:

• Repeated personal insults, contempt, or mocking someone's work to score points.
• Dogpiling, baiting, or quietly organising others against a member.
• Sustained negativity aimed at people rather than ideas: sniping in thread after thread, relitigating old grudges, keeping a room tense.
• Abuse aimed at moderators, or retaliation against anyone who reported something in good faith.

What does not count: disagreeing hard, blunt critique of work, an unpopular opinion, or one clumsy comment followed by an apology. Argue with ideas as hard as you like. Never go after a person. That line is the whole test.

The ladder

Every step is private. There are no public trials here, no call-out posts, and no announcements.

1. Step 0: Log the pattern. Before anyone acts, a moderator saves two or three dated examples with message links in the private mod log. No action is ever taken on vibes alone, and the log is what makes every later step fair.
2. Step 1: The private nudge. A moderator reaches out directly, names what was seen, and assumes a bad day first. Most problems end here, because most people, spoken to with respect, course correct.

   "Hey, a few comments lately have landed pretty sharp. We run on kindness here, even when we disagree. Can we reset on that?"

3. Step 2: The formal warning, plus a timeout. If the pattern continues, the member gets a written warning: what happened, which standard it broke, what has to change, and what comes next. A timeout of 24 hours to 7 days usually goes with it, so the room can breathe while they read it.
4. Step 3: The graceful exit offer. Especially for a long-standing member, we offer the face-saving way out before we force anything. They get 24 hours to leave on their own, with no announcement and no hard feelings outside the community.

   "I do not think this is the right fit anymore, and I do not want it to get uglier. Best if we part ways here. No announcement, nothing public."

5. Step 4: Cooling Off, 7 to 14 days. If we want to give one last real chance, or the member will not leave on their own, the Cooling Off role makes them inactive: no channels, no posting, only the private room with the moderators. At the end of the period a person reviews the case. Return is with a clean slate, or the case moves to the final step.
6. Step 5: Quiet network removal. If the pattern continues, or the member doubles down in private messages, we ban the account from all of our communities at the same time, so the problem does not simply move rooms. No announcement, no public record, no spectacle. The community moves on, and so do we.

The fast track

Some conduct skips the ladder entirely and goes straight to removal, with law enforcement notified where the law requires it: threats of violence, doxxing, scams and fraud, hate raids, impersonation used to harm, and any sexual content involving minors. Protecting people comes before giving chances.

What we never do

• No public shaming. We never announce a timeout, a suspension, or a ban, and we never publish a list of removed members.
• No pile-ons. If the community turns on someone, that is itself a moderation problem. We cool it, we do not join it.
• No retroactive rules. Nobody is punished under a standard that did not exist when they acted.
• No moderation as content. Enforcement is infrastructure, not entertainment. It stays boring on purpose.

If it happens to you

Report it privately to a moderator and let the ladder work. Do not retaliate in the room: retaliation climbs the same ladder on its own. Reports are read by a person, investigated quietly, and the person who reported is never named.

Appeals

Anyone who is warned, suspended, or removed may appeal once, in writing, within 14 days, by direct message to any moderator. The appeal is reviewed by someone who was not involved in the original decision, and that reviewer's word is final. What you created remains yours, exactly as the Discord Community Rules say, whether you stay or go.

How the setup runs

Three simple pieces make this plan real instead of theoretical: the Cooling Off role and its private room in each server, the private mod log where patterns are recorded, and a standing watch that flags repeat patterns for a human to review. Tools can flag and can time out. A person makes every removal call, and the founder has the final say on bans.

Membership is a privilege, not a right. We would rather lose one member who makes the room worse than lose the many kind people who quietly stop showing up because of them. That trade is not close.

Kind to people. Firm on patterns. Quiet about exits.