Our Community Principles

5BestThings gives people different ways to participate: ask questions on Ask5Best, publish Stories, share Thoughts, create Pages, join Hubs, comment, reply, follow, save, and take part in conversations.

Different formats may have different publishing or moderation rules, but the same basic standards apply across the platform.

Respect People

5BestThings should be a place where people can ask, answer, publish, and disagree without being targeted personally.

Do

• Challenge ideas without attacking the person behind them.
• Give context when sharing strong opinions or criticism.
• Allow room for different experiences and perspectives.
• Use replies and comments to move the conversation forward.

Do Not

• Harass, stalk, threaten, intimidate, or repeatedly target another person.
• Encourage others to pile on, shame, or coordinate abuse against someone.
• Use slurs, hateful attacks, or dehumanizing language aimed at protected groups.
• Share private personal information about someone without permission.

Be Authentic

Trust works better when people know they are interacting with real, clearly represented identities and organizations.

• Do not impersonate another person, creator, company, organization, or public figure.
• Do not create accounts designed to mislead people about who is behind them.
• Do not manipulate engagement, follows, likes, comments, or other signals.
• Do not use fake endorsements, fabricated testimonials, or deceptive claims.

Keep It Safe

Content that creates a serious safety risk may be removed, restricted, or escalated for review.

• No credible threats of violence or encouragement of violence against others.
• No sexual exploitation, non-consensual intimate content, or sexual content involving minors.
• No content that encourages self-harm or suicide.
• No instructions intended to facilitate serious criminal activity, fraud, or abuse.
• No malware, credential theft, phishing, or links designed to compromise users or devices.
• No attempts to evade platform safety systems or moderation controls.

No Spam, Scams, or Manipulation

5BestThings is not a place for mass backlink building, fake engagement, repetitive promotion, or deceptive account activity.

• Do not create accounts primarily to place promotional links or backlinks.
• Do not post the same or substantially similar content repeatedly across the platform.
• Do not use automated or coordinated activity to inflate engagement.
• Do not post scams, fake offers, misleading financial claims, or fraudulent opportunities.
• Do not hide promotional intent or misrepresent sponsored/commercial relationships.
• Do not abuse Pages, Hubs, Profiles, Ask5Best, Stories, Thoughts, or My Links for link spam.

Publishing Standards

Different parts of 5BestThings are designed for different types of content. Use the format that best matches what you are trying to share.

Ask5Best

Ask clear questions that invite useful answers and real discussion. Avoid misleading, promotional, duplicate, or intentionally inflammatory questions.

Stories5Best

Stories should offer a meaningful experience, lesson, perspective, idea, or useful narrative. Submitted Stories may require review before publication.

Thoughts

Thoughts are for shorter ideas, opinions, observations, and updates. They should still follow the same standards for respect, authenticity, safety, and spam.

Pages and Hubs

Owners are responsible for what they publish and moderate. Pages and Hubs must not be used to impersonate others, mislead users, or organize abusive or deceptive activity.

Links and Promotions

Relevant links can be useful. Excessive, deceptive, repetitive, or purely promotional linking may be limited, held for review, or removed.

Moderation & Enforcement

We may review content, accounts, Pages, Hubs, links, media, and activity when something is reported, flagged by our systems, or appears to violate these guidelines.

Depending on the situation, actions may include limiting distribution, holding content for review, removing content, restricting features, suspending an account, deactivating a Page or Hub, or permanently removing access.

We consider context, severity, repetition, and the risk to other users. Not every mistake results in the same action, and these guidelines do not attempt to list every possible situation.