The ruleset the 2026 cohort wrote in week 7, the config that enforces part of it, and the register that says why each rule exists.
The Sandbox#
From week 7 the cohort governs a small community of its own. It has a submission queue, an appeals route, and a rota that staffs both until the end of semester. It exists so that the first removal you ever write costs a classmate an evening instead of costing a stranger their contribution.
Below is the 2026 cohort’s sandbox as they handed it on. It is published because week 12 requires it: the Continuity of Service policy does not accept a handover nobody outside the room can read, and the cohort inheriting a ruleset is entitled to see what they are inheriting.
The ruleset#
Eight rules. Week 7 gives you two hours and one constraint — a newcomer has to read all of it — so the 2026 cohort cut fourteen proposed rules down to eight.
- Post in English, or post a translation with it. First breach: removed with the reason, repost welcome.
- Do not post from an account created in the last seven days. First breach: held for review rather than removed, and a human reads it within a day.
- Cite a source for any factual claim about a real community. First breach: a comment asking for one. Removed after 24 hours if none arrives.
- Do not post screenshots that identify an account with fewer than 500 followers. First breach: removed, no warning, because the harm is already done.
- One submission per person per day. First breach: the later one removed.
- Disagree with the argument, not the person. First breach: a warning naming the sentence.
- Disclose generated text. Undisclosed is treated as rule 3, not as misconduct.
- Appeals go to modmail, not to the thread. First breach: the comment removed with the modmail link.
Rule 6 is the one deliberately left to a person. The cohort’s note on it reads: “Every threshold we drafted either caught quoting someone in order to disagree with them, or caught nothing. If it needs judgement, say so rather than pretending a word list has any.”
What the machine actually enforces#
Rules 2 and 8 are ShiftBot’s. Everything else is yours, and the ruleset says so on its face, because a community that cannot tell you whether a machine or a person removed something cannot be appealed to.
---
# rule 2 — new accounts, held not removed
type: submission
author:
account_age: "< 7 days"
action: filter
action_reason: "Rule 2 — account under seven days"
comment: |
Held for review under rule 2, because your account is less than a
week old. A moderator reads this within a day. Nothing is lost and
you do not need to repost.
---
# rule 8 — appeals belong in modmail
type: comment
body (includes-word): ["appeal", "unban", "why was this removed"]
action: remove
action_reason: "Rule 8 — appeals to modmail"
comment: |
Removed under rule 8. Appeals go to modmail so that somebody who did
not make the decision can hear it.
---Rule 5 is the interesting one. The cohort wrote it expecting ShiftBot to hold the line, and found out in week 11 that it never had. AutoModerator reads each submission on its own and cannot count what somebody posted yesterday, so there was no rule 5 to configure. It had been enforced for four weeks by whoever happened to notice, which is to say unevenly, and nobody had written that down because nobody knew.
The rationale register#
One line per rule, why it exists. In week 12 you find out this is the only part anyone needed.
| Rule | Added | Because |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | wk 7 | Drafted on principle. Never once invoked, and kept anyway. |
| 2 | wk 7 | Drafted on principle. The only rule nobody has argued about. |
| 3 | wk 7 | Every norm map the cohort built found this rule enforced somewhere and written down nowhere. |
| 4 | wk 8 | A screenshot of a moderator’s profile, posted to argue they were inconsistent. Removed in nine minutes. The rule is that incident. |
| 5 | wk 7 | One person posted six times before lunch on the first day. |
| 6 | wk 8 | Two threads that were about the arguments until they were not. |
| 7 | wk 9 | Two submissions nobody could check, both fluent and both plausible. |
| 8 | wk 9, amended wk 11 | Appeals were being litigated under the removal, by the person who made it. The audit added an exception for threads about arbitration. |
Rule 4 is the one to read twice. It exists because of a single afternoon, it names a number nobody can justify, and the next cohort will inherit it with no memory of the afternoon. That is how every community you will work in got the rules it has.
What the week 11 audit changed#
ShiftBot’s rule 8 filter removed fourteen comments in four weeks. Ten were appeals in the wrong place. Three were people quoting rule 8 at somebody else. One was a student discussing the Arbitration Committee’s appeal process in a thread about week 8, which contains the word “appeal” and is not an appeal.
Four of fourteen, then, on a rule nobody had thought was controversial. Rule
8’s line in the register gained a second sentence and the config gained
~body (includes): ["arbitration", "ArbCom"], and the cohort recorded what
the exception cost: a rarer false positive, bought with a rule a newcomer is
less likely to predict. Both halves of that are the point.
What passes on#
The ruleset, the config, the register, the rota and the week 10 dissent, to the 2027 cohort, in week 12. They may repeal any of it. The one thing they may not do is repeal a rule without reading why it was added, which is the only clause in this course that binds people who have not enrolled yet.