How reports are handled, and how to appeal.
This document explains how The Way handles reports, who makes decisions, how quickly we aim to respond, what actions we can take, and how you can challenge a decision. We publish it because a community that can be moderated in secret is not one you should trust.
Everything members create on The Way: profiles and photos, messages and introduction requests, groups and events, church listing corrections and claims, and reports themselves.
It also covers our own conduct — what moderators may do, what they may never do, and what is recorded about their actions.
Reporting is confidential. The person reported never learns who reported them.
Every report is triaged into one of three levels.
P0 — immediate risk. Credible threats of violence, a minor at risk, sexual exploitation, signals of self-harm, imminent real-world danger, or a suspected minor in Intentional Fellowship.
P1 — serious harm. Harassment, scams and financial exploitation, impersonation of a person or a church, hate and abuse, and misconduct within Intentional Fellowship.
P2 — quality and nuisance. Spam, inaccurate church data, duplicate content, and general quality problems.
Our response-time targets are targets for review, not promises about outcome:
Reporting is not an emergency service. These windows are measured in hours and days. If someone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services.
New, then triaged, then in review, then actioned, then resolved. A case can also be escalated to a senior administrator, or reopened when there is an appeal or new evidence. Every transition is recorded with who did it and when.
A person makes every consequential decision. Automated systems may sort, classify, translate, summarise, detect duplicates, and flag risk. They may apply temporary rate limits to slow an obvious flood.
Automated systems may not remove content, restrict an account, suspend anyone, or ban anyone on their own. Where a machine suggestion is shown to a moderator, the moderator can edit or reject it, and both the suggestion and the human decision are recorded.
Escalation to a senior administrator is required for permanent bans, legal demands, contact with law enforcement, removal of a church listing, and every P0.
In roughly increasing order of severity:
The usual ladder: first substantiated violation, removal plus a warning; second, a temporary feature restriction; third, a temporary suspension; fourth, permanent removal. Earlier steps stop counting after a long clean period.
Severe violations skip the ladder. Threats, exploitation, sexual content involving minors, and imminent danger can result in immediate permanent removal on a first offence, and are referred to the appropriate authorities where the law requires or permits it.
Access to private message content is a separate and higher privilege than moderation.
Messages are encrypted in transit and protected in storage, but they are not end-to-end encrypted, and we will never claim otherwise.
Church listing decisions follow written, published criteria and nothing else. A church may be listed if it publicly identifies as a Christian church or ministry, represents a real congregation with verifiable contact or location information, is not fraudulent or impersonating anyone, and gives enough information for the listing to be useful.
Corrections from members are reviewed, routed first to a church’s own representatives where one exists, and always answered with an outcome.
Reported content is captured at the moment it is reported, so a case does not evaporate when someone deletes a message or an account.
Moderation cases, evidence snapshots, enforcement history, and audit logs are retained for at least 12 months, or longer where the law requires. They are restricted to safety and administrative roles and used only for safety, enforcement, and legal compliance.
If you reported something, you are told the outcome — that it was reviewed and whether action was taken. We do not share the details of another person’s account.
If action was taken against you, you are told which category of rule was broken and what the consequence is. You are never told who reported you.
Write to support@thewaychrist.com from the email on your account, describing what happened and why you believe the decision was wrong. We aim to respond within 14 days.
An appeal reopens the case. It is reviewed by someone other than the person who made the original decision wherever possible. New evidence is welcome.
We are a small team. We will not catch everything, and we will sometimes get things wrong. What we commit to is a written process, human judgement, honest records, a real appeal route, and telling you the truth about what we can and cannot see.
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