Community guidelines

What examples are for

An example is a reusable, sanitized description of how a practice can be implemented — not a case study of your specific environment. Write it so a stranger could learn from it without learning anything about who wrote it or where it runs. A submission that only makes sense with the missing context (“as discussed with our assessor…”) is not ready to publish.

• Be concrete enough that a verdict can actually judge it — vague platitudes get rated “insufficient signal” for a reason.
• Be honest about assessment objective coverage. Claiming an objective your example does not actually address wastes the next reader’s time.
• Duplicating an existing example with no meaningful change is not a contribution. If you have a genuinely different approach to the same objective, use Publish a variant from the original example instead of starting from a blank form.

What a useful verdict looks like

A verdict is not a thumbs up or down. It is a judgement call, and the reasoning is the part other people are here to read. Rate the implementation as written, weigh adequacy (is this the right kind of evidence?) and sufficiency (is there enough of it?), and say what tipped your call either way. See rules of engagement for verdicts and how verdicts work for more.

Disagreement is expected and useful — a contested example is often the most informative page on the site. What is not useful is a verdict with no stated reason, or one that argues with the author instead of the evidence.

Discussion and disagreement

Argue the pattern, not the person. It is fine — good, even — to say an example is wrong and explain why. It is not fine to make it personal, harass another member, or pile on in a thread after the substantive point has been made. Assume good faith: most disagreements here are genuine judgement calls about an ambiguous control, not bad actors.

No spam, no self-promotion unrelated to compliance patterns, and no using threads to advertise products, services, or consulting.

Attribution and identity

Contributions are attributed to a handle, optionally a pseudonym you control. Do not impersonate another member, an organization, or a Certified Assessor credential you do not hold. Assessor verification is granted by an administrator against an authoritative source — see Assessor verification — and misrepresenting that status is treated as a sanitization-tier violation.

What gets moderated, and how

Content is removed for unsanitized detail, spam, harassment, or impersonation — not for being wrong. An example that arguably falls below the line stays up; the verdict system exists precisely to say so in public. Removal is a soft delete, recorded in an append-only audit log with the acting administrator attached, so a mistake can be reviewed and undone.

Repeated or severe violations can lead to account suspension. If that happens to you and you think it was wrong, see Appeals.

See something that should be reviewed? Use the report action on the example, rating, or post in question — that is the fastest way to get eyes on it.