content policy

BeforeYouRent exists to help renters understand rental buildings, not to publish personal attacks. Reports should be specific, factual, building-related, and useful to someone deciding where to live. Moderators review submissions before they appear in public search results or on building report pages.

Allowed public content

  • Building-level conditions such as maintenance issues, pests, noise, heat, water, safety, accessibility, elevators, parking, or shared-area concerns.
  • Management and communication patterns described without naming or targeting private individuals.
  • Approximate dates, broad timelines, broad unit context, rent ranges, and issue categories that help renters understand the report.
  • Moderator-written summaries and aggregate signals that are approved, redacted, and safe for public display.

Not allowed in public reports

  • Private person names tied to accusations, phone numbers, emails, SINs, exact unit numbers, workplaces, family details, or other identifying personal information.
  • Threats, harassment, discriminatory language, slurs, doxxing, instructions to target someone, or content meant to shame a private person.
  • Unverified criminal claims such as calling someone a scammer, thief, fraudster, criminal, predator, or other serious accusation without a public-safe framing.
  • Raw evidence links, file names, screenshots with personal details, lease documents, audit logs, submitter details, admin notes, or moderator-only fields.
  • Spam, duplicate reports, promotional content, irrelevant complaints, fake submissions, or content that appears to be submitted in bad faith.

Evidence handling

Evidence can help moderators evaluate trust, context, and whether a report should be approved. Evidence remains private by default. Public pages may state that evidence was privately reviewed when that is accurate, but public pages should only show approved and redacted content. Raw files, submitter identities, internal review notes, and audit details stay out of public reports.

Moderation outcomes

A submission may be approved, edited for clarity, redacted for privacy, summarized, merged with related information, rejected, removed, or sent back for more detail. Moderation decisions are based on product safety, usefulness, privacy risk, and available context. They are not legal findings and do not decide who is right in a tenancy dispute.

Disputes and corrections

Renters, landlords, property managers, owners, residents, or affected people can request review of public content. Helpful dispute requests explain what is inaccurate, identifying, outdated, unsafe, duplicated, or missing context. Moderators may redact, update, remove, or leave content in place after review.

This is a working MVP content policy and should be reviewed before public launch. It is meant to explain BeforeYouRent moderation rules, not to provide legal advice.