hackerspace.sh/content/docs/how-to/handle-incidents.md

Incidents are how your space records code-of-conduct complaints, safety reports, and conflicts, then moves each one from a report to a decision. Any member can file; admins and board members triage. This recipe walks the whole path, including the anonymous option and the appeal-to-a-proposal exit.

Before you start

• File a report: any member of the space.
• Change status, record a disposition, scope update visibility, appeal: admin or board role.
• A reporter always sees their own incident and its non-board updates, even without a privileged role.

File a report

1. Go to /incidents and click File a report (or open /incidents/new directly).
2. Enter a Title (short summary, up to 200 characters) and describe What happened in the body, when, where, who was present, what was said or done.
3. Set Category (free text, e.g. general, safety, harassment, theft) and Severity.
4. Optionally check any Subjects, members the report concerns. Subjects are stored on the record but are not notified and do not gain read access by default.
5. Optionally check File anonymously (see below).
6. Click File report. A named report opens at its detail page; the incident starts in status received.

Severity is one of:

Value
low
medium	default
high
critical

File anonymously

Checking File anonymously omits your name from the record and the activity log. In exchange you get a one-time tracking token shown on screen.

• The token is the only way to look the report up later, it is never emailed or displayed again. Save it immediately.
• Check status any time at /track by entering the token. That view shows the report, its status timeline, a disposition once one exists, and updates that are not board-only.
• This is not cryptographic anonymity: an admin with direct database access can still see the row exists.

Triage and move the incident

On the incident detail page (/incidents/[id]), admins and board members get an Update status control. Statuses:

Status	Meaning	Timestamp stamped
received	Filed, not yet acknowledged	,
under_review	Acknowledged, being handled	acknowledged_at
decided	A disposition has been reached	decided_at
appealed	Reporter has appealed the decision	,
closed	Resolved and archived	closed_at

When you select decided or closed, a Disposition / reasoning box appears. What you write there is visible to the reporter and is surfaced on the public tracking view. Deciding also records you in the incident's decision-makers.

Post updates with scoped visibility

Use Post an update to add information, ask a question, or share a decision. Admins and board members choose a visibility for each note; reporters post at all_parties.

Visibility	Who can read it
reporter_only	Admin/board and the reporter
all_parties	Admin/board and the reporter
board_only	Admin/board only, hidden from the reporter and the tracking view

Each incident also has a discussion thread at the bottom of the page for members who can see the record.

Appeal a decision

Once an incident is decided, the reporter sees a Request membership appeal form. Filing an appeal:

1. Creates a draft proposal of type membership_vote with a simple-majority threshold, linked back to the incident.
2. Flips the incident to appealed.
3. The action itself requires admin or board access.

The proposal opens as a draft so the language can be refined before voting, you still open it for voting yourself. From then on it behaves like any other proposal; see Run a proposal. A link to the appeal proposal appears on the incident under Appeal.

Incidents are never deleted, the platform has no delete path, so the record is retained for the space's history.