Community rules

Bake Circle is the community of bakers in Starterwise: share bakes, starters and recipes, and follow the bakers you like. These rules keep it friendly and safe. You accept them before your first post.

What Bake Circle is

Everyone has a profile with a name, a handle, an optional photo and bio, and follower and following counts. Following someone is one tap.
Each post is for everyone or for your followers only, as you choose. Posts for everyone also appear in Explore. With a private account, only followers you approve see your posts.
You can post bakes (with up to four photos and a short note), starter updates and recipes. Others can react, save posts and leave short comments; you can pin up to two comments on your posts.
There are no direct messages. You can block anyone, and you can report posts, comments and profiles.
You can delete your posts and comments at any time.

Be kind

Everyone is here to bake. Encourage people, and be honest in a kind way when you comment on someone's loaf.

Do not post

anything offensive, hateful, harassing, threatening or violent
sexual content
spam, advertising or links that are only there to sell something
unsafe food advice, including telling someone that a starter, dough or food is safe to eat when you cannot know that
other people's private information, or photos of people who have not agreed to be in them
anyone else's photos, writing or recipes that you do not have the right to share
anything illegal, or anything that pretends to be someone you are not

How we check posts

Every new post, comment and photo is checked automatically before anyone else sees it.
If it looks fine, it is published straight away.
If the check says no, the post comes back to you with a short reason. Nobody else sees it. A block from the check is not a strike.
You can edit it and try again: the new version is checked again. Or, if you think the check got it wrong, you can ask for a second look, with a note if you like. A person looks at it, usually within 48 hours.
If the person agrees with you, it is published and you are told. If not, it stays blocked and you are told, with a note if they left one. You can still change it and try again.
If the check cannot run (for example it is unavailable), your post waits for a person to look at it instead, and you see that it is in review, usually cleared within 48 hours.
A strike comes only from a person confirming that something broke these rules. A confirmed breach (for example offensive, sexual, hateful or violent content, spam or unsafe food advice) can mean a ban from posting to Bake Circle. Content that is clearly serious, such as sexual, hateful or violent content, is also shown to a person without you having to ask, so that repeat breaches can be dealt with.
When a person publishes something the check had blocked, we may keep a copy of the words (without your name or account) so that we can make the check better. If a photo was involved, we keep only a pointer to it for as long as the original exists.

Report, block and appeal

Report any post or comment from the app. It is hidden from you straight away, and the automatic check looks at it again. If the check finds a problem it is taken down and goes back to its author to fix; either way a person sees every report.
Block someone and you will stop seeing each other everywhere in the app.
Appeal a strike or a ban, or tell us about anything else, by emailing support@starterwise.com. Asking for a second look at a blocked post is done in the app, on the post itself.