Vahuk is a community-powered social bookmarking and link-discovery platform. Members can submit Stories, browse useful links, vote, react, comment, and help other people discover content from across the web.

These Community Guidelines explain the kind of participation Vahuk expects. They apply to Story submissions, comments, voting, reactions, reports, and other community activity.

The goal is simple: share useful things, describe them honestly, interact genuinely, and treat other people with respect.

If you are new to Vahuk, you may also want to read About Vahuk and How Vahuk Works.

Share Things Worth Discovering

Vahuk works best when people submit links because they believe someone else may genuinely find them useful, informative, interesting, educational, practical, or entertaining.

Useful Stories can point to many kinds of resources, including:

• articles;
• tutorials;
• research;
• tools and software;
• videos;
• discussions;
• reference material;
• original resources;
• useful product or service pages when they are relevant and not spammy.

Vahuk is not a place to submit every page from a website simply because those pages exist. A Story should give the community something worth discovering.

For more about what a Story is, see What Is a Story?.

Be Accurate About What You Share

A Story should describe the source honestly.

Use a title that matches what people will find when they open the source. Add context that helps rather than misleads. Choose Genres and Tags that reflect the actual subject.

Do not:

• use a misleading title to attract clicks;
• exaggerate what the source contains;
• hide the commercial nature of a page;
• pretend a source is independent when you know it is promotional;
• describe one website as if it were another;
• use false claims just to make a Story look more important.

A good rule is to help people understand what they are about to open before they visit the source.

For detailed submission guidance, read the Submission Guidelines.

Use the Right Genre and Tags

Classification matters because it affects what other people see when they browse Vahuk by topic.

Choose the Genre that best represents the Story’s main subject. Use Tags for narrower details.

Do not select unrelated popular Genres just to gain exposure. Do not add excessive Genres to make the Story appear in as many places as possible.

Honest mistakes can happen. Repeated or deliberate off-topic classification is different because it can make topic archives less useful and may become an integrity or moderation issue.

See Genres on Vahuk for more about choosing the right category.

Add Useful Context

A Story does not need a long essay, but it should give readers enough context to understand why the source may be worth visiting.

Useful context can include:

• a concise summary;
• the main subject;
• relevant Tags;
• an accurate Genre;
• important details that help readers judge whether the link is relevant to them.

Avoid keyword stuffing, empty promotional language, copied blocks of source text, or filler written only to make a Story look longer.

Respect the Original Source

A Vahuk Story points to content on another website. Submitting that URL does not make Vahuk or the contributor the owner of the original work.

When possible, link to the original or canonical source rather than a copied version or unnecessary redirect.

Do not copy large portions of an article, report, tutorial, or other copyrighted work into a Story when a short summary is enough. Do not remove attribution or present someone else’s work as your own.

You can read more about the relationship between a Story and its source on What Is a Story?.

Participate as a Person, Not as a Promotion Machine

Self-promotion is not automatically a problem. A creator, company, publisher, developer, or business can sometimes share its own useful content.

The problem begins when participation becomes little more than repeated promotion.

Avoid:

• submitting only your own domain again and again;
• flooding Vahuk with promotional pages;
• creating low-value Stories only for exposure;
• disguising advertisements as independent recommendations;
• treating Vahuk mainly as a backlink-submission service.

If most of your activity exists to promote one website rather than contribute to the community, that pattern may be treated as spam or abuse.

See the Spam & Abuse Policy for more detail.

Vote Honestly

Voting should reflect what you genuinely think about a Story.

Vote because you find the Story useful, relevant, misleading, low quality, interesting, or otherwise worth responding to – not because someone promised to vote for you in return.

Do not:

• trade votes;
• join coordinated voting groups;
• create extra accounts to support your own Stories;
• downvote another member because of a personal dispute;
• use automation to influence Story scores.

Read Voting & Reactions for more about how community feedback should be used.

Use Reactions Honestly

Reactions should represent a real response to a Story.

Do not use reactions simply to create activity, collect Karma, or help a Story appear more popular than it is.

Reaction abuse can include automated clicking, reaction farming, coordinated engagement, multiple-account activity, or repeatedly switching reactions to exploit a technical or reward system.

Changing your reaction because your opinion changed is normal. Trying to turn that feature into artificial engagement is not.

For the relationship between activity and Karma, see How Karma Works.

Keep Comments Useful and Respectful

People do not need to agree with each other on Vahuk.

Healthy discussion can include disagreement, criticism, questions, factual corrections, alternative sources, and different interpretations.

Keep the focus on the idea, Story, claim, or source rather than attacking the person behind it.

Criticize the argument, source, or idea – not the person.

Avoid personal attacks, insults, threats, intimidation, repeated hostility, trolling, or deliberately derailing a discussion.

No Harassment or Targeted Abuse

Do not use Vahuk to harass, intimidate, stalk, threaten, or repeatedly target another person.

This can include:

• credible threats;
• repeated unwanted contact;
• coordinated attacks against another member;
• intimidation;
• publishing private information to harm someone;
• using comments, votes, or reports as tools for personal retaliation.

Serious threats or safety concerns may lead to immediate moderation.

See the Moderation Policy for more about how serious issues may be handled.

No Hate or Dehumanizing Abuse

Vahuk should not be used to target people with hateful, dehumanizing, or seriously abusive content based on who they are.

Content or behavior whose main purpose is to dehumanize people, direct hateful abuse at them, encourage serious discriminatory harassment, or call for violence may be moderated.

This does not prevent discussion of difficult social, cultural, political, historical, or religious subjects. The issue is how people are treated, not whether a topic is controversial.

No Threats or Promotion of Violence

Do not use Vahuk to make credible threats, encourage violence, or organize real-world harm.

Stories may discuss war, crime, politics, history, violence, terrorism, public safety, or other difficult subjects when the source itself is legitimate and the discussion follows Vahuk’s rules.

Discussing violence is not the same as encouraging it.

No Impersonation or Deliberate Deception

Do not pretend to be another person, company, organization, publication, or authority in order to mislead people.

Do not use deceptive identities to commit fraud, manipulate Stories, evade moderation, or create fake support for your own activity.

Using a display name or pseudonym is not automatically impersonation. The problem is deliberately misleading people about who you are or who you represent.

Respect Privacy

Do not publish private or sensitive information to expose, intimidate, embarrass, or harm another person.

Examples can include:

• private home addresses;
• private phone numbers;
• private email addresses;
• passwords or credentials;
• private conversations;
• sensitive personal documents.

Information that is already public can still require responsible handling. Context and intent matter.

Do Not Share Malware, Phishing, or Dangerous Deception

Do not knowingly submit or promote links designed to harm, deceive, or steal from people.

This includes links involving:

• malware;
• phishing;
• credential theft;
• fraudulent downloads;
• malicious scripts;
• deceptive redirects;
• scams intended to steal money or personal information.

Unsafe Stories may be removed quickly when Vahuk has enough reason to believe they present a real risk.

See the Spam & Abuse Policy for more about malicious and deceptive submissions.

Respect Copyright and Intellectual Property

Submitting a link is not permission to copy the source.

Use your own summary or description when possible. Avoid copying entire articles, tutorials, reports, images, or other protected material into a Story.

Do not falsely claim ownership of someone else’s work.

If Vahuk receives a legitimate copyright concern, the affected Story or content may be reviewed separately from ordinary community voting.

Be Transparent About Commercial Interests

If you have a meaningful commercial connection to what you are sharing, honesty helps the community understand the recommendation.

This may include situations where you:

• own the website;
• work for the company;
• are being paid to promote the source;
• have an affiliate relationship;
• have another material interest in the submission.

A simple, honest disclosure is usually better than trying to make commercial content look independent.

Self-Promotion Is Acceptable Only When It Adds Value

Sharing something you created is not automatically against Vahuk’s rules.

Self-promotional Stories are more likely to be useful when:

• the source provides real value;
• the title and summary are accurate;
• the Genre is relevant;
• the contributor is transparent when appropriate;
• the account is not flooding Vahuk with one domain.

Self-promotion becomes a problem when it turns into repeated domain flooding, duplicate submissions, fake voting, coordinated reactions, irrelevant classification, keyword stuffing, or low-value advertising.

For more detail, read the Submission Guidelines and Spam & Abuse Policy.

Do Not Manipulate Karma

Karma is meant to follow genuine participation, not manufactured activity.

Do not attempt to increase or protect Karma through:

• fake accounts;
• reciprocal voting groups;
• reaction farming;
• automated activity;
• abusing Karma tasks;
• exploiting bugs;
• creating artificial engagement around Stories.

Vahuk may reverse artificial activity or correct Karma when manipulation is discovered.

See How Karma Works for a fuller explanation.

Do Not Manipulate Trending or Discovery

Trying to manufacture enough activity to push a Story into Trending undermines community discovery.

This can include:

• coordinated voting;
• automated reactions;
• fake comments;
• multi-account activity;
• other artificial engagement intended to influence ranking.

Trending should reflect genuine attention, not organized score manipulation.

You can read more about community signals on Voting & Reactions and view current results on Trending Stories.

Do Not Abuse Reports

Reporting tools are for genuine concerns, not personal disputes.

Do not:

• report someone simply because you dislike them;
• mass-report competitors;
• organize false reports;
• use reporting as retaliation after a disagreement.

False or coordinated reporting can itself become a moderation issue when it is clearly abusive.

Follow the Submission Guidelines

These Community Guidelines cover broad participation and behavior. The Submission Guidelines explain how to create and classify Stories correctly.

If you submit Stories regularly, you should be familiar with both.

Follow the Spam & Abuse Policy

Some types of manipulation and abusive behavior need more detailed rules than a general community page can provide.

The Spam & Abuse Policy covers issues such as repetitive promotion, domain flooding, fake engagement, automated activity, malicious links, and attempts to manipulate Vahuk’s systems.

Community Guidelines explain how members are expected to behave. The Spam & Abuse Policy explains specific abuse patterns in more detail.

How Moderation Works

Vahuk may review Stories, accounts, or community activity when something appears inconsistent with the platform’s rules.

A review may begin because of:

• user reports;
• automated integrity signals;
• duplicate detection;
• spam patterns;
• Genre relevance concerns;
• voting or reaction manipulation;
• manual review.

Depending on the situation, Vahuk may take no action or may apply measures such as:

• correcting a Genre;
• removing artificial votes or reactions;
• correcting Karma;
• limiting search indexing;
• unpublishing or removing a Story;
• changing contributor trust;
• restricting an account;
• suspending an account in serious or repeated cases.

The Moderation Policy explains this process in more detail.

Honest Mistakes and Deliberate Abuse Are Not the Same

People make mistakes.

A first-time contributor may choose the wrong Genre. Someone may accidentally submit a duplicate URL. A member may misunderstand how a feature works.

Those situations are different from repeated spam, coordinated manipulation, deliberate deception, or attempts to bypass moderation.

Vahuk can consider context, history, repetition, severity, and apparent intent when reviewing activity.

Karma Is Not Immunity From the Rules

High User Karma does not put a member above the Community Guidelines.

High Story Karma does not prevent a Story from being reviewed if there is a real problem.

A trusted contributor can still make mistakes or violate a rule. A new contributor is not automatically suspicious simply because their account is new.

For more about the difference between Karma and contributor trust, read How Karma Works.

What to Do If You See a Problem

If you see a Story, comment, account, vote pattern, or other activity that appears to violate these guidelines, use the available reporting tools where appropriate.

Try to provide enough context for the issue to be understood. A clear report is more useful than an angry one.

If no suitable reporting option is available, visit Vahuk Help for the appropriate way to raise the issue.

Avoid escalating arguments or organizing other members against the person you are reporting.

Appeals and Corrections

Moderation can occasionally be based on incomplete information or a technical problem.

Where an appropriate review or contact process is available, a member may be able to provide missing context, report a technical error, or ask for a decision to be reconsidered.

The available process may depend on the type of issue. See the Moderation Policy or Vahuk Help for current guidance.

These Guidelines Apply to Everyone

The Community Guidelines apply regardless of account age, Karma, contributor trust, popularity, website ownership, commercial relationships, or how many Stories someone has submitted.

Long-time members should follow the same basic standards as new members.

The Guidelines May Change

Vahuk may update these guidelines as the platform develops, new features are introduced, community needs change, or new abuse patterns appear.

Material changes should be made to improve clarity, safety, fairness, or the usefulness of the community rather than to change rules without explanation.

Check this page from time to time if you participate regularly.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Community Guidelines

Can I submit my own website?

Yes, when the source is genuinely useful and the Story follows Vahuk’s submission and community rules. Repeated self-promotion, domain flooding, fake engagement, or low-value submissions may be treated as spam.

Is self-promotion allowed?

Limited and useful self-promotion can be acceptable. It becomes a problem when promotion dominates participation or relies on misleading descriptions, irrelevant Genres, duplicate submissions, fake votes, or other manipulation.

Can I disagree with another member?

Yes. Disagreement is part of normal discussion. Keep criticism focused on the idea, claim, source, or argument rather than attacking the person.

Is criticism allowed?

Yes. Honest criticism, factual correction, and disagreement are allowed when expressed without harassment, threats, targeted abuse, or deliberate disruption.

What counts as harassment?

Harassment can include repeated targeted abuse, threats, intimidation, stalking, coordinated attacks, unwanted contact, or publishing private information to harm someone. Context and severity matter.

Can I downvote someone because I disagree with them?

Disagreement alone does not necessarily make a Story low quality. Vote based on the Story’s usefulness, relevance, accuracy, or quality. A respectful comment may be better when you want to explain a disagreement.

Are vote exchanges allowed?

No. “Vote for me and I will vote for you” arrangements undermine genuine community feedback and may be treated as manipulation.

Can I ask friends to react to my Story?

You can share a Story with people who may genuinely be interested. Coordinating reactions only to manufacture engagement, Karma, or Trending activity is different and may be treated as manipulation.

Can I use AI to help write a Story description?

Using a tool to help draft or improve text does not remove your responsibility for what you submit. The final Story should be accurate, useful, relevant to the source, and free from invented claims, keyword stuffing, or misleading summaries.

What if I accidentally choose the wrong Genre?

An honest mistake can usually be corrected. Repeatedly choosing unrelated Genres for exposure is more serious because it can become a pattern of taxonomy abuse.

Can high Karma protect my account from moderation?

No. Karma does not provide immunity from the Community Guidelines, Spam & Abuse Policy, or Moderation Policy.

Can I report spam or abuse?

Yes. Use the available reporting tools when appropriate. If no suitable reporting option exists for the issue, visit Vahuk Help.

What happens after a report?

A report may lead to review. Vahuk may take no action if no problem is found, or may correct, restrict, remove, or otherwise moderate the affected Story or account depending on the situation.

Can a moderation decision be corrected?

Yes, when appropriate. Technical errors, missing context, or incorrect decisions can require correction. The available review process depends on the issue.

Help Keep Vahuk Useful

You do not need to agree with every Story or every member. You do need to participate honestly, classify what you share accurately, respect other people, and avoid manipulating the systems that help Vahuk surface useful content.

If you are unsure about a submission, read the Submission Guidelines. For detailed anti-abuse rules, see the Spam & Abuse Policy. For review and enforcement, see the Moderation Policy.

You can also read How Karma Works, Voting & Reactions, or visit Vahuk Help for the main documentation hub.