Community rules and moderation

Rules

Talk about coins, be decent to each other, and keep buying and selling on the marketplace. In detail:

Never allowed, anywhere on Florin House

These are illegal or seriously harmful. We take them down, can remove the account that posted them, and report them where the law says we must. They are not allowed for anyone, whatever their age.

• Child sexual abuse and exploitation. That means anything that sexualises children, including drawings and AI-made images. It also means grooming: an adult getting in touch with a child, making friends with them or messaging them in order to abuse or exploit them. Never send a sexual message to anyone under 18. We report all of this to the National Crime Agency.
• Terrorist content: anything that supports, promotes or recruits for terrorism, or for a group the UK government has banned.
• Nudity, sexual content or pornography of any kind. That includes sharing an intimate image of someone without their agreement, and sending anyone a sexual image they did not ask for. Designs on coins, medals and banknotes, and classical or historical works of art, are fine, even where they show nude figures. Sexual pictures of any kind, and photos of real people naked, are not.
• Anything that encourages suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, or explains how to do them. If you are struggling, you can call Samaritans free on 116 123, day or night. If you are under 19, you can also call Childline free on 0800 1111.
• Violence: threats, and anything that encourages, shows or explains how to do serious violence to a person or an animal.
• Dangerous stunts or challenges that could get someone badly hurt, and encouraging anyone to swallow, inhale or inject something harmful.
• Hate: attacking or abusing people because of their race, religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or where they are from.
• Bullying, harassment and stalking.
• Offering drugs, weapons, stolen goods or anything else that is illegal to sell.
• Scams and fraud of any kind.

Anything else that could seriously harm someone, especially a child, is not allowed either, even if it is not on this list.

Reports are how we find most of these. Our automated check looks only at threads and replies. It looks for most of the things on this list and passes what it finds to a person. Of the things on this list, it can take something down on its own only when it is sure it is illegal (most often an illegal sale) or plain spam, as the automated check explains. It can miss things, so if you see any of them, anywhere on Florin House, please report it.

Keeping under-18s safe

You can have an account from 13, and we don't check anyone's age. So we keep the things above off Florin House for everyone, not only for children: the checks and reports on this page apply to all of them, and we take them down when we find them.

• Don't ask anyone you don't know for their age, their address, their school or photos of themselves.
• Nobody can put you in a group chat. If someone wants you in one, you get an invitation that shows who sent it and which group it is, and you join only if you accept. You have 14 days to decide, and the person who invited you is not told if you decline or ignore it. They can't ask again straight away by making a new group, and you can block or report them from the invitation itself.
• If someone is making a young person uncomfortable, or asking them to keep secrets, meet up or send photos, block them from the menu in your messages with them, use Report, and email hi@florinhouse.com with the subject “Child safety”. We deal with those emails before anything else.
• If you are under 19 and someone is bullying you, or something you saw here has upset you, you can talk to Childline free on 0800 1111 or at childline.org.uk, day or night.
• If a child is in danger now, call 999.

Scams, off-site deals and contact details

• Buying and selling happens on the Florin House marketplace, not in threads. The marketplace holds the buyer's money until the coin arrives, and the buyer can open a dispute if it doesn't. A deal done anywhere else has none of that protection.
• So don't post phone numbers, email addresses or links to other sites, and don't ask people to contact you on WhatsApp, Telegram, email or anywhere else to do a deal.
• Don't ask for or offer payment outside the marketplace, for example by bank transfer, PayPal Friends and Family, gift cards or cash on collection.
• Asking what a coin is worth is fine. So is saying you have a coin listed on the Florin House marketplace.
• Our automatic checks look for phone numbers, email addresses, links and off-site contact phrases in threads and replies. What they find is held until site staff have looked at it, and nobody else can see it until then. Some have a good reason, like a link to the Royal Mint's page about a coin, and those are let through. A post that is nothing but a contact detail or a link is refused. The checks don't catch everything, so the rule applies whether they spot it or not.

Counterfeits

• Never sell, offer or pass off a counterfeit, replica or altered coin as genuine.
• Showing a fake so that others can learn to spot one is welcome. Say clearly that it is a fake or a copy.
• Don't explain how to make counterfeit coins or how to pass them off.
• Don't offer coins you know or suspect are stolen, or finds that should have been reported as treasure.

Be decent

• Argue about coins, not about people. Disagreeing is fine. Insults, name-calling and personal attacks are not.
• No bullying, harassment or ganging up on someone, and don't follow someone around the site to bother them.
• Don't pretend to be someone else, including Florin House, a dealer or a moderator.
• Don't post things you know are false, such as a made-up history or grade for a coin.

If someone is bothering you, you can block them from the menu in a direct message with them. Blocking stops messages both ways, hides their replies from you in threads, and stops either of you replying to the other's threads and replies or voting on the other's posts. It does not yet hide their threads from the feed or stop them following you. If that happens, report it.

Personal information

• Don't post anyone's personal details, such as their home address, phone number, email address, where they work or go to school, or photos of them, unless they have agreed.
• Don't post private messages someone sent you without their agreement.
• Be careful with your own. Anyone can read threads and replies, whether or not they are signed in. Don't say where you keep your coins or when you will be away from home.

Pictures

• Only post pictures you took yourself or have permission to use. You can add up to 4 to a thread or a reply.
• Keep them about coins and collecting. No nude or sexual photos of real people, no gore or violence, and no photos of other people unless they have agreed. The designs on coins, medals and banknotes are fine, even where they show nude figures.
• Check the background before you post. A photo of your coins can show your home, your address on a letter, or where you keep your collection.
• We save a fresh copy of every picture you add to a thread or reply, and of a community's own picture and banner picture when its owner sets them. That removes the hidden details a phone adds to a photo, including where it was taken. A community's picture set before we began doing this was stored as it was uploaded, so if you own a community, setting its picture again makes sure it carries none of them.
• When a thread or reply is taken down, its pictures are moved off their public web address into private storage, where only we can see them, within about two hours, unless another post that is still showing uses them. They come back if it is put back, unless its author has deleted their account.
• When you delete a thread or reply, its pictures are deleted, unless a moderator is looking at it (we then keep them privately, with the report), another of your posts uses them, or the law requires us to keep them.
• A picture you upload but never post, for example because you removed it from the thread or gave up on the thread, is taken off its public web address about a day after you choose it.
• We delete a picture file from private storage too when we take it down as illegal or as harmful to children. If you want a picture of yours to go completely, for example because it shows you or your home, email hi@florinhouse.com and we will delete the file.

Spam and fair play

• No advertising, and no promoting other shops, websites or services.
• Don't post the same thing again and again. Posting the same title twice in a day is refused.
• One account per person. Don't use other accounts, or ask other people, to vote, report or post for you.
• There are daily limits: 10 threads (3 on your first day), 100 replies, 20 pictures, 10 edits to threads and 20 edits to replies. Deleting a post or a picture does not give you another.
• Don't report posts just because you disagree with them.

A community's own rules

A community's moderators can write house rules for their community. They are shown to anyone about to post there. House rules can add to these rules but cannot overrule them, and cannot include contact details or links.

If you break the rules

• Your thread or reply can be held for review or taken down. You are usually sent a notification when that happens, which says how to appeal, and you can always see it on the post itself: a held post shows to you as waiting for review, and one that was taken down shows as taken down.
• A thread that is taken down disappears for everyone except you and the moderators. A reply that is taken down stays in its thread as “Taken down” under your name, without its words or pictures, and anyone reading the thread can see that.
• Site moderators can send you a warning.
• If you keep breaking the rules, or break a serious one, your account can be banned. Only the owner can ban an account. A banned account cannot post, reply, vote, add pictures, report, or buy and sell. Any account, a banned one included, can still be deleted from its settings, even while a report about it is open. Only money still moving makes it wait. You cannot delete your account while an order you are part of is still open or a payout is still held. If a report about it is open, we first keep what the report concerns, for us alone, until the report is closed, and for 90 days at most, unless the law requires us to keep it longer (our Privacy Policy, section 7, says what).
• Where something is illegal, we may also report it to the police or the National Crime Agency.

You can appeal any of these. See Complaints and appeals.

Moderators

Two kinds of people moderate on Florin House, and an automated check helps them.

Site staff

Site staff are the owner and any site moderators the owner appoints. Site moderators are not named publicly, because they act across the whole site.

• Site staff can act anywhere: approve a held post, take a thread or reply down and put it back, check what the automated check took down, pin and lock threads, close reports and send warnings.
• Only the owner can ban an account, appoint or remove site moderators, and quarantine, close or reopen a community.

Community moderators

Anyone who is signed in can start a public community. The person who starts it is its owner and moderates it, and can appoint up to 5 more moderators. Community moderators are volunteers, not Florin House staff. Who moderates a community is public.

• In their own community, they can take threads and replies down, put back what they took down, mark something the automated check passed to them as fine, pin and lock threads, close reports, and write the house rules. If they take down a post that was held and then put it back, it goes back to being held.
• They cannot act outside their community, act on their own posts, undo something site staff or the automated check took down, warn or ban anyone, or see who made a report. They see the reason given, never the person.
• Some things are for site staff only. Community moderators cannot let through a post held for contact details or a link, or say something is fine when the automated check thought it might be child abuse, grooming, terrorism, sexual content, hate, or about suicide or self-harm, or close a report it thought that about. Reports of child sexual abuse or grooming, an intimate image, or other illegal content go straight to site staff and are not shown to community moderators. Community moderators can still take any of these down, but cannot put them back up: a held post goes back to being held, and anything else waits for site staff.
• They lose their moderator tools if their community is closed.

What we expect of community moderators

• Apply these rules and your house rules fairly, including to your friends.
• Deal with reports in your community within 3 days. A report left open longer than that counts against the community (see the ladder below).
• If you see something illegal, take it down and email hi@florinhouse.com straight away with the link. Don't copy, screenshot or share it.
• Don't use moderation to win an argument. If you are part of it, leave it to someone else.
• Keep what you see as a moderator to yourself. Held posts, report reasons and anything written with a report are not to be copied, shared or talked about outside moderation.

What to look out for

Take these down and email us straight away. Don't wait for a report.

• Grooming: an adult trying to get a young member to talk in private, meet up, send photos or keep a secret, or asking them their age, school or address. Use the subject “Child safety”.
• Anything sexual, and anything that sexualises a child. Send only the link.
• Threats, hate, and anyone being singled out and piled on.
• A coin offered as genuine that looks fake, or anyone asking to be paid off the marketplace.
• Anything supporting terrorism or a banned group.
• Anything encouraging suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.

The automated check

We use an AI model made by Anthropic to read new and edited threads and replies, including their pictures, and to look again at a thread or reply that is reported. It is not used on a report of child sexual abuse or grooming, an intimate image or other illegal content, nor on the thread or reply such a report is about while the report is open: a person reads those instead. A check also runs overnight on the day's posts that were missed. It does not read messages, listings or profiles. It sorts content into kinds: fine, spam, trying to deal off the site, a scam or counterfeit sale, harassment, illegal, child sexual abuse or grooming, terrorism, sexual content, hate, content about suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, or something else. By “illegal” it mostly means selling stolen coins, unreported treasure finds, weapons or drugs. It can get things wrong and it can miss things, which is why reports matter.

• It can take something down on its own only when it thinks it is spam, an attempt to deal off the site, or illegal, and is at least 90% sure. Illegal here includes child sexual abuse material and terrorist material, which are against the law to have or share. You get a notification when it does, which says that our automated check made the decision, not a person, and how to appeal. Site staff look at every automatic takedown within 3 days and either put it back or keep it down, and you are told which. You don't have to wait for that to appeal.
• Anything else it is unsure about is passed to a moderator. It never takes down harassment, a suspected counterfeit sale, grooming, hate, or anything about suicide or self-harm on its own: it passes those to a person, however sure it is, unless a sale also asks buyers to deal off the site, which it can take down for that alone. It does the same with sexual content, unless it is plainly spam, and with anything it thinks might be child sexual abuse or terrorism but is not sure of.
• It never takes something down because of a report, never overrules a moderator who approved something or put it back, and never lets a held post through.
• It does not check every post as it is written: when it is not working, or we have reached our limit on checks for the day, posts go up after the contact-detail checks alone, and moderators still deal with reports.

The ladder for communities

Community moderators are expected to deal with what is reported in their community. The ladder is how we keep track, and how we step in when a community is not being looked after. Every community is on one of five steps, and anyone who visits it can see which.

1. Active. Nothing to say.
2. Notice. Set automatically overnight when a report in the community has been open for more than 3 days, or when site staff have had to take down 3 or more things there in 30 days that had been reported and left for 3 days. A banner says the community has open reports. Nothing changes for anyone posting.
3. Warned. Set automatically when a community has been on notice for 7 days and the same problems are still there. The banner says the reports have been open for some time. Still nothing changes for anyone posting.
4. Quarantined. Only the owner of Florin House can do this, and must write down why. The community is taken out of the list of communities and the main feed, and only people who were already members can post in it. It can be undone.
5. Closed. Only the owner of Florin House can do this, and must write down why. Its threads stay up and can still be read, but nobody can post or reply, and its moderators lose their moderator tools.

• A computer can only move a community up to warned. A person decides to quarantine or close one.
• A community never moves back down on its own, even once its reports are dealt with, because a person should decide that it is being run properly again. When yours is ready, email hi@florinhouse.com and we will look at it.
• Each time a community moves, its owner and moderators get a notification with the reason. Members and visitors see the banner.
• The owner of a quarantined or closed community can appeal within 7 days. The date is on the banner. See Complaints and appeals.

Complaints and appeals

Reporting something

• Use Report on the thread or reply, or on a listing or in a message, and choose the reason that fits best. The person you report is not told who you are, even if they appeal, and community moderators see the reason but never who reported it.
• If it is child sexual abuse or grooming, an intimate image of you, or anything else illegal, choose that reason, wherever you report it. Those reports go straight to site staff, at the top of the list, and are not shown to community moderators.
• You can add a note to say what is wrong after you choose a reason. Email hi@florinhouse.com instead, or as well, if you want to tell us more than fits in a note, if you are not signed in or don't have an account, if the post is about you or someone you look after, or if you have reached the daily limit: 20 reports of threads and replies a day, and 10 more of child sexual abuse or grooming, an intimate image or anything else illegal, wherever you report it. Send the link and say what is wrong.
• We look at reports within the times in the table at the end of this page.
• If it shows child sexual abuse, don't copy, screenshot or share it. Send us the link only. You can also report it to the Internet Watch Foundation at report.iwf.org.uk. If someone is in danger now, call 999.
• We don't yet send you a message about what happened to your report. If you want to know, email us.
• If you reported bullying, or something about suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, and it has affected you, you don't have to deal with it alone. If you are under 19, Childline is free on 0800 1111 or at childline.org.uk. Anyone can call Samaritans free on 116 123. Both are there day or night.

A nude, sexual or intimate image of you

If a nude, sexual or intimate image of you has been posted or sent on Florin House without your agreement, email hi@florinhouse.com with the subject “Intimate image report”. That includes a photo or video of you in your underwear, or on the toilet. You can also report for someone else if you are acting for them. Don't send us the image itself: send the link. Tell us:

• where it is: the link to each thread, reply or message, or enough detail for us to find it;
• that it is an intimate image of you, or of the person you are acting for;
• that you are reporting in good faith and that what you have told us is true;
• how we can contact you.

We take it down, and any copies of it we find, within 48 hours, and we delete the picture files. The only exceptions are if we decide it is not an intimate image, or that you are not entitled to report it, and we will tell you if so. Even then, we still take it down if it breaks these rules, and sexual content of any kind does. If you are unhappy with how we dealt with it, reply to our email and we will deal with that before anything else.

If your post is held

A thread or reply that is held shows as waiting for review to you and the moderators, and to nobody else. We look at held posts within 3 days. If it has been longer, email hi@florinhouse.com.

Appealing a decision

You can appeal if we, a community moderator or the automated check:

• took down your thread, reply, listing, message or picture;
• did not let a held post of yours through;
• sent you a warning;
• banned your account;
• quarantined or closed a community you own.

Email hi@florinhouse.com with the subject “Appeal”. Tell us your username, the link to the post if there is one, what happened and why you think it was wrong, and send anything that helps. Appeal within 30 days. For a ban, appeal within 7 days, and for a community being quarantined or closed, within 7 days. We accept a late appeal if there is a good reason. The notifications we send when we take down a thread or reply, warn you, or quarantine or close your community say the same.

What happens next:

• We reply within 2 working days to say we have it and when you will hear from us.
• A person looks at the decision again, with what you sent. Florin House is run by one person, so if the owner made the first decision, the owner looks at it again from the start.
• If your post was taken down because somebody reported it, we tell you the reason given in the report, but never who made it.
• We decide within 7 days and tell you what we decided and why.
• If you are right, we put your post back, tell you the warning is withdrawn and record that it was, lift the ban, or return your community to where it was. Once a person has put something back, the automated check cannot take it down again on its own. It can only ask a person to look.
• If we keep the decision, we explain why.

Appealing does not stop you going to court, including for breach of contract.

Complaints about how we run Florin House

If you think we are not doing what these rules, our Terms or the law say, for example about dealing with illegal content, protecting children from harmful content, handling reports and appeals, or respecting your freedom of expression and your privacy, email hi@florinhouse.com with the subject “Complaint”. The owner deals with every complaint. If you would rather not get more emails about your complaint once we have it, say so.

For complaints about how we use your personal data, see section 7 of our Privacy Policy. You can complain to us, and to the Information Commissioner's Office.

How quickly we act

These are the longest we allow ourselves, not how long things usually take. If we miss one, tell us at hi@florinhouse.com.