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Stop Flock Cams Now

Contributor Policy

Stop Flock Cams Now · Last updated: 2026-08-23

Contributors are how this map gets built and stays true. This policy covers how to contribute safely, lawfully, and accurately — and what you're agreeing to when you do. It supplements terms-of-service.md §3 and community-guidelines.md.

1. Safety first — the non-negotiables

Documenting a camera is never worth an injury, an arrest, or a confrontation.

  • Stay on public property. Sidewalks, public road shoulders (parked safely), parks, and other places you have a legal right to be. If documenting a camera requires entering private or restricted property — skip it.
  • Never touch the equipment. Do not touch, lean on, open, climb toward, attach anything to, obstruct, or otherwise interfere with any camera, pole, cabinet, or solar panel. Not even briefly, not even "just to read the label." Photographing from a lawful vantage point is protected activity; touching is how protected activity stops being protected.
  • Traffic is the real danger. Most ALPRs are on roadways. Park legally and fully off the travel lane, wear visible clothing at dusk/night, never photograph from a moving vehicle you are driving, and don't stand in medians.
  • If approached by police or property owners: stay calm and polite, state that you're photographing from public property, and comply with lawful orders even if you believe they're wrong — document and report the encounter to us afterward instead of escalating. Walking away is always an acceptable outcome.
  • Don't linger, don't be covert. Take the photo, note the details, move on. Behaving furtively creates risk that walking up in the open does not.
  • Protect yourself digitally. We strip GPS EXIF from published photos automatically, never require your real name (pseudonyms are fine and normal), and never publish your email. You control what identity, if any, you attach to your work.
  • Contributors must be 16 or older to do fieldwork.

2. Lawful conduct — bright lines

Everything in terms-of-service.md §4 applies with force to contributors: no vandalism, tampering, disabling, obstruction, trespass, or interference of any kind; no harassment, doxxing, or targeting of any individual; no using the platform or its data to track people. A contributor who breaks these lines is banned and, where warranted, reported. There are no exceptions for good intentions. This platform documents, verifies, educates, informs, organizes, and advocates — lawfully. That is the entire deal.

3. What a good report contains

  • Precise location: GPS from the report flow, or a map pin placed where the camera is (not where you stood). State your uncertainty honestly.
  • Photo from public property showing the device and mounting context (pole, intersection). Avoid capturing people, private plates, or home interiors — such photos are rejected or edited.
  • Details: facing/direction of monitored travel, mount type, camera count on the pole, manufacturer if identifiable (Flock's form factor is distinctive; if unsure, say unsure — AI-assisted identification will be marked AI ESTIMATE and reviewed).
  • Dupe check: the flow surfaces nearby existing markers; verify or dispute those rather than duplicating (methodology.md §3).
  • Removals: a missing previously-documented camera is a report too — file it so the record can move to REMOVED_CONFIRMED.

All reports pass pre-publication moderation (../docs/MODERATION.md). Declines come with reasons; fix and resubmit.

4. Verification rules

Verification is what moves a record up the confidence tiers (methodology.md §2):

  • A verification is a first-hand re-observation: you went there (or have your own photo evidence) and confirm the camera exists as described — location, type, status.
  • Independence is required: you cannot verify your own report, reports from accounts sharing your signals (household/device), or verifications coordinated to game tiers. COMMUNITY_VERIFIED requires 2+ independent verifications.
  • Verify honestly, including negatively: "no camera at this location" is a valid and valuable verification outcome and routes the record toward DISPUTED or REMOVED_CONFIRMED.
  • Drive-by memory is not verification. If you didn't observe it, don't attest it.

5. Accuracy-based reputation

Your standing is earned by being right, not by volume:

  • Reputation rises with reports and verifications that survive independent confirmation, and falls when your submissions are corrected, disputed successfully, or declined for accuracy.
  • Higher reputation earns streamlined review and eligibility for verifier and, by invitation, moderator roles; lowered reputation means added review on your submissions (enforcement ladder: community-guidelines.md §4).
  • Fabrication is not a reputation event; it's a ban, plus re-review of everything you ever touched.
  • Reputation is internal machinery for data quality; we don't gamify it with public leaderboards that reward speed over care.

6. Licensing and OSM upstreaming

By submitting, you grant the license in terms-of-service.md §3 — including release of camera data under ODbL 1.0 and contribution upstream to OpenStreetMap. In practice:

  • SFCN periodically contributes verified reports (COMMUNITY_VERIFIED and above) to OSM under OSM's contributor terms, using the community's ALPR tagging conventions, so the commons that DeFlock and others built benefits from your work.
  • If you already map in OSM, consider submitting there directly; our ingest will pick it up, and the commons is the best home for base data. We'll credit the tagging community either way.
  • Your published contributions appear under your display name in provenance records and in the free dumps described in data-license.md.

Questions or safety incidents to report: [contributors@stopflockcamsnow.com] · urgent: [safety@stopflockcamsnow.com]