Content policy

This covers what belongs on Makit Community and what does not. It applies to the repositories people list here, and to what they write here — comments, and the notes and photos on a build.

A project is a repository, and we do not host its files. So this policy is about what you point at and what you say about it, and the strongest thing we can do about a project is stop pointing at it.

What belongs here

Hardware somebody can rebuild: a public repository with the drawings, the parts and enough writing to make it again. It does not have to be finished, or good. It does have to be a real attempt at a real thing.

What is not allowed

Weapons, and the files that make them

This one is absolute, and it does not bend to your local law being more permissive than somebody else’s:

• Firearms, and any part of one — frames, receivers, bolts, barrels, magazines, suppressors.
• Anything that converts a firearm to automatic fire or raises its rate of fire, and anything whose purpose is to make a weapon harder to detect.
• Ammunition, explosives, and their components.
• Files ready to hand to a machine to produce any of the above — G-code, sliced files, CAM output, toolpaths.
• Controlled knives and other weapons that are regulated where you are, and instructions for making them.

The reason it is a flat rule rather than a judgement call: publishing a machine-ready file for a firearm frame or receiver is an export-controlled act under US law — it stays subject to the Export Administration Regulations even once it is public, the ordinary “it has been published” exception does not apply to it, and it needs a licence before it goes online (15 CFR §734.7(c)). Publishing instructions for making a firearm or a controlled knife is prohibited outright in China. We are not able to run that assessment country by country, so the line is drawn in the same place for everyone.

Props, replicas and airsoft parts that cannot fire a projectile and cannot be converted to are fine. Say clearly in the project which one it is.

Anything involving a child sexually

Reported to the authorities, account closed, no warning and no appeal. There is nothing to discuss here.

Files that are not yours to publish

Somebody else’s model, drawing or documentation, republished without the right to do so — a vendor’s STEP file out of a press kit, a paid model re-uploaded, a project lifted from someone else and listed under your own name. Listing a repository is a statement that you may publish what is in it.

Building on someone else’s open project is not this. That is what the licences are for, and the project page says where a project came from.

Danger the project hides

Hardware is dangerous by nature and we are not going to pretend otherwise: mains voltage, lithium cells, stored energy and hot surfaces are all ordinary here. What is not allowed is hiding it — telling people to bypass a thermal cutout, a fuse, an interlock or an enclosure; leaving out that a design carries mains inside; presenting something as safe that the writer knows is not.

Say what the risk is. That is the whole requirement.

Spam

Listings that exist to move traffic somewhere else, repeated builds posted for the same project, comments that are advertisements. A link to the shop you bought a part from is fine; a project that is a shop is not.

Harassment

Going after a person rather than their work. Criticising a design as hard as you like is the point of this place. Abuse, threats, and publishing somebody’s private details are not.

Things that are not projects

Sexual content, gore, and material meant to shock rather than to be built. This is a directory of hardware.

Other goods whose manufacture or sale is licensed where you are — medical devices meant to treat somebody, drug precursors, radio equipment that transmits outside the licence-free bands — are your responsibility to get right before you list them.

Reporting something

Reporting is done in the Makit app, from the page of whatever you are reporting. The reasons are copyright, unsafe design, spam, harassment, and something else. Tell us what is wrong and how you know — a report we can check is worth more than an angry one.

What we can do

We can do three things, and each one is logged with a reason:

• Hide a listing, so it disappears from this site.
• Delete a comment.
• Suspend an account, which hides everything it listed.

What we cannot do is take files down. They are in somebody’s repository on somebody else’s host, and hiding a listing does not touch them. For copyright in particular, report it to the host as well — that is the only place it can actually be removed.

Weapons are the exception to the ordinary handling: a listing goes as soon as we see it, before any correspondence, and the account with it.

If we get it wrong

Write to hello@makit.build and say which listing or account, and why. A person will read it. We would rather be argued out of a bad call than leave it standing.