Community rules
How reputation, badges, perks, and contributor recognition work on DealHive. Values below are current as of the date in the header of each section, subject to change with notice. See terms and privacy policy for the legal framing.
Heads up: values, thresholds, tier names, and perks are tunable - we may adjust them as the community grows. Material changes will be flagged in a banner on this page for at least 14 days. Reputation already earned isn't clawed back when values change.
What reputation is
Reputation is a number on your profile. It grows when you contribute things the community values (good deals, useful comments, helpful votes), and it shrinks when you contribute things they don't (rejected submissions, downvoted comments, confirmed bad-deal reports). It exists for three reasons: (a) to surface trusted voices on the site, (b) to gate perks that scale with contribution, (c) to make the site more fun by giving regulars something to grow.
Reputation is not money, but high-rep contributors may be eligible for the Contributor Recognition Program (see below) - a discretionary thank-you that includes charity donations and capped personal rewards, at our discretion.
How to earn reputation
Current values as of 2026-05-31:
| Action | Reputation |
|---|---|
| Confirm your email after signup | +5 |
| Opt in to commercial data use (one-time) | +50 |
| Set up your local-deals home regions (one-time, first time you save at least one city) | +50 |
| A deal you submitted gets approved | +10 |
| A deal you submitted graduates to Popular (bonus, one-time per deal) | +25 |
| A deal you submitted is marked Editor's Choice (bonus, one-time per deal) | +50 |
| Someone upvotes a deal you submitted | +1 |
| You post a comment (capped at 5 rep/day from comments) | +1 |
| Someone upvotes a comment you posted (coming soon) | +1 |
How reputation can be lost
| Action | Reputation |
|---|---|
| Someone downvotes a deal you submitted | -1 |
| Someone downvotes a comment you posted (coming soon) | -1 |
| A deal you submitted is auto-rejected by AI for a clear policy violation (scam, hate, harassment, doxxing, illegal content, referral spam) | -2 |
| A comment you posted is removed by a moderator for a clear policy violation | -2 |
| A deal you submitted is reported and confirmed bad by the community quorum | -5 |
Floor at zero: reputation never goes below 0. A user with 3 rep who incurs a -5 ends up at 0, not -2. New users start at 0 and can only go up from there.
Admin rejections do NOT cost rep. If our admin team rejects a deal you submitted because it didn't quite fit (not really a deal, duplicate, out of scope), there's no rep penalty. We reserve penalties for clear policy violations caught by AI. Real bad actors get handled with account restrictions rather than blunt rep deduction.
No clawback on consent withdrawal: if you opted in to commercial data use (+50 rep) and later toggle it off, you keep the 50 rep. We don't penalise you for exercising your right to withdraw consent. Same applies to local-deals opt-in.
No refund on later voiding: rep earned for an upvote that's later removed (e.g. the voter removes their vote, or the deal expires) is not retroactively voided. Rep flows in one direction.
Badge tiers
Your tier is automatically calculated from your reputation. Higher tiers unlock perks (see next section). Tier appears as a badge next to your name on every deal, comment, and your public profile.
| Tier | Reputation |
|---|---|
| New Member | 0 - 4 |
| Member | 5 - 49 |
| Contributor | 50 - 249 |
| Curator | 250 - 999 |
| Trusted | 1,000 - 2,999 |
| Veteran | 3,000 - 9,999 |
| Legend | 10,000+ |
Non-tier “stacking” badges that show alongside your tier badge: Founding Contributor (opted in to commercial data use), Verified Buyer (coming soon), First 100 (one of the first 100 signups), Local Hero (top contributor in a specific city), AMA Guest (hosted a community AMA).
Perks by tier
Each tier unlocks the perks of itself and every lower tier.
- Member (25+): file reports on stale or wrong deals (normal weight), access the alerts page, access the saved-deals folder.
- Contributor (100+): daily submission cap raised (e.g. 20 → 50); local-tagged-submission cap raised; comments post immediately (no AI moderation queue).
- Curator (500+): vote on deal moderation in
/curator/review; your reports count double weight; your public profile shows your hit rate; can submit aggregate-event deals (multi-item posts). - Trusted (2,000+): can soft-delete obvious spam comments (with audit trail, reversible by admin); early access to new features behind a feature flag; can promote a deal to Popular (subject to admin reversal if abused).
- Veteran (5,000+): enrollment in the DealHive Creators rev-share program (paid fraction of affiliate revenue from deals you submitted); custom flair / profile background; can host a community AMA; featured in the annual rewind email.
- Legend (10,000+): gold star on every interaction; inducted into the Hall of Fame; permanent recognition even if rep later drops.
Some perks listed above (Creators rev-share, custom flair, Hall of Fame, AMAs) are on the roadmap and not yet live. Earning the tier today reserves the perk for when it ships - you don't lose the qualification if the feature is added later.
Contributor Recognition Program
A discretionary thank-you for our highest-contributing members. Pre-launch (no payouts yet); will launch once we have affiliate revenue + ~1,000 active users.
How it works (planned): quarterly, we review top contributors by quality metrics (approved-deal rate, real click-through, low report rate, link quality audit). Recognition takes the form of either (a) a charity donation in the recipient's name to an Australian charity from a curated list, or (b) a capped personal recognition reward (gift card, Insider-tier upgrade, exclusive limited-run merch).
How recipients are picked: by skill / quality criteria (NOT by random draw or pure leaderboard). We manually audit each candidate for link quality and contribution authenticity. Pure-volume contributions don't qualify; quality is the primary signal.
Caps and limits: personal recognition rewards are capped at AUD $300 per recipient per quarter and AUD $1,000 per recipient per calendar year. Charity donations have no cap.
Disclaimers: participation in this program is at our sole discretion - no guarantee, no entitlement, may be modified or discontinued at any time with notice. We may decline payment if we identify content-quality concerns or evidence of farming behaviour. Recipients are responsible for any tax obligations arising from personal recognition rewards (we'll note this when awarding).
Anti-gaming policy
We protect the reputation economy so it stays meaningful:
- You can't vote on your own deals.
- Reputation from comments is capped at 5/day to prevent spam-farming.
- We monitor for sock-puppet voting (multiple accounts upvoting the same submitter); accounts that look like coordinated farming get suspended pending review.
- Reputation earned through verified bad-faith activity (proven fake deals, coordinated downvoting of others) can be reversed at admin discretion.
- If your reputation gets adjusted by a moderator and you think it was wrong, contact support with the details.
Disputes and appeals
If you believe a reputation change, badge assignment, or recognition decision was unfair, contact support with: your username, the action in question (deal id, comment id, or rep change amount), and what you think the correct outcome should be. We aim to respond within 5 business days. Most disputes are resolved by reviewing the audit log.
Reputation and accounts
Reputation belongs to your account. It doesn't transfer between accounts. Deleting your account permanently removes your reputation balance (the underlying actions that earned it stay on the site, anonymised). Reputation doesn't expire, but unused accounts may be cleaned up per our normal account-retention policy (see terms).