Skip to main content

Jellyfin Community Standards

This document outlines the standards by which all participants in the Jellyfin community, be it user or contributor, on all possible platforms, must adhere.

Mission Statement​

  • Jellyfin aims to be the best free and open-source media streaming platform possible, without any proprietary/locked features or unreasonable centralization.

  • Jellyfin is a project made up entirely and exclusively of Volunteers who donate their free time to the project.

  • Jellyfin is not and will never be under the control of any corporation or profit-driven entity, and does not exist to make money for anyone, including any volunteer contributors or the project leadership.

  • Fostering a community of respectful and productive contributors is central to our success and longevity.

Code of Conduct​

At all times when interacting with the Jellyfin community via any method (Matrix, Forums, etc.), you must abide by the following:

  • Respect others and remember the Human. Do exhibit kindness and empathy to others and make them feel welcome. Do not antagonize, flame, insult, demean, abuse, or harass others. Do not use slurs or sexualized language. Do not dox or otherwise expose others' private information, even if it is shared publicly elsewhere. Always act in good faith and give other contributors the benefit of the doubt. Try to read positivity rather than negativity into communications where at all possible.

  • Do not engage in, encourage, facilitate or discuss piracy in any Jellyfin communities. Jellyfin is a media server system for your own media collection; how you obtain media is not our concern and is not to be discussed in our communities in any form. Do not ask about where or how to obtain media, do not ask about, sell, trade, or otherwise facilitate access to other users' servers or discuss any piracy related topics. This includes discussing technologies commonly used for piracy and personal philosophies about it, in our communities. Please also refrain from discussing any topic that is closely related to piracy or accompanying topics and technology.

  • Do not suggest, encourage, or discuss configurations that may violate the Terms of Service (TOS) of any other platforms. Jellyfin can interface with multiple external services, both internally (e.g. Metadata providers) and by user configuration, each of which has its own requirements and TOS to protect itself. We do not want Jellyfin or its community to develop a reputation for facilitating circumvention or breaking of other services' TOSes or be seen as a problematic member of the wider community. The exact nature of these violations is subject to interpretation on a case-by-case basis based on the service in question and the discussion, and this rule is designed to bring attention to the issue. As a concrete example, the Cloudflare Terms Of Service forbid video streaming behind a normal Cloudflare tunnel; thus, suggesting a user run their instance in this way is a violation of this rule.

  • English is the primary working language of Jellyfin, but large portions of the community are not native English speakers. Be patient when language issues arise, and do not mistake incomplete language knowledge for ignorance or worse. If you are having trouble communicating an idea in English, please post in your native language and ask for help translating, and someone is likely to understand.

  • Jellyfin is created exclusively by volunteers, as set out in our Mission Statement. Since they are freely giving their time and effort, no volunteer contributor owes anything whatsoever to any other contributor, any user, or the project itself. Contributors are free to come and go as they please, to work on and give attention to what they deem interesting or important, and to respond or not respond to anything they wish. Do not badger volunteers in any way about any topic.

  • If you have questions to ask of the community, please choose the appropriate location (see our Getting Help page) and ask your question in full, immediately, with as much detail as possible. Author issues aside, Asking Questions the Smart Way is a valuable resource and is recommended reading before engaging with any free and open source community, including ours. Do not pester or harass community members for help or to answer questions. Do not require others to pry information out of you. Do not spam questions; they will be answered when they are answered.

Dispute Resolution and Moderation​

Disputes are inevitable, including violations of the rules above. When these occur, the following policy applies.

  • Before any other resolution step, we trust the community to police itself. If you see a community member violating these community standards, please let them know, and link them to this document. Do not respond in kind (e.g. respond to a flame with a flame). Most disagreements can be solved with education and discussion. If you have been linked to this document by another user, do not dwell on this point: alter your behavior as appropriate and move on.

  • If the issue cannot be resolved between the contributors, any complaints, instances of explicit rule breaking, or unresolvable disagreements with other community members may be directed towards the Core Team or the Project Leader directly. You may do so through email (team [at] jellyfin.org) or on Matrix via a direct message. Please include details and context as appropriate. See the about page for the list of Core Team members and ways to contact them.

  • The team will review the complaint and decide on an action, including but not limited to: informal private guidance, informal private warnings, formal public warnings, temporary ban(s) from the various platforms, or permanent ban(s).

  • Formal warnings will be made under a "second-chance-only" policy. Once warned, if one repeats the same behavior, the response will escalate as appropriate to the infraction.

  • Moderation tasks in some locations are delegated to other, non-Core team members. This dispute resolution procedure applies anywhere under the Jellyfin umbrella. The Core team and Project Leader retain final say in any dispute resolutions.

Questions or Comments​

Questions or comments regarding these standards should be forwarded to the Project Leader or Core Team.

Changelog​

This document represents official Jellyfin project policy. Any changes to this document require a changelog entry here and approval by a Project Leader.

  • 2020-09-14, Joshua Boniface: Initial version of the community standards document. Based very loosely on several CoCs including the Contributor Covenant, and various Forum rules I've read and written over the years.
  • 2022-09-03, Joshua Boniface: Update header and footer sections; reduce redundant wording; make rules clearer.
  • 2024-08-12, JPVenson: Added section about respecting the TOS of other services