Community Guidelines

Last updated: 25 October 2026

The short version

MDX is a home for Africa's technical creatives. People come here to show work, learn, get seen and hype each other up. Keep it that way.

Respect the people. Disagree with ideas. Never attack a person.
Credit is everything. Only share work you made or have the right to share, and name everyone who helped.
Feedback that helps. Be specific, be honest, be kind.
No spam. This is a community, not a billboard.
Keep people safe. No threats, no hate, no sharing anyone's private details.
16+ only. You need to be 16 or older to join.
See something off? Report it. A real person on the MDX team will look at it.

These guidelines cover everything you do on joinmdx.com: Journal comments and likes, your profile, the work and award entries you share, your votes, event sign-ups and the waitlists you join. They sit alongside our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

1. Respect the people

MDX brings together motion designers, brand and visual designers, photographers and filmmakers, experimenters, creative technologists and the curious. Whether you've shipped client work for years or posted your first render last week, you get the same respect.

Talk to people the way you'd want someone to talk about your first reel.
Disagree with the work, the idea or the take, never with who someone is.
Don't pile on. If someone has already made the point, a like says "same" without making it a crowd.
Don't pretend to be someone else: another member, a studio, a brand or the MDX team.

2. No harassment, no hate

Zero tolerance here. We remove it, and we may remove the people who post it.

No harassment or bullying: insults, mockery, repeated unwanted contact, or rallying others against someone.
No hate: nothing that attacks or demeans people for their ethnicity, nationality, tribe, religion, gender, sexuality, disability or any other part of who they are.
No threats or encouragement of violence, not even "as a joke".
No sexual content, and nothing sexual involving anyone under 18. Ever.

3. Keep it real: no spam

We love it when you share what you're building. We don't love link-dumping.

Don't post the same comment over and over, or across lots of posts.
Don't use comments to advertise, sell or farm followers. Want to work with MDX? Email [email protected].
Links are welcome when they add something to the conversation. New here? Your first links show as "Link awaiting review" until a moderator has a look. It's not personal; it's how we keep spam out. Once one of your links is approved, your links go live straight away.
Don't game likes, views or votes with extra accounts, bots or "like for like" deals.

4. Credit is everything

Credit is the whole point of MDX: your work, your name, always.

Only post or submit work you made, or work you have the right to share.
Credit everyone who worked on it: co-designers, animators, sound designers, directors, studios. If a project was a team effort, the credits say so.
Client work: check that you're allowed to share it before it goes on your profile or into the Awards. Your agreement with the client comes first.
Assets: make sure you have the right to use the music, footage, fonts, models and other assets in your piece.
Inspiration is part of the craft; passing someone off as you is not. Reference, remix and learn from others, and say so when it matters. Don't post someone else's work as your own.
Is your work up here without your permission or without credit? Use Report on the comment, the project or the award entry, and pick "Stolen work or missing credit". For anything else, like a profile, email [email protected] with a link. We'll look into it.

5. Feedback that helps

Awards at MDX are built on scores, and scores only mean something if they're honest.

When you vote:

Score the work, not the person, against each of the category's criteria.
Use the score guide: 1–4 not there yet · 5–6 solid · 7–8 strong · 9–10 exceptional. A 10 should mean a 10.
You can't vote on your own entries or on work you're credited on. If you know the creator personally and can't be fair, skip it.
Jurors who know a creator through work, friendship or a studio step aside (recuse) for that entry. Jurors don't enter the categories they judge, and the people who run the Awards don't enter or vote at all.
To vote as a member you need a verified email. Your vote is final once you cast it, and it's public: each entry lists who voted and the scores they gave.
Don't trade votes, don't ask friends to max-score you, and don't run vote campaigns. We review voting patterns before results are final, and we can hold results while we look into anything that doesn't add up.

When you comment on someone's work in the Journal:

Lead with what works, then what could be better, then why.
Be specific: "the ease-out on the logo reveal feels late" helps; "mid" doesn't.
Ask before you assume. "What were you going for with the colour shift?" opens a conversation.
Hype is welcome. Empty hype on everything is noise.

6. Keep people safe

Private information: never post someone's phone number, home address, private messages, ID documents or other personal details, even if you found them somewhere public.
Self-harm: don't post content that encourages it. If someone seems at risk, report the comment with "Self-harm" so a moderator sees it. If anyone is in immediate danger, contact your local emergency services first.
Illegal content: don't post it, link to it or ask for it.

7. 16+ only

You need to be 16 or older to create an MDX account, comment, or join a waitlist. When you sign up, you tell us you're 16 or older. If we learn an account belongs to someone younger, we'll close it.

8. Reporting

See a comment, a project or an award entry that breaks these guidelines? Use Report on it and pick the closest reason:

Spam
Harassment or bullying
Hate
Sexual content
Violence or threats
Self-harm
Private information
Impersonation
Stolen work or missing credit
Off-topic
Something else

You can add a short note. You don't need an account to report; if you're not signed in, we'll ask you to pass a quick bot check first. For anything without a Report button, like a profile, email [email protected] with a link.

Your report is confidential. Only moderators can see who reported something. The person you reported never can.

9. How moderation works

Comments go live straight away. We don't make you wait for approval, apart from first-time links (see §3).
People decide, with one safety catch. One report never hides anything. If three different members report the same comment, it's held for review: hidden until a moderator looks, and back as it was if it breaks no guideline. Every report goes to the moderation queue, and moderators get an email alert.
Removed comments. When a moderator removes a comment, they record a reason. If the comment had replies, a "Comment removed" marker stays so the conversation still makes sense. If it's your comment, you'll see that it was removed and why.
Cooling things down. Moderators can lock a thread (it stays readable, but no new comments), turn comments off on a post, or pause comments across the whole site while they deal with something.
Your own comments. You can edit a comment for 15 minutes after posting; after that it stays as written, marked "edited" if you changed it. You can delete your own comment at any time. If it had replies, a "Comment deleted" marker keeps its place in the thread.
Award entries are reviewed before voting opens. An entry that breaks these guidelines, or the category rules, can be rejected with a reason. Until voting opens, an approved entry can still be removed if it turns out to break them, for example if it's someone else's work.
We may not be able to tell you the outcome of every report.

10. What happens if you break the rules

What we do depends on what happened and whether it keeps happening:

A nudge: a held link stripped, a comment removed with a reason, or a project taken off the site.
Less room: a thread locked, comments switched off on a post, or your commenting paused for a while (you'll see why, and until when, where the comment box was).
Awards: an entry rejected at review or removed before voting opens, or results held while we look into suspected vote manipulation.
Out: for serious or repeated breaches, we deactivate the account.
The law: where the law requires it, we may pass information to the authorities.

We don't run a points or strikes system. A single serious breach, like a threat or sharing someone's private details, can be enough to lose your account.

11. Think we got it wrong?

We're human and we'll sometimes get it wrong. If you think a decision about your comment, project, entry or account was wrong, email [email protected] with a link to it and tell us why. A person will read it.

Questions about these guidelines? Same address. We'll update them as MDX grows, and when we do, we'll change the date at the top of this page.