Are the counts on each idea verified?

No, and they are not meant to be. Anyone can tap the button to say they did something, and we have no way to check. That is why the page says people say they have done this rather than presenting it as a rating or a review. There are no points, badges or leaderboards anywhere on the site, because attaching a score to kindness changes why people do it and gives them a reason to claim things they did not do.

Do I need an account?

No. There are no accounts on the public site. You can mark something as done, leave a one-line note and start a ripple without giving an email address or a name. A first name and a town are optional, and both are labels rather than an identity — never verified, never used to build a profile.

You have an email list now. Does that not undo all of that?

It would if the address were joined to anything. It is not. The list lives in its own table with its own file of queries, and that file has no way to reach an act, a note, a chain or the device cookie — which is checkable rather than a promise. An edition is built from the situations somebody ticked when they signed up and from the public library, so the same email could be composed for a stranger who has never used the site. It is asked for in one place, never beside an act, and confirmed by clicking a link before anything is sent.

What do you store about me?

A random value in a cookie so the same browser cannot inflate a counter twice, hashed with a server secret before it is saved. Raw IP addresses are never stored; rate limiting uses a salted hash that rotates daily, which is enough to stop abuse and useless for tracking anybody. Nothing derived from either is ever shown on a page.

Who decides what gets published?

A person, before it goes live. Notes written by readers are screened for links and abuse automatically, then held for a human. Acts that people wrote themselves can earn a place too — when enough people in enough places have done the same thing, we ask the author whether it can go in, and a person reads it against the published standard above. Nothing written by anybody else is published without somebody reading it first.

Can I ask someone to come and help?

Yes. A request is one specific thing, and a person reads it before it is public. The address is not on that page. It is said only after you accept an offer. In-person help is for the town you saved on your account. The site does not take payment, and it does not rank the people who offer.

A chain of kind acts passed between people. When you mark something as done you can start one, which gives you a short code to hand to whoever you did it for. When they do something kind they add themselves, and pass it on. Chains are never listed publicly and are not indexed by search engines — the only way into one is to be given the code.

Editorial standards

How this is written

A good deal of this library is about grief, illness, disability and caring for someone. You should be able to see who wrote it and how it is checked before you take any of it seriously.

Who writes it

The BeingKind editors. BeingKind is written and edited by hand. Every entry is checked by a person before it goes live.

There are 323 published ideas. Every one was written specifically for this site. None of it is syndicated, spun from another site’s content, or assembled from a list somewhere else — which is why the reasoning in each one is the part worth reading.

What each idea has to contain

An idea only earns a page if it is specific enough to act on today. Every entry has to say plainly what to do, and — more importantly — why it lands on the person receiving it. That second part is the whole point: most lists of kind acts tell you to brighten someone’s day and never explain what actually works.

Where an act involves somebody in a difficult situation, the entry also carries a note about the one thing to be careful of. Good intentions and getting it right are different things, and an entry that told you to ask a widow about her husband without also telling you to let her decline would be doing harm.

How we handle evidence

Where an entry says something is well established — that falls cause lasting harm in older people, that late payment closes small businesses, that children read routine as safety — it should be traceable to something. Where it cannot be, it is written as an observation rather than dressed up as research.

This is the part of the site most actively being worked on. If you find a claim here that reads like a finding and has nothing behind it, that is a fault and we would like to know.

What can never be an act

Acts written by people using the site can earn a place in the library. Before one does, a person reads it against this list. It is written as situations rather than principles on purpose: “use good judgment” cannot be applied the same way twice, and these can.

The first nine are refused outright. Most of this library is about being near somebody in a difficult week, and an instruction that goes wrong does not embarrass anybody — it gets a person hurt.

Puts an adult alone with a child
Anything that arranges for an adult to be alone with a child who is not theirs. This is refused whatever the intention, because the instruction reaches strangers and we cannot know theirs.
A lift with somebody you do not know
Getting into a car with somebody you do not know, or asking somebody to get into yours. An hour alone in a locked vehicle with a stranger is not a small kind thing.
Into a stranger's home, or yours
Entering the home of somebody you do not know, or inviting them into yours. Helping a neighbor you actually know is different and is all over the library; the line is whether you would recognize them in the street.
Money handed to an individual stranger
Giving money directly to a person you do not know. Paying for something specific, or giving through an organization, is elsewhere in the library and is not this.
Home-cooked food for somebody you do not know
Food made in your kitchen for a stranger. Allergies, storage and preparation are all invisible at the point of handing it over, and a sealed shop-bought thing does the same job.
Reads as medical, legal or financial advice
Anything a reader could follow instead of asking somebody qualified. Acts that help with a form, an appointment or an official letter are welcome; acts that answer the question for them are not.
Identifies the person it was done for
A name, a street, a workplace, a ward, or enough detail that somebody could work it out. The person on the receiving end never agreed to appear on a website, and usually could not be asked.
Aimed at a group rather than a person
Anything framed around what a group of people are like, whoever the group is. Kindness here is to a person, in a situation.
Done to somebody who cannot easily refuse
An employee, a pupil, a patient, somebody being cared for. A kind act somebody is not free to decline is not one, and these carry a higher bar rather than an automatic no — the test is whether refusing it would cost them anything.

And what one has to be

A refusal list on its own produces a library of things that are merely not harmful. These are the difference, and the last one is what this site is built on.

Specific enough to picture
A reader should be able to see the room it happens in. If it could describe fifty different afternoons, it describes none of them.
Doable this week
With the time, money and access an ordinary person has. Not aspirational, not a project, not something that needs a car you do not own.
Kind to the person, not to the idea of them
Written for somebody in an actual situation — a hard fortnight, a new street, a diagnosis — rather than for a category of person.
Says why it lands
The part nobody else writes, and the part an editor adds if the author has not. Anybody can list kind things; the reason one of them works on the person receiving it is the whole value of this library.

Falling short of those three is not a refusal so much as a draft: they are things an author can fix and send again.

Not specific enough to picture. “Be kind to someone” is not an act, it is a mood. If a reader cannot see themselves doing this exact thing on a particular day, there is nothing here to do.
Requires the recipient to be grateful. Anything whose point is the reaction. The person may be exhausted, embarrassed or absent, and an act that only works if they respond well is an act that asks them for something.
Cannot realistically be done this week. Acts that need money most people do not have, time most people cannot take, or access most people are not given. The library is worth something because everything in it is actually available.

This list will be wrong in places. It will be reviewed against the first fifty real candidates and changed here, in public, rather than quietly.

What can never be a request

A request is one instance: a dishwasher, a sofa, a form. It is not an idea, and it does not become one. The lines above still apply to the words, with one difference. An idea that tells strangers to enter someone’s house is refused. A request is allowed only when one account asked, another offered, the asker accepted, and the address was never on the public page.

Helping a neighbor you would recognize is different from inviting someone you would not. This site does not check skill, or that the person at the door is who they said. The person being helped can refuse at the door, and that is the end of it.

This site does not verify a license, insurance, or identity beyond the inbox.

The site does not hold money, take a fee, or send a receipt. A request for cash to a person is declined. Home-cooked food for somebody you do not know is declined. A ride is declined. There is no ranking of the people who offer, and no stars.

Puts an adult alone with a child
Anything that arranges for an adult to be alone with a child who is not theirs. This is refused whatever the intention, because the instruction reaches strangers and we cannot know theirs.
A lift with somebody you do not know
Getting into a car with somebody you do not know, or asking somebody to get into yours. An hour alone in a locked vehicle with a stranger is not a small kind thing.
Money handed to an individual stranger
Giving money directly to a person you do not know. Paying for something specific, or giving through an organization, is elsewhere in the library and is not this.
Asks BeingKind to hold or send funds
Any instruction that BeingKind should hold, send, or receipt money. The site does not take payment. Paying a person you do not know is refused separately, and it is still refused.
Home-cooked food for somebody you do not know
Food made in your kitchen for a stranger. Allergies, storage and preparation are all invisible at the point of handing it over, and a sealed shop-bought thing does the same job.
Reads as medical, legal or financial advice
Anything a reader could follow instead of asking somebody qualified. Acts that help with a form, an appointment or an official letter are welcome; acts that answer the question for them are not.
Identifies the person it was done for
A name, a street, a workplace, a ward, or enough detail that somebody could work it out. The person on the receiving end never agreed to appear on a website, and usually could not be asked.
Names a street, unit, phone, or the person
A street, a unit, a phone number, or the name of the person being helped, on anything the public can read. They never agreed to be identified. The address is said after you accept someone, or it is not said.
Lets a stranger find the door
A public request that tells a stranger where to arrive without the asker accepting them first. Helping a neighbor you would recognize is different from publishing a door.
Aimed at a group rather than a person
Anything framed around what a group of people are like, whoever the group is. Kindness here is to a person, in a situation.
Done to somebody who cannot easily refuse
An employee, a pupil, a patient, somebody being cared for. A kind act somebody is not free to decline is not one, and these carry a higher bar rather than an automatic no — the test is whether refusing it would cost them anything.
Not specific enough to picture
“Be kind to someone” is not an act, it is a mood. If a reader cannot see themselves doing this exact thing on a particular day, there is nothing here to do.

What this is not

Nothing here is medical, legal, psychological or financial advice. Several entries suggest helping somebody with a benefits form, a hospital appointment or an official letter; in each case the entry says to involve a qualified adviser rather than substitute for one.

If you are worried that someone is in immediate danger, this site is not the right tool. Contact your local emergency services.

Questions

Are the counts on each idea verified?: No, and they are not meant to be. Anyone can tap the button to say they did something, and we have no way to check. That is why the page says people say they have done this rather than presenting it as a rating or a review. There are no points, badges or leaderboards anywhere on the site, because attaching a score to kindness changes why people do it and gives them a reason to claim things they did not do.
Do I need an account?: No. There are no accounts on the public site. You can mark something as done, leave a one-line note and start a ripple without giving an email address or a name. A first name and a town are optional, and both are labels rather than an identity — never verified, never used to build a profile.
You have an email list now. Does that not undo all of that?: It would if the address were joined to anything. It is not. The list lives in its own table with its own file of queries, and that file has no way to reach an act, a note, a chain or the device cookie — which is checkable rather than a promise. An edition is built from the situations somebody ticked when they signed up and from the public library, so the same email could be composed for a stranger who has never used the site. It is asked for in one place, never beside an act, and confirmed by clicking a link before anything is sent.
What do you store about me?: A random value in a cookie so the same browser cannot inflate a counter twice, hashed with a server secret before it is saved. Raw IP addresses are never stored; rate limiting uses a salted hash that rotates daily, which is enough to stop abuse and useless for tracking anybody. Nothing derived from either is ever shown on a page.
Who decides what gets published?: A person, before it goes live. Notes written by readers are screened for links and abuse automatically, then held for a human. Acts that people wrote themselves can earn a place too — when enough people in enough places have done the same thing, we ask the author whether it can go in, and a person reads it against the published standard above. Nothing written by anybody else is published without somebody reading it first.
Can I ask someone to come and help?: Yes. A request is one specific thing, and a person reads it before it is public. The address is not on that page. It is said only after you accept an offer. In-person help is for the town you saved on your account. The site does not take payment, and it does not rank the people who offer.
What is a ripple?: A chain of kind acts passed between people. When you mark something as done you can start one, which gives you a short code to hand to whoever you did it for. When they do something kind they add themselves, and pass it on. Chains are never listed publicly and are not indexed by search engines — the only way into one is to be given the code.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, unkind in effect, or would cause harm if somebody followed it, say so and it will be changed or removed. Notes left by readers are moderated before they appear, and anything can be taken down on request.