The refusal policy
A public queue where strangers fund letters to the government needs a stated limit.
Enforced at review, before anything reaches the Docket and before anyone can put money on it. Refusals are logged with a reason, publicly — a refusal policy applied invisibly is just editorial preference.
No requests targeting private individuals
FOIA's own privacy exemptions exist for this reason. A crowd-funded queue pointed at a named private person is a harassment machine with a civic vocabulary. Public officials acting in their official capacity are a different matter and remain in scope.
No requests whose evident purpose is to harass an employee
A request aimed at a specific records officer, or one that repeats a settled question to generate work, is refused regardless of how it is worded.
No requests already answered
The Docket links to the existing release instead. Cheaper for everyone, and it makes the archive's own coverage visible rather than quietly duplicating it.
No requests that cannot be filed as written
A request a records officer could not act on without guessing is not a request, it is a wish. Review will send it back with the specific problem named.
Vote manipulation and funding brigades
Handled by making both signals public and attributable, and by keeping a human review gate between quorum and filing. Reaching quorum obliges Aletheca to review a proposal; it does not oblige Aletheca to file it. Where a funded proposal is refused after quorum, contributions are returned or redirected at each contributor’s choice, and the refusal is published like any other.
Think a refusal was wrong? Say so — appeals against our own refusals are published beside them.