Community Rules

{Name of Community} is a place for respectful conversations between people interested in a variety of subjects. We want and welcome different opinions and want to be able to see things from multiple perspectives. That is how we can learn.

However, we don't allow trolling, racism, insults, and harassment. This is a place to learn and to discuss better solutions and different ideas, not a place to dominate others.

By creating an account or otherwise interacting with this website, you agree to comply with these Community Rules and our Terms of Service.

Prime Directive

The main rule is very simple:

1. Don't be an jerk. Or, if you prefer, don't be an @$$#*!&.

To be more specific:

2. Keep it family friendly. We want this to be a place that is appropriate for students to discuss things and ask questions.
3. Debate ideas, not people. Don't make it personal. Insulting your opponents is strictly prohibited, and bad form.
4. No illegal content. This includes pirated content, child abuse, incitement, and recommending people engage in illegal behaviors.
5. No harassment. Don't do things that purposefully make a person feel bad, afraid, upset, depressed, or angry, among other things.
6. No sexist content. This includes content hateful towards women, men, LGB, Trans, QIA+, etc.
7. No racist content. This includes content that is hateful towards any race, creed, skin color, culture, etc. No exceptions.
8. No violence. No promoting of violence or self-harm, no death threats, no wishing someone dead, etc.
9. No hate groups. Promoting ideologies that are based on hate, such as National Socialism (Nazi or Neo Nazis), are not permitted, even if the post is not specifically hateful.
10. No trolling. Don't incite arguments or make posts just to get an adverse reaction.
11. No porn. You can find that all over the internet. It does not need to be here.
12. Avoid swear words. Keep these words to a minimum, and they should never be directed at a person or a group of people.
13. No hateful usernames. Even if some of your posts are not hateful, we can't allow usernames that are interpreted as being hateful.
14. No spam. No repetitive posts, no unsolicited commercial messages, no unsolicited solicitations, no unsolicited promotions, etc.
15. No doxing. Do not post personal and private information about an individual without their permission.
16. No slander or libel. Don't post or repeat false information about other people, groups, or organizations.
17. No impersonation. Do not impersonate other people, groups, or organizations. Parody accounts are allowed if marked as such.

On the forums, these additional rules apply:

18. No soliciting. No commercial posts, no solicitations for donations or money, no promoting websites, etc. The only exception is if a forum specifically allows commercial posts, soliciting, and/or promotions.
19. Post in the right forum. Please post in the right place. It becomes hard to find content you want to engage in if it is located in the wrong forum. We reserve the right to move your post to the appropriate forum or forum topic.

Yes, we know some things contradict, such as being family friendly, and allowing swear words in certain contexts. It is similar to broadcast television rules and PG rated movies. We may allow a couple of mild swear words in, but don't go overboard.

Additional Rules

In addition to our rules about not being a jerk, we have some additional rules:

20. Excess Use of Resources We have limited resources on this server, and as such, we cannot allow a small number of users to take up most or all of the resources. If you have heavy usage, we may ask you to move your channel(s) to another server, or ask that you contribute to the server to cover the additional cost of your resource usage.
21. Channel Bots: Any account or channel that is operated by a bot must be identified as being a bot. We reserve the right to block bots that do not follow our Community Rules or cause server issues. Channel bots must not spam the server.
22. AI and LLMs: We want conversations with real people, not automated and often inaccurate information from a large language model (LLM). If you are going to use ChatGPT or its competitors, make sure the information it gives you is actually accurate before posting. You are responsible for what you post, even if you had an LLM write it for you.
23. No Circumvention. Trying to get around the rules via a technicality is not allowed. If it violates the "spirit of the rule," it is still a violation.

User-Created Forums

Our software, depending on how it is configured, may allow the creation of forums, also known as discussion boards or groups.

Additional rules may apply to forums created by our community members or administrators.

If they have additional forum rules, these forum rules must be posted conspicuously and be available to both current and prospective forum members. They also must be consistent with our Community Rules.

Community members who create a forum do not have to create forum rules for their forum since these Community Rules already apply to their forum, even if the forum is private.

Allowed behaviors

• Pen Names & Anonymity Permitted. You may use an alias and use an avatar that does not resemble you. Considering that some people are unjustly targeted for their opinions and political stances, we recommend using an alias when discussing certain subjects.

Enforcement

These rules apply whether you have a local account on our server or are participating with an account on a remote server (controlled by yourself or someone else).

Some possible enforcement actions:

1. We delete your post or comments on our forum, which may also send a "delete post" signal to anyone following the conversation.
2. We ask you to edit your post. If it is the first post in a forum topic, we may edit your post for you.
3. We prevent you from posting, but still allow you to read posts.
4. If you have a local account, we can suspend or ban your account.
5. If you have a remote account, we completely block you so you cannot engage in this server.
6. If your server also prohibits your behavior, we may report you to your Administrator.
7. In some cases, such as child abuse and terrorism, we will report you to law enforcement and provide information we know about you.

Warnings and Notices:

• We may take moderation steps with or without warning. We may choose to inform you by Direct Message (DM), if your platform supports direct messages, however we are not required to do so.

Remote Users:

• Since this forum exists on the Fediverse and ATmosphere (decentralized social media), we can't control what people say on their own channel on their own server since we have no access to their server.
• If we delete a post on our server due to a moderator action, the software may automatically try to notify any follower's server that the post was deleted, but we have no control over whether that server deletes it or not. Furthermore, some servers may not be able to accept delete requests from us due to technical limitations or errors.

Backups and Account Migration

• If you have a local account and are banned due to a violation of the Community Rules or Terms of Service, we will assist you in downloading and accessing backups of your account so you may migrate it to another server, if technically possible.
• However, if your account contains illegal materials, including, but not limited to copyrighted content you do not have the right to post, harassment, threats of violence, child abuse, or otherwise illegal content, we cannot and will not provide you with a back up of your channel(s) and content.
• Furthermore, if your account contains illegal content, such as child abuse or terrorism, we may provide the backup of your account to law enforcement, as required by law or court order.

Things we can't do:

• If someone's account/channel is on another server, we can't delete the post on their server, nor can we prevent their post from being distributed to their followers. We simply do not have access to do that.

Things we won't do:

• We don't remove posts from the forums just because we or you disagree with them. If it is a bad idea or a misinformed opinion, we recommend that people discuss why it is not a good idea and why it is a misinformed opinion. You can't get rid of misinformation and bad ideas by deleting them since it will still exist in their mind. You can only change people's minds if you can show them that there is a better idea or better way of thinking or a different perspective they have not considered. (Note: This only applies to differing opinions and online debate. This does not apply to illegal content, which will always be removed upon discovery.)

Our Community Rules are based on FWAA Community Rules Version 2.0 and may have been modified and customized for our community. Examples that you can copy and modify are located on the Federated Website & App Alliance website.