Community Guidelines

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Community Guidelines

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Hi! How are you? Hope you're well! Welcome to the OpenBeta Forums!

Our goal here is to make information and communication accessible to everyone in the climbing community. We want to make sure that these forums serve as a welcoming and safe space for everybody to share their passion about climbing, build connections, and feel like they belong. We want this to be a fun place to be!

To do that, let's lay out a few ground rules that I think we can all agree on.

Conversation should generally remain on the topic of climbing

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This includes no politics, no explicit content, no personal drama, etc. This also encompass the principle that you should try to make sure your post goes under the right category (e.g. don't share pictures of your recent climbing trip in General, that goes under Pics and trips).

Off-topic posts or replies may be removed by the moderation team, but we'll generally just try to nudge the conversation back on topic.

No harassment, discrimination, or abuse of any kind

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Don't be rude, don't insult or talk down to others, and obviously no racism, homophobia, or any other gross things like that.

This also means "it's just a joke" doesn't fly as an excuse. Text as a medium doesn't convey tone and sarcasm well, so keep the tone more towards the "friendly and helpful" side of things to avoid potential misinterpretation.

Improve the discussion

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We want to hear your voice! We want you to contribute and discuss and engage with others, and that means what you're saying should contribute to the discussion. As before, if your post is off topic or being rude to someone, that doesn't add to the conversation. If you have a criticism, make sure you're phrasing it in a helpful way and not attacking the person whose idea you're criticizing.

Another part of this is that we don't allow AI-generated content. Why should anyone bother to read content that somebody didn't even bother to write?

Self-promotion is allowed (in moderation)

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If you make climbing products or climbing content, we want to support you! Just 2 things to keep in mind: (1) make sure to post it under the right category and (2) add the self promo tag. Products will generally go under General Climbing and content would probably go under either General Climbing (for guides and such) or Pics and trips (for vlogs, photography, etc).

That said, obviously don't be obnoxious about it. Making the same post repeatedly or spamming caps or emoji will receive a warning or a temporary ban, depending on the severity.

Report problems, don't engage

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If you see somebody posting off-topic, being rude, or otherwise breaking the rules and causing problems, please don't engage. Just flag the post to send a message to the mod team.

Enforcement and appeals

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At the end of the day, we don't have a huge moderation team or any complicated system of rules. The gist of this all is "just don't be a jerk." The moderation team is made of people who are volunteering their time and doing their best to act in good faith to make these forums a fun place to be.

The moderation team uses these guidelines to act at their discretion and we're not going to engage with rules lawyering. If you do have a problem with any mod's decision or behavior, go ahead and make a post here. You won't be able to see the post once it's submitted, but the mod team will be able to see it and review whatever concern or report you've submitted.