OpenBeta Forums

Community Guidelines 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 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 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 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) 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 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 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.

What is the Local Gyms directory? At OpenBeta, we want to make information and communication accessible to everyone in the climbing community. As part of that, we offer these forums as a community platform for local gyms to create their own subforum. How can local gym subforums be used? Local gyms can create their own subforum under this category to use however they want! The goal is to help gyms have an online space to engage with and foster community. A gym's subforum can be used to announce events, share local news about the gym, provide a place for members to find belay buddies, announce updates, answer questions, and much more! Gyms choose which categories they have, but in general, they'll have a few standard categories: General General discussion about the gym and climbing Community events Announcements and discussion for community events Belay buddies A place for members to find climbing buddies News Announcements for news and updates that might be interesting or useful to the community Some examples of "News" posts might be announcing upcoming renovations, changes in rules or pricing, or fun stuff like honoring a member of the month or announcing new and refreshed routes! Gym staff are responsible for moderation (and some administration tasks) for their own subforums, but the moderation team at OpenBeta aims to be easy to reach and we're eager to offer what we can to help out with whatever local gyms may need! What if my gym isn't listed? We encourage you to talk with your gym to have them reach out to us! We'd love to work with them to see if we can help with community engagement! I'm a gym, how can I get our own subforums? First off, congrats on your sentience as a gym! Second, you can find an admin and send a message here on the forums. We also monitor this post for replies, so you may be able to get our attention here. We'll get back to you quickly and open a discussion about how we can help and start getting you and your staff onboarded. Further questions If you have any other questions or feedback, feel free to reply to this thread. We monitor this thread for comments and questions and we try to respond as quickly as we can.