Opinion Pub 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.

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 commercial posts, no repetitive posts, no solicitations for donations or money, no promoting websites, 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.

This forum is an interactive computer service and not a publisher. You are responsible for the content you create and are considered to be the publisher and/or information content provider of said content.

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:

18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.

Age Restrictions

Many states or countries have various laws regarding social media use by young people. In order to comply with the laws in over 100 countries, we have devised the following policy:

21. Age restrictions.
    • To create an account on this server, you must be at least 18 years old.
    • To participate in our forums (using an account on another server), you must be at least 13 years old, unless a higher age is required by the law where you live. For example, some states or countries have a minimum age of 16 years old to engage in social conversations on the internet.
    • If your local law requires us to get parental consent for you to participate because you are under a certain age, you are not allowed to participate on this forum.
    • If your local law requires us to collect personally identifying information, such as your birthday, or requires us to verify your age, you are not allowed to participate in this forum.

We know this limits how many people can participate on our forums, but as a small website, we don't have the resources to check your ID or get parental consent or individually research laws in hundreds of countries and states. If you are under 18, you will need to join a server that allows users under 18.

Allowed behaviors

• 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 will 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 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, 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, however, we can control what appears on this website and what gets distributed to people who follow our forums.
• If we delete a post on our server due to a moderator action, the software will 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.

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. We only have control over what appears on our server.

Things we won't do:

• We don't remove posts just because we or you disagree with them. If it is a bad idea or a misinformed opinion, we 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.

Our Rules vs. Free Speech

These rules apply to those participating on this forum, whether remotely or locally. We are a bit more strict than some other servers because we want our community to be a safe space for people to discuss tough and sometimes controversial topics. It is hard to have a fair and productive conversation if people are being disrespectful to one another.

If you cannot or will not follow these rules, you cannot participate on this server.

If You Don't Like Our Rules

We do support your right to free speech, but that does not exempt you from these Community Rules while participating on our servers. And thanks to decentralized social media, you have the choice to go elsewhere if you don't like our rules.

You have the option of creating an account on another server that has rules to your liking. Or you can run your own fediverse server, where you only have to comply with applicable laws and your web host's terms of service.

Thank you for understanding.