New proposed rules:

1. Do not use sexually explicit, vulgar, abusive, threatening, hate speech or bullying language and/or images. (This includes forum titles/content and any abbreviated or misspelled words where the intended meaning is obvious.)

2. Do not deliberately set out to disrupt/sabotage the normal flow of discussion by going off-topic, this includes various kinds of trolling/spamming or posting unrelated memes/videos. At the request of the OP, such posts may be deleted.

3. Do not insult, defame or personally attack your fellow OD member. (Do not include an identifiable OD member in forum titles. The exception is when an admin open a forum on your behalf, see 4.).

4. Discussions about COVID-19 or vaccines which are topics that could include potentially harmful information need to be 100% open, i.e. conducted in forums where OP has no active OD member blocked. If you have OD members blocked you can ask one of the admins to create such a forum for you.

Note:

The age requirement for the club is 16+ years.
All rules enforced at the superadmin/admins’ discretion, but not on the basis of religious, political or other views, race, ethnicity, gender, age, or sexual preference.

Previous version:

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/od-rules-2

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Temporary Pinned Forum:

The admin team wishes to allow for open discussion about virtually all topics including conspiracy theories. A problem has arisen where some members have blocked others, in some cases many others, and create forums about dangerous topics such as medical misinformation. Chess.com staff recommend that admins delete such content and sanction the members or report them to staff for site-wide muting or banning. Chess.com staff have previously deleted clubs were admins did not police their clubs for potentially harmful content.

The admin team has decided not to delete such content but instead to flag it as dangerous and debunk and provide official medical advice. We see a larger educational value of such an approach as the medical misinformation, say about COVID, is so widespread and readily available on the Internet.

For this to happen consistently and timely, we have amended the rules that any forum about potentially harmful topics (such as COVID or vaccines) needs to be 100% open, i.e. conducted in forums where OP has no active OD member blocked. If you have OD members blocked you can ask one of the admins to create such a forum for you and the forum will be "yours" and you will have all the privileges of an OP. It will be prefixed with your name, Say, for example:

"Reb: Consistent Inaccuracies in COVID-19 Testing and Reporting"

We ask all members to respect this rule and we ask all consistently follow official medical advice from your government, state, local health board, and doctor (whether you believe in such advice or not). If you are in doubt about medical advice, we urge you to contact a medical professional (or official hotline).

The new rules were published today and take effect immediately:

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/od-rules-3

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News Alert:

[Same copy of the pinned forum with a link to the pinned forum for discussion and to links to the new rules]

Q&A (Draft):

Q: Why does the rule explicitly identify COVID and vaccines?

A: Chess.com staff are taking a harder line on misinformation posted about those two topics during this pandemic.

Q: If posts are dangerous and factually incorrect, why do the admins not delete them?

A: The admin team has decided not to delete such content but instead to flag it as dangerous and debunk and provide official medical advice. We see a larger educational value of such an approach as the medical misinformation, say about COVID, is so widespread and readily available on the Internet.

FOOD for thought

Super Admins

Admins