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Identifiable groups based on gender, sexuality, gender-politics or race cannot be the target of insulting comments, nor can insulting generalizations be extended to members of those groups. Arguments which specifically and adequately acknowledge diversity within those groups, but still advance a universal principle may be allowed, and will incur no penalty if not. This means that you can say "Women oppress men" and "Men oppress women" without earning an infraction.
No slurs, personal attacks, ad hominem, insults against another user, their argument, or their ideology. This does not include criticisms of other subreddits. This includes insults to this subreddit. This includes referring to people as feminazis, misters, eagle librarians, or telling users they mansplaining, femsplaining, JAQing off or any variants thereof.
Mods reserve the right to post a screenshot of extreme messages sent in modmail/pms to the mods, which will result in an infraction.
There are some other powers of intervention the mods have in exceptional circumstances.
Everyone, including non-users, is protected by the rules. However, insults against non-users will be modded more leniently.

Sandboxing:

Comments that do not clearly violate the above rules, but are deemed to be unreasonably antagonistic or borderline may be sandboxed at the mods' discretion. This is not an official infraction and does not affect your standing in the tier system. If the user thinks that worthwhile content was lost by the sandboxing, they may repost the content in a more acceptable manner in the form of a new comment.

Guidelines:

Make titles clear and descriptive.
After making a post, assign it flair.
Links to threads, comments, or searches in other subs should be "np" links.
Be nice. Try to communicate constructively and intelligently. Try to help others do the same.
Report comments that are -ist (racist/sexist/etc), rather than commenting that they are -ist. Don't insult people who "deserve" to be insulted. Don't allow yourself to be baited into breaking the rules by someone who is breaking the rules.
If you use a term that is in the Glossary of Default Definitions, and you use it with a different definition, you should specify that definition the first time you use the word.

Guidelines are not enforced, but please try to follow them.

Banning Tiers

Full Explanation

First offenders will be warned.
Second offenders will be banned for 24h.
Third time offenders will be banned for 7 days.
Fourth time offenders will be banned almost permanently.

The creation of alt accounts to sidestep the banning system will result in an immediate ban of any and all known alt accounts in the present and future.

If you are on the third or fourth tier, you can message the mods if it's been three months or longer since your last infraction and you will be bumped down a tier.

The above rules do not apply to comments in the Deleted Comments thread.