Site Rules

The moderation team reserves the right to intervene and sanction in situations not explicitly covered by these rules at their discretion should they deem it necessary for the health of the community.

The Site Rules are split into three major blocks:

• Rules to which any posts — Disqus and WordPress — have to adhere.
• Our community etiquette. These are items which might not necessarily result in an outright warning or deletion when breached, but will still be enforced, and serious and/or repeated violations may result in warnings.
• The fundraising rules.

Posting Rules

The Avocado does not accept posts, comments or behavior that:

1. violate Disqus’ rules.
   • https://help.disqus.com/en/articles/1717102-terms-of-service
   • https://help.disqus.com/en/articles/1717116-basic-rules-for-disqus
   • Most crucially: violating the law and/or making threats/wishing harm on people.
2. disparage race, ethnicity, religion, gender, nationality, region, sexual orientation, age, physical characteristics, disabilities or other parts of a person’s identity outside their control, by slurs or other means.
   • This is often referred to on The Avocado as the ‘red handle’ rule, which simply means not mocking traits that have nothing to do with a person’s personal choices.
3. are likely to disrupt, provoke, attack, or offend others. This includes, but is not limited to, objectification, sexually explicit or suggestive content, trolling, microaggressions, personal attacks, harassment, unwanted flirting, rehashing grievances across time and different threads (vagueposting), dragging out or inciting drama, and more, depending on context.
4. minimize and/or trivialize the impact of bigotry, discrimination, and the lived experiences of others, particularly fellow site members and marginalized groups.
5. include identifying information such as phone numbers, postal or email addresses without consent.
6. describe or encourage activities which could endanger the safety or well-being of yourself or others.
7. exceed the fundraising limit of three separate fundraising requests per member in a twelve-month period. See below for the specific fundraising rules.
8. are considered to be spam.
9. egregiously and/or repeatedly ignore the Avocado community etiquette.
10. uses the Disqus upvote/downvote feature in a manner which results in harm as a post itself would (harassment, attacks, bigotry, etc.).
11. can be considered harassment or posting inflammatory remarks about other members on external websites and social media, or contacting other members off site without their permission.
12. publicly accuse another community member of being a ban evader, previous commenter, or sock puppet. Such accusations should be brought to the mods via avocadomods@gmail.com.
13. include embedded Tweets. (Screenshots of Tweets are permitted.)

Community Etiquette

• Empathy and consideration: think about how your words may impact others before you comment. One of our top priorities is to make this site a welcoming space that encourages empathy and understanding, so remain considerate of the fact that some comments are harmful and do not need to be shared at the expense of others. Be aware of privilege.
• Handling arguments: instead of escalating arguments, flag offending posts and/or notify a mod directly, or the team via avocadomods@gmail.com. 
• Political discussions:we ask that you recognize that political talk can be inherently stressful for some members, so please show consideration to them and be mindful of discussing inherently political topics in the OT or other non-PT spaces.
• Spoilers and Content Warnings:  when discussing newly released media, adult content, edgy/gross posts or otherwise not-safe-for-work content (NSFW), or if your comments contains potentially upsetting topics, start your comment with a warning (e.g. NSFW, Spoilers for Citizen Kane, or Content Warning: sexual assault) and add spoiler tags to your comment. To place text in your comment under spoiler tags, highlight the text, and then click the icon in the toolbar at the bottom of the text editor.
• Bad takes: do not post links or quotes from people without political power, or that are needlessly antagonistic, simply because they are bad or objectionable.
• Liveblogging: do not keep creating top level comments when liveblogging. Reply to one top level comment to keep liveblogging contained and coherent.
• Serious talk: to discuss something when wanting only serious replies, put /serious in a prominent place in your post. If you see a comment with the /serious tag, honor that request.
• Respect moderation: if a comment is caught in the automod filter, deleted, and/or a request for editing or censoring is made, please be respectful of the decision. These decisions are made to keep the site safe and are not meant to scold or punish. For more information on how this works and what to do if you disagree with a request please review the How Modding Works and the Guidelines for Moderators pages.
• AI Art: Do not use AI art for featured images in the OT and PT. Do not try to pass off AI art as non-AI art when using it elsewhere. Otherwise, there are no AI art-specific restrictions on posts or thread headers.
• Verifying Content: In an effort to limit potentially upsetting content and/or amplifying misinformation, we expect a good faith/best effort attempt to post accurate/factual stories. If a story/screenshot/social media post is fake or inaccurate, please post either a correction or context verifying that the story is fake/satirical/inaccurate.

Fundraising Rules

We do allow people to link to their GoFundMe or other fundraisers. However, we ask that you limit your fundraising requests:

• Three requests per member per twelve-month period are allowed. That does not mean three posts linking to requests; it just means three fundraisers are accepted.
• What counts as a fundraiser:
  • Either one GoFundMe campaign or a similar system with a built-in goal or time limit.
  • Or a 30-day period for things which do not have a built-in goal or time limit like a Paypal link.
• Do not direct your on-site requests to specific individuals, ever. That will result in deletion and potentially a warning.
• Please notify the mod team before doing a fundraiser. We need no details, and approval does not depend on merit. It’s just for tracking.
• Patreons for artists/creatives are not included in this rule, as that falls under self-promotion. Just be sure not to rise to the level of spamming with links to your self-promotion.
• The mod team will not feature fundraising requests.