Talk like you'd talk to a stranger you respect.
That's it. Most everything else here is a footnote.
You don't have to agree with everyone, and you don't have to be nice. You do have to engage with what someone actually said — not a strawman of it.
What we'll remove and what gets you banned.
The following are not allowed anywhere on Rhyme. Anything in this list, applied with intent, is a fast track to suspension or ban.
- Threats and targeted harassment. Repeated unwanted contact, coordinated piling-on, threats of violence — whether about a person, a group, or an organization.
- Sexual content involving minors. Zero tolerance. Reported to NCMEC.
- Hate speech. Slurs, dehumanizing language, or content that exists to incite hostility against a group defined by race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, disability, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
- Doxxing. Sharing someone's private contact info, address, workplace, or identity without consent.
- Promotion of self-harm or violence. Encouraging suicide, eating disorders, or harm to others. We do allow recovery conversations; the line is encouragement vs. testimony.
- Illegal content or transactions. Sales of weapons, regulated drugs, malware, stolen accounts. Pirated content. CSAM. Anything that would get a normal forum's host pulled.
- Coordinated manipulation. Multiple accounts to evade limits, fake engagement, bot-driven posting, brigading.
What erodes a discussion platform — and we won't tolerate.
This bucket isn't ban-on-sight, but consistent behavior here will dim your reach, route your posts to The Void, and eventually surface to a moderator.
- Spam and self-promo flooding. One post about your project, fine. Twenty posts a week pushing the same product — not fine.
- Engagement bait. "Comment 'yes' if you agree" posts, recycled outrage, made-up controversies designed to provoke. We use AI to detect this and dim it.
- Drive-by negativity. "This is dumb." "Cope." "L take." If you have a real disagreement, make it. If you can only fit a sneer in, don't post.
- Misinformation presented as fact. Genuine debate is welcome. Knowingly false claims (especially health, election, or safety claims) are not.
- AI-generated slop. Drafting with AI is fine. Posting unedited model output as your own thinking, without disclosure, is not.
- Topic spam. A post about your dog doesn't belong under World Politics. Use topics as they're meant; the platform routes posts to where they fit.
Use the buttons honestly.
When you downvote a post, you pick a reason. We use that reason when we score the post and the author — it's not cosmetic. So:
- Miscategorized — this is fine content, just routed to the wrong topic or room.
- Spam or scam — promotional, bot-like, or fraudulent. Not "I disagree."
- Misinformation — knowingly false or misleading. Not "I disagree with the take."
- Rude or unkind — abusive, harassing, or crosses one of the hard limits above.
- Nonsense — low effort, off-topic, or doesn't actually say anything.
Using "spam," "misinformation," or "rude" as a generic dislike will erode the trust score of your account, not just the target's. The community decides what those words mean.
Reporting is the most useful thing you can do.
Every post and comment has a "Report" item in the menu. Every profile has one too. Reports go to a human moderator, usually reviewed within 24 hours.
Don't report things you just disagree with. Reports are not a super-downvote — they take a human's time. Reserve them for content that breaks the limits above.
Want to flag a person rather than a piece of content? Go to their profile and click the More menu → Report user.
The escalation ladder.
We try to use the smallest tool that works. Generally:
- First time, low severity: the content gets dimmed or hidden, you don't lose your account.
- Repeated patterns: your account's reach gets reduced. Your posts won't be promoted in feeds.
- Suspension: read-only for a set period. You can still appeal, contact us, and view your own profile.
- Permanent ban: account locked. Used for the hard-limit items above, repeat offenses, or evasion attempts.
If you think we made a wrong call, email [email protected] with your username and what you'd like us to revisit. A human will read it.
What our AI does (and doesn't) decide.
We use AI to do a few things: classify posts into topics, score how on-target a post is, and flag obvious red flags (spam, toxicity, AI-generated text). AI does not issue bans, suspensions, or permanent removals on its own. Every permanent action involves a human reviewer.
If you think the AI got something wrong about your post — wrong topic, unfair flag — the post page has tools to appeal, and an admin will look.