The rules
Fanmoot is for football, and for arguing about it. These are the lines, written as they are quoted to anyone who crosses one.
- Threats of violence
- Do not threaten, wish or incite violence against anyone — a player, an official, another fan. Not as a joke, not in the heat of a derby.
- Self-harm
- Do not encourage or glorify self-harm or suicide. If someone here is at risk, report it so a person can look at it quickly.
- Hateful conduct
- Do not attack people for their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, gender, sexuality or disability. Club rivalry is not a protected characteristic; the rest are.
- Private information
- Do not post someone's address, phone number, private messages or other personal details without their consent.
- Abuse or harassment
- Argue with the take, not the person. Targeted insults, pile-ons and following someone around the site to bait them are not debate.
- Sexual content
- No sexual or explicit content. Fanmoot is a football site that people open at work and in front of their children.
- Impersonation
- Do not pretend to be a player, a club, a journalist or another fan.
- Spam, betting or advertising
- No betting tips for money, affiliate links, advertising or posting the same thing again and again.
- Not about football
- Fanmoot is for football — matches, players, clubs, tactics, the game around the game. Everything else belongs somewhere else.
- Something else
- Something that breaks the spirit of the rules above even if it is not named in them. The moderator's note says what.
- Repeated removals
- Several of your moots were removed by moderators in a short time, so posting is paused for a while. It lifts on its own.
What happens when a rule is broken
Everything posted is checked before it appears — a safety check on every submission, and a football check on every link. Most posts pass and nobody notices. When something is stopped, the message says which check stopped it and why.
When a person is involved, they can warn, remove the post, mute an account for a period, suspend it or ban it. Every one of those is recorded, the author is told, and the rule above is quoted back to them as it stood at the time.
Appeals
Anything removed can be appealed, including a refusal by the automatic checks, and the moderator whose decision is appealed is not the one who reviews it. If an appeal succeeds the moot is posted as it was written, in the thread it was written for.