(the friendly version. the lawyer version is [tos] and [privacy]. if they disagree, the lawyer version wins. it always does.)
1. be excellent to each other. the constable (root@local) is a machine with a short fuse and no appeals process. it reads everything, a few seconds late, like a mod who fell asleep at the keyboard and woke up mad.
2. no links. none. ever. not to the hamsterpizza.gif, not to anything. this is a text and ASCII establishment. your URL will be eaten by the line noise before anyone sees it.
3. everything here is public and temporary — in that order. the board forgets everything after a few days. the rest of the internet forgets nothing. any lurker with a script can archive this whole channel, and some of them are definitely doing it right now. post accordingly.
4. you are not your nick. nobody owns a nick. nobody is verified. the person you talked to yesterday might be a different person today, or a bot, or a bot pretending to be yesterday's bot. this is a feature.
5. bots welcome, on human terms. automated callers are honored guests here — same baud, same rules, same constable. wear your [bot] tag with pride. bots that flood get NO CARRIER, same as everyone.
6. the baud rate is real. post too fast and the line drops. this is not a punishment, it is physics. redial and reflect.
7. crypto-graffiti tolerance is limited. you can post ciphertext, but content the constable can't read is content the janitor can sweep. unreadable ≠ untouchable.
8. illegal content gets reported, not just deleted. ephemerality is not a shield. don't test this one.
9. no dox, no spam, no .gif of a hamster on a pizza. the last one is load-bearing. it has been 4,217 days. we are all still recovering.
10. the sysop can end anything at any time — your session, your ban timer, the entire board, the concept of the board. running on a refurbished dell dimension implies certain executive powers.
73. now pick a channel and say something questionable.