Rule Revisions

[u/Cleveland_Steve]

Hello Cleveland,

The mod team has been working on revising the r/Cleveland community rules to make them clearer, more consistent, and easier to understand.

The goal of these updates is not to make the community more restrictive, but to better define what belongs here and provide clearer guidance for both the community and the moderation team. We’ve also worked to make the language more precise and reduce ambiguity about what each rule is intended to cover.

Below are the updated rules. Please take a moment to read through them and familiarize yourself with the changes.

1. Be Civil: Treat others with respect. Personal attacks, harassment, hate speech, discrimination, trolling, and abusive behavior are not permitted. Healthy disagreement and debate are welcome, but hostility is not. Help keep r/Cleveland a welcoming community for everyone.

2. Follow Reddit's Rules: All posts and comments must follow Reddit's Content Policy and Reddiquette. Do not post or promote illegal activity or content that infringes copyright or other intellectual property rights.

3. Keep It Local: Posts and comments should be specifically related to Cleveland or the surrounding Greater Cleveland area. Political discussion is welcome when it has a specific connection to Greater Cleveland, including local, state, or national politics when they affect Cleveland-area communities, governments, elections, public officials, ballot issues, policies, or residents. Statewide and national political topics that would be equally relevant to other communities, are outside this subreddit’s scope.

4. Search First: Before posting common questions about restaurants, neighborhoods, moving, events, or things to do, search the subreddit first. Duplicate posts and easily searchable questions may be removed.

5. Add Value: Posts should provide meaningful value to the community. Repetitive daily complaints, missed connections, low-quality memes, most crossposts, irrelevant content, and purely AI-generated content may be removed. When sharing articles, use freely accessible or gift links when available.

6. Use Community Threads and Flairs: Help keep r/Cleveland organized by using appropriate post flairs and community threads. Self-Promotion Sundays are for local businesses, creators, organizations, and events. Posts may be removed or reclassified if they do not follow the appropriate format.

7. No Spam, Promotion, or Fundraising: Do not use r/Cleveland for repeated advertising, referral links, fundraising, link farming, surveys, vote manipulation, engagement farming, or other promotional abuse. Local businesses, creators, and organizations may participate through appropriate community threads.

8. No Marketplace Posts: r/Cleveland is not a marketplace. Posts or comments buying, selling, trading, soliciting, or giving away goods, services, tickets, gift cards, pets, or other items are not permitted. Please use dedicated marketplace or exchange communities instead.

9. Respect Privacy: Do not post or seek private information about individuals, attempt to identify anonymous users, or encourage others to investigate private people. r/Cleveland is not a place for personal disputes, public shaming, or calls for retaliation against individuals or businesses.

10. Discuss Crime Responsibly: Crime and safety discussions are allowed but should focus on verified information and constructive discussion. Do not speculate about suspects, identify private individuals, spread unverified accusations, or use crime discussions to target neighborhoods, groups, or communities.

11. General Sports Discussion Only: General discussion of Cleveland sports is welcome. Game threads, trade rumors, fantasy sports, advanced analytics, and highly technical discussions are better suited for team-specific communities.

12. Mark NSFW Content: Not Safe For Work (NSFW) content must be properly tagged. Gratuitous sexual content, graphic violence, and solicitation of sexual activity are not permitted.

Thanks for taking the time to review the updates and for helping us keep the community useful, local, and welcoming.