SigmaChat Community Guidelines

These guidelines apply everywhere on SigmaChat: boards, group DMs, direct messages, and everything attached to an account, including display names, bios, avatars, statuses, and board names and icons. We do not screen private conversations, but the people in them can report them, and the rules hold there the same as anywhere else. Board admins can set stricter rules for their own boards. These are the floor under all of them.

Minors come first

SigmaChat is for people 13 and up, and accounts found to belong to children under 13 are deleted.

Sexual content involving minors is banned in every form: real, drawn, or AI-generated. Posting it, requesting it, or trading it means immediate termination and referral to authorities where the law requires. If you are an adult, romantic or sexual engagement with a minor is banned outright, including compliments of that kind, requests for images, and attempts to move the conversation somewhere private. There is no context that makes any of this acceptable, and reports of it are reviewed first.

Sexual content

No pornography or sexually explicit media anywhere on SigmaChat. Members here can be as young as 13 and there are no age-gated spaces, so there is no board where explicit media is acceptable.

Never share an intimate image of a person without their consent, whether the image is real or AI-generated, and never threaten to. If it happens to you or someone you represent, report it at sigmachat.org/report, with or without an account, and it will be handled within 48 hours.

Sexual attention nobody asked for is harassment and is treated as harassment.

Harassment and hate

Disagreement, criticism, dark jokes, and swearing are all fine. Profanity is speech.

Targeting a person is different. No abuse campaigns, threats, stalking, pile-ons, or recruiting others to do any of it. No attacking people over race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or similar characteristics, and no slurs used to degrade someone. Criticizing ideas and institutions is fine; dehumanizing the people who hold them is a violation.

Violence

No threatening anyone, on SigmaChat or off it. No inciting, organizing, or celebrating violence, and no glorifying the people who commit it. Graphic violence and gore posted to shock or to celebrate is a violation.

Self-harm

Never encourage someone to hurt themselves, share methods or instructions, or post content promoting suicide, self-harm, or eating disorders.

Talking about your own struggles is not a violation, and neither is asking for support. If someone seems to be in danger, report the message so a person sees it.

Illegal activity

Don't use SigmaChat to commit, organize, or facilitate crimes. That covers selling drugs or weapons, fraud, theft, trafficking, hacking other people, and the rest of it.

Other people's privacy

No doxxing: posting someone's home address, phone number, workplace, government IDs, or other private details against them. Don't drag private conversations or media into other spaces to expose or humiliate the people in them.

Scams, spam, and fake accounts

No phishing, malware, or links that pretend to be something they aren't. No scams or fraud. No spam, including mass unsolicited invites or DMs and flooding. No impersonating a person, a board, or SigmaChat staff. If you run a bot or app, what it posts is on you. If you find a bug or security hole, report it to us instead of using it.

Boards set their own rules

Admins can require more than these guidelines and enforce it with their tools, so joining a board means accepting that board's rules, and leaving is always an option. Running a board exempts nobody from these guidelines, including in how they moderate.

How enforcement works

Automated screening and reports open cases that staff review, and people make the final calls. Context counts: quoting something to condemn it or report it is different from posting it to promote it.

Most violations move up a ladder: a warning on your record, then a temporary suspension during which you can read but not post, then a ban. Severe violations, and everything in the minors section, skip the ladder. Action taken by a board's admins is separate from action taken by SigmaChat.

A ban applies to you, not just the account, and returning on a new account is itself a violation. If we get something wrong, reply to the enforcement email and a person will review it.

Reporting

Report any message or profile from inside the app, and include context where you can, since it speeds up review. Intimate-image cases can also be reported at sigmachat.org/report without an account. Knowingly false reports are a violation.