Wow. That is really strange.
Incorrect rules
Perhaps one of the wisemen who wrote those threads wrote the chess rules from memory? Its not like one can easily find the rules. When googled "official rules of chess" it only came up with 10,100,000 entries. Chess.com has an impossible to find page with nice diagrams, but one has to be one of the top premium, titled members to access them.
This is one of the diagrams from chess.com's page. It shows the queen's movement, but perhaps it's not good to start the newbs off with a blunder:
Ever find a chess set that had incorrect/incomplete rules? I found one. In place of diagrams showing movement they used descriptions. Most of them were accurate, but can you tell me how a knight moves from this brief description: "Knights jump over pieces." It said that on the first turn of the game a pawn can move 2 squares, and all future pawn moves are only 1 square. There was no mention of en passant. Well, if pawns can only move 1 square after the first turn, there wouldn't en passant... Finally, it never once mentioned check!