Community Guidelines

This is a place for people who find these subjects genuinely interesting — sceptics and believers alike. Both are welcome. What is not welcome is contempt for the other.

The short version

• Argue about the evidence, not the person making the argument.
• Cite what you can. A link is worth more than certainty.
• Say when you are speculating. Speculation is fine; disguised speculation is not.
• Being wrong is fine. Everyone here has been.
• Changing your mind in public is the most respectable thing you can do here.

What gets removed

Moderators will remove content that is:

• Abusive — personal attacks, harassment, pile-ons.
• Hateful — targeting people for race, religion, nationality, gender, sexuality, disability or any other characteristic.
• Doxxing — posting anyone’s personal information, including witnesses and researchers. This applies to public figures too.
• Deliberately fabricated — invented documents, faked images presented as real, quotes that were never said.
• Spam — promotion, affiliate links, repetitive posting.
• Dangerous — encouraging trespass on restricted or private land, threats, or anything that puts a person at risk.

On conspiracy and prejudice

Some theories in adjacent corners of this subject are antisemitic, racist or otherwise bigoted at their root — sometimes explicitly, sometimes by inheritance from an older idea that was. Those are not welcome here in any form, however they are framed. This is not a restriction on scepticism of institutions, which is entirely legitimate and often the whole point. It is a line against prejudice wearing a theory as a costume.

Claims about real people

Witnesses, researchers and officials named on this site are real people. You may criticise their arguments, their evidence and their conduct. You may not allege crimes without a source, speculate about their private lives, or contact them on the basis of something you read here.

Moderation

Moderators can remove a comment, lock a thread, suspend an account or ban it outright. Every action is logged. Where a comment is removed, the fact of the removal stays visible rather than the comment quietly vanishing — silent deletion breeds exactly the suspicion this platform is meant to examine rather than generate.

If you think a decision was wrong, reply to the notification you receive and a human will look again.

Reporting

Every comment, discussion and profile has a report option. Reports are reviewed by a moderator, not automatically actioned. Reporting someone for disagreeing with you wastes everyone’s time and is itself a misuse of the tool.

Your account

• Accounts are free, and there is no paid tier that buys you more latitude.
• Profile pictures are chosen from our icon library rather than uploaded, which keeps the place looking like itself and removes a category of abuse.
• You can delete your account at any time, and your comments go with it if you want.

Questions

If something here is unclear or you think a rule is wrong, get in touch. These guidelines will change as the community does.