Not Your Typical Forum Rules!

My main interest is in straightforward, intellectually honest discussion regardless of the topic.

I was a free speech absolutist long before Elon Musk made the term popular, and I have been regularly annoyed by the often aggressive, capricious, and agenda-driven moderation approaches used on many other forums.

I don’t believe in childproofing discussions, I believe in the free marketplace of ideas. If someone puts forth an idea that’s fundamentally flawed, or potentially offensive to some group of people, then the best response is to point out the flaws of that idea and offer a better one. Censoring or deleting unpopular comments simply ducks the issue, leaves the bad ideas unchallenged, and coddles those who are unable to tolerate exposure to ideas that they may disagree with.

Ideally people would keep their discussions calm, productive, and rational – but sometimes folks overstep, or make it clear that their argument is fundamentally full of shit, and they need to be called out for it. If tempers occasionally flare as a result, so be it.

My goal is to never have to delete a post unless it’s pure spam or contentless garbage that actively interferes with the ability of the forum to operate effectively. The same principle holds for banning user accounts. I may occasionally need to move posts to other places if they run too far afield from the topic at hand, but in general I plan to leave people’s comments alone and let the best ideas win.

If this looser approach offends your sensibilities, then this forum may not be the right place for you, and that’s OK.

Let’s All Speak The Same Language

So everyone can understand each other, the official language of the forum is English. Feel free to use whatever flavor of English suits you best.

No Ads, But…

Since I hate intrusive ads, I’m presenting this forum to you ad-free out of the kindness of my heart (and my wallet).

As a result, the site is using a free email service that’s capped at a couple hundred emails per day, so I’ve disabled all email notifications by default, and I ask that if you re-enable any of them that you only do so for events that will produce infrequent notifications.

Since email has to be used for new user signup and password resets, if the site starts capping out I may need to intervene and disable individual users’ email notifications, but I’ll reach out to those folks first if it becomes necessary.

That’s It!

Have fun – and above all, keep it real.