This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules. They are guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a kind, friendly place for civilized public discourse.

Actualism is Experiential

Whether it be a discussion board, mailing list, or a real-time chats, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that actualism is experiential.

Although understanding is key, at the end of the day the direct rewards of actualism of an increasingly happy and harmless life, are only attainable by actually putting what you read about and discuss into practice.

The maximum benefit of your participation is ultimately the improvement of the quality of your own life - yours in particular, you who is reading this now. Thus it is helpful to keep this in mind when participating lest discussions become simply philosophical or abstract in nature.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something beneficial to the discussion, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spending time browsing the topics here is a good way to instigate your own thinking and contemplative processes, which will be what lead you to post the most productive types of posts!

Be considerate of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond by disagreeing. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling
  • Ad hominem attacks
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
  • Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, watching, muting and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a major news site.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category; please read the category definitions.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

Powered by You

This site is operated by your friendly local staff and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the site feedback category and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us via the staff page.

Moderation

We aim for the moderation to be a light touch that guides the forum to be a place where the guidelines above are naturally followed. To that end the simple and rough set of moderation guidelines are:

  • Any patently obvious trolls will be banned immediately.

    Note that it has never in our experience happened that a genuine and sincere participant has been accidentally branded a troll.

    If you are concerned that your post might be considered a troll post… that already means it won’t be, as that level of consideration shows that you are already on the right track :slight_smile: .

  • We provide a space for disagreements and objections as these are important to work through.

    However if somebody is simply intent on “disproving” actualism and/or has no interest of applying it to their own life, to the detriment of the other forum-goers, we will eventually suggest they spend their time elsewhere.

  • The human condition is gnarly and a lot of intense reactions can come about when someone’s beliefs are questioned.

    With that in mind we will be tolerant to a degree as it’s better to let these things play out than to shut it down. But if there are egregious cases the mods will decide what to do on a case-by-case basis.

See also this post that touches on the subject of moderation.

Suspension

With the goal of consistency of moderation in mind, the rough guidelines for account suspension are:

  • For obvious trolling or spamming, a mod can take action on their own and temporarily suspend an account if needed.
  • For a less urgent / more nuanced situation, then 2 or 3 mods (~30-50%) should discuss it and agree.
  • For a permanent ban, then 4 mods (~67%) should agree.

If the case is tricky or there is a strong vocal dissent then the mods decide it on a case-by-case basis… these are only rough and ready guidelines.

Editing & Deleting Posts

To preserve the historical integrity of the discussions here, the forum is structured to act more as a mailing list would: once a post is made, it is set in stone forever, and cannot be modified or deleted. Rather than editing something away that was later regretted, we think it better to preserve people’s thoughts and reactions at the time, and people can always post corrections as follow-ups.

To that end, posts can be edited for a short time-window afterwards (on the order of hours) to allow for typos and grammatical fixes, and they cannot be deleted.

Of course, if something must be removed due to privacy concerns or legal reasons, reach out to one of the @moderators and we can assist you in doing so.

Terms of Service

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves – and by extension, you and your data – against unfriendly folks. We have a Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.