Community Guidelines
These guidelines exist to keep this space worth being in — a place for genuine curiosity, good-faith conversation, and ideas worth sharing.
What Belongs Here
Post things that reward intellectual curiosity. The best submissions open up a topic, reveal something surprising, or spark a conversation that couldn’t happen anywhere else. If you’d see it on the evening news, it probably doesn’t belong here. If it would make a thoughtful person lean forward, it probably does.
Post original sources. If you found something through another site, link the original.
Use titles honestly. Don’t embellish, editorialize, or use ALL CAPS for emphasis. Crop gratuitous numbers (“10 Ways to Do X” → “How to Do X”). If something is a video or PDF, note it: [video] or [pdf].
Don’t use this community primarily for self-promotion. Sharing your own work occasionally is fine — just make sure it’s a small part of your participation, not the whole of it.
How to Comment
Lead with curiosity, not conclusions. The best comments ask better questions or surface things others missed. They don’t just announce an opinion, they add to the conversation.
Assume good faith. Before responding, ask yourself: what’s the most reasonable interpretation of what this person said? Start there. This is the Principle of Charity in practice: treat others as intelligent people making a real point, even if they’re making it imperfectly.
Disagree with the argument, not the person. If someone is wrong, explain why. “Here’s what I think is missing from that view…” is more useful than any version of “that’s wrong/naive/silly.”
Be substantive, especially when it matters most. On contentious topics, shallow takes make things worse. Take the extra moment to say something real.
Don’t be a curmudgeon. Thoughtful criticism is welcome. Generic negativity isn’t.
Skip the performance. No sneering, no fulminating, no internet tropes, no flamebait. If a comment exists mainly to score points or signal a team, it doesn’t belong here.
Don’t pile on. If something has already been said, you don’t need to add +1. If you can add something new, do.
Humor is welcome — if it earns it. A well-placed joke can be the best comment in a thread. Low-effort joke responses are just noise.
Tone and Temperament
Be kind. There’s a real person on the other side of every comment.
Don’t cross-examine. Ask questions out of genuine interest, not to trap someone.
Edit out the swipes. Even if a point is valid, it lands better without the dig attached.
If a thread is getting heated, be the one who lowers the temperature.
Things That Don’t Belong Here
- Political or ideological point-scoring (it kills curiosity)
- Insinuations about bad faith, shilling, or coordinated behavior — if you’re genuinely concerned, contact the admins privately
- Complaints about other users’ votes or whether someone read the article
- Comments pointing out that a post is off-topic — flag it instead
- Shallow dismissals of others’ work
A Note on the Principle of Charity
This community takes the Principle of Charity seriously, not as a rule to enforce, but as a practice to cultivate. It means: when someone’s meaning is unclear, choose the most reasonable interpretation. When someone is wrong, engage with their best argument, not their weakest one. When someone seems to be acting in bad faith, consider that they might just be expressing something poorly.
This doesn’t mean agreement. It means the kind of intellectual honesty that makes disagreement productive.
When in doubt: would this comment make the conversation better? If yes, post it. If not, hold it.