First and foremost, let me say that I appreciate you actually engaging in a real discussion on Lemmy!

WHY?

This Community was made in response to the rest of Lemmy and the way many otherwise interesting discussion threads fall apart into downvoting, groupthink, and burying of posts composed by people asking for clarification or looking to understand the reasoning behind things.

We don’t like people making baseless accusations; we defend people on all sides when people are wrong about their opposition. We don’t appreciate it when people think they know what others think and project incorrect (and often evil) bullshit on each other. We dislike people being wilfully wrong because their group fetishizes a certain angle of the truth instead of the boring reality of the situation.

It is important to maintain solid reasoning and conclusions, not just one or the other.

Ideas and discussion are important. We don’t feel we can get out of the current slump we’re in with political discourse unless we are able to clearly articulate ourselves and discuss the world we’re all living in.

DO:

• Be civil. This does not mean you shouldn’t challenge people, just don’t be a dick about it. Disagreeing with reasons is fine, mocking or insulting someone is not.
• Upvote interesting points and things that are well-articulated, even if you may not agree.
• Upvote when you see others correct themselves or change their mind.
• Be prepared to back up any claims you make with an unbiased source.
• Be willing to be wrong. Admit when you are incorrect or spoke poorly. If you are the OP of a thread, feel free to edit the main post, and add an edit to the end to show your opinion has changed.
• Be a “Devil’s Advocate” if there’s no opposition and you can see some arguments for the other side you’d like to see addressed. You do not have to believe either side of an issue in order to generate solid points on a view.
• Discuss hot-button issues.
• Use bracket tags to show the kind of post you’re making (see below), and try to use the disclaimer if it’s your style to help those coming in from outside the Community who may not understand it.
• Add humour, and be creative! Dry writing isn’t super fun to read or discuss.
• Post any rule, formatting, or changes here that you would like to see.

DO NOT:

• Call people names or label people. We fight ideas, not people here.
• Ask for sources, and then not respond to the person providing them. This means you’re not here to better yourself or the discussion, and it’s rude to waste someone’s time by challenging them and then just walking away.
• Mindlessly downvote people you disagree with. We only downvote people that do not add to the discussion.
• Be a bot, spam, or engage in self-promotion unless explicitly allowed by the mods.
• Duplicate posts from within the last month unless new information is surfaced on the topic.
• Strawman.
• Expect that personal experience or your personal morals are a substitute for proof.
• Exaggerate. Not everything is a genocide, and not everyone slightly to the right of you is a Nazi.
• Copy an entire article in your post body. It’s just messy. Link to it and maybe summarize if needed.

SUBMISSION RULES:

All main posts should append a tag to the front to describe the topic type:

• (WEEKLY) Will be reserved for Mods as it will be used for the pinned featured weekly topic thread.
• (CMV) Change My View can read like a rant or some scattered thoughts on a topic that the creator is looking to challenge themselves on. You must start with some initial reasons along with some thoughts on how those reasons led you to feel the way you do. If you can articulate things that would or wouldn’t change your mind, please add those as well. If your mind is changed, we ask that you place a link to the post that did so at the end of the main post as an edit.
• (OPEN-ENDED) for a general prompt to show that you’re looking to see what people think. A good place to seek answers to questions that you haven’t thought of yet.
• (ARTICLE) for a link to an article to be discussed. Please link the main source, not a news link already talking about the source and give a few initial thoughts.
• (STEELMAN) is discussion on hard mode and is the opposite of a strawman argument. This is someone making as close to an iron-clad argument as they can for a side or an opinion and challenging you to poke holes in it where you can. These should come with sources already.
• (OTHER) is, for now, what we call everything else. I think we covered most of it above, but just in case, there’s OTHER.

We would encourage you to also have our Disclaimer bolded at the front to help show how we’re different to those coming in from browsing New or All posts which should hopefully help curtailing the drive-by downvoting that was so common in our early days:

Reminder: This post is from the Community Actual Discussion. You’re encouraged to use voting for elevating constructive, or lowering unproductive, posts and comments here. When disagreeing, replies detailing your views are appreciated. For other rules, please see this pinned thread. Thanks!

And finally, none of these are so set in stone that we can’t change them. If you want to see adjustments or changes, let us know here or in Private Message!