Leave generic programming behind. Fade the echoes.

DemAgora is built for healthy disagreement. You don't have to agree with other members, be polite about every opinion, or avoid controversial subjects. But productive disagreement requires people to actually engage with what other people are saying. These aren't rules that will get you banned for breaking them. They're guidelines for getting more out of DemAgora and contributing more to its discussions.

• Bring the HOT: Honesty, Objectivity and Transparency. These are the personal values that make us better participants in Dem Agora and society in general.
  • Honesty: Tell the truth even when it goes against your argument. Honesty is about integrity and developing the trust necessary for meaningful conversations.
  • Objectivity: Be willing to accept things you don't like or even want to hear. Objectivity is about valuing learning and improving ourselves more than simply defending what we already believe.
  • Transparency: Have the courage to say things people need to hear instead of simply repeating the echoes around you. Too many problems go unsolved because people are afraid to be transparent.
• Address what people actually say. Don't argue against positions they haven't taken or assume motives they haven't expressed.
• Support your claims. You don't need to prove every opinion beyond doubt, but if you're making a claim, make an effort to explain the reasoning behind it.
• Stay relevant. Respond to the point being discussed instead of redirecting the conversation toward unrelated arguments, grievances, or controversies.
• Disagreement is not misconduct. Someone being wrong, unpopular, offensive, or strongly opposed to your position does not by itself mean they've violated DemAgora's rules.
• Remember that scoring isn't moderation. A weak argument, logical fallacy, or low-scoring comment isn't necessarily a rules violation. Justina helps evaluate and organize discussions. Moderation deals with violations of the Rules of Engagement below.

The Participation Guidelines above are about having better discussions. The Rules of Engagement are different. These are DemAgora-wide rules governing what is and isn't permitted on the platform. Violations can result in content being removed, restrictions on participation, account suspension, or permanent account termination.

• No harassment or abusive personal attacks. Don't threaten, harass, bully, or repeatedly target another person with abusive behavior. Criticizing someone's arguments, actions, opinions, or public conduct is not automatically a personal attack.
• No threats or calls for violence. Don't threaten, encourage, solicit, or call for violence or physical harm against another person or group.
• No hateful or discriminatory abuse. Don't attack or demean people based on protected characteristics such as race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
• No sexual exploitation or prohibited sexual content. Don't post sexually exploitative material or other sexual content that violates DemAgora's policies. Any sexual exploitation or sexualization of minors is strictly prohibited.
• No doxxing or serious invasions of privacy. Don't publish another person's private or personally identifying information without authorization for the purpose of exposing, threatening, harassing, or endangering them.
• No scams, impersonation, or deliberate deception. Don't use DemAgora to defraud people, impersonate another person or organization in a materially deceptive way, or intentionally mislead people about who you are for malicious purposes.
• No spam or platform manipulation. Don't use bots, coordinated activity, repetitive posting, fake accounts, or other methods to artificially manipulate votes, engagement, discussions, or other DemAgora systems.
• No serious illegal or dangerous activity. Don't use DemAgora to facilitate serious criminal activity or provide instructions intended to enable people to cause serious harm.
• Don't interfere with DemAgora itself. Don't attempt to compromise accounts, exploit vulnerabilities, circumvent security measures, disrupt the service, evade enforcement actions, or otherwise interfere with the operation of the platform.

Not every violation will be handled the same way. DemAgora may consider the severity of the conduct, its context, whether it was intentional, whether harm was caused or threatened, and a member's history of violations when determining an appropriate response. Serious violations may result in immediate account termination.

Agorum: An individual community on DemAgora built around a subject, interest, organization, team, place, or other topic. The plural of Agorum is Agorums.

AgoraScore: A score assigned to a post based on Justina's analysis of its reasoning, principles, and AI-ness. AgoraScore helps members decide which posts they want to see and provides one of the signals DemAgora can use to organize content.

Echo Score: An assessment of how much a comment repeats what has already been said or relies on familiar talking points without adding to the discussion. Higher means more repetition. In the default Top view, comments with high Echo Scores move below the others after their first 24 hours.

AI-ness: An estimate of how much posted content appears to have been generated by AI. Lower AI-ness means the content appears more likely to have been written by a person.

DemaScore: A score associated with an Agorum that helps members evaluate and compare communities on DemAgora.

HOT: Honesty, Objectivity and Transparency. The three personal values DemAgora encourages members to bring to discussions. Honesty is about integrity and trust. Objectivity is about being willing to learn and accept things we may not want to hear. Transparency is about having the courage to say things that need to be said instead of simply repeating the echoes around us.

Justina: DemAgora's Justification Assistant. Justina analyzes posts and comments to help identify their reasoning, principles, AI-ness, and potential problems with justification.

Main Points: The primary claims, conclusions, or ideas Justina identifies in a post so members can respond directly to the specific point they want to discuss.

Logical Arguments: The reasoning connecting a claim or opinion to the facts, assumptions, or ideas being used to justify it.

Principles: The moral or behavioral standards underlying a position or argument.

Vibe: An optional label attached to a post that provides additional context about the post or the perspective from which it was written.

Highlights: Posts selected by an Agorum's moderators for prominent placement within that Agorum.

Prime Moderator: The primary moderator responsible for an Agorum. Every Agorum has one Prime Moderator.

Platform Moderator: A DemAgora-wide moderator with moderation authority across Agorums.