Two voices
Everyone reads everything — the forum is never gated, the same as the rest of this site. Writing in it has two tiers, by design: a member cannot take over a thread by outnumbering everyone else in it, and a crowd of new accounts cannot reach the argument sections at all.
| Member at the table | Scribe | |
|---|---|---|
| Read every public thread, Deeper Study included | Yes | Yes |
| Comment in General | Up to 3 times in any 24 hours | No daily limit |
| Post in Claim, Texts, For or Against | No | Yes |
| Start a new thread (Open Table, Deeper Study) | No | Yes |
| Post in Deeper Study | No | Yes |
| React, report | Yes | Yes |
A Scribe seat is not sold as an upgrade — it is granted. Anyone can ask for one in their account; an editor reads the request and decides it, the same review every request gets, so no one buys their way past it and no one is priced out of it either.
Sections
A thread attached to an essay, word, question or timeline entry is divided into sections built for an argument, not a scroll:
- Claim — the thesis being discussed. Usually the essay's own summary, standing as the first post.
- Texts — the primary sources the claim rests on, laid out rather than buried in the middle of a paragraph.
- For and Against — the case each way. A post here needs at least one citation; an argument with nothing behind it does not get a section here to sit in.
- General — everything else: questions, side notes, a member at the table's only door into the thread.
A free-standing thread (Open Table, or Deeper Study) opens with a Claim post from whoever started it, then reads the same way.
Citations
A citation is a labeled source — a passage, a manuscript, a book, a link — attached to a post. For and Against posts require at least one; every other section may still carry them. Nothing here fabricates a reference: the label and the reference text are exactly what the writer typed.
New accounts, and the first three posts
A brand-new account's first posts — in a heading that reviews them, and starting a free thread counts as a post too — are held until a moderator releases them. The account is never told to wait for a *count*; they simply see their own post marked “awaiting review” until it clears. Nobody else sees a held post, including a held thread's title. This is the entire premoderation queue: it exists to keep a flood of new accounts from reaching the argument sections unread, not to slow down a regular.
Reactions
One reaction exists — “useful.” It is a private signal: a post's own author sees how many people marked it useful, and moderators see it as one input among others, but no count is ever shown publicly. There is no leaderboard here and no ranking by reply count.
Reporting
Any verified member may report a post once, with a reason. A report reaches the moderation queue; when a moderator resolves or dismisses it, the person who filed it is notified. Reporting is never anonymous to the moderation team, and it is never visible to anyone else.
When a post is hidden or removed
A moderator may hide a post (recoverable) or remove it (with a public reason, permanently). Either way, the post's place in the thread stays — a tombstone marks where it was, so replies underneath it are never left answering a post that silently vanished. Nobody rewrites another member's words: a moderator can only hide, remove, or ask the author to fix it themselves within their own 15-minute edit window.
Deeper Study
One heading, open to every reader, argued by Scribes only. It exists for threads that need sustained back-and-forth rather than a quick comment — the same citation rules apply there as everywhere else.