Discussion guidelines
How discussion works on overwatch.report. What gets removed and why. The rules are visible because no-one should ever be able to say they didn't know.
The shape
This is a forum for substantive discussion of overwatch.report articles and the political-literacy themes the publication covers. Every post is reviewed before it appears publicly. The friction is the point. It filters impulsive posting and pile-on sniping, and ensures that what gets published has been considered both by its author and by the moderator.
Every post submission goes through a two-step flow: write, then preview-and-affirm before the post is submitted for review. The affirmation is specific because eyes glide past "I agree to the terms" but not past a sentence that names good faith and policy-fit.
What gets removed, and why
Hate
Identitarian attacks on groups (anti-immigrant, anti-minority, and similar) are removed. This is distinct from policy disagreement on subjects like immigration: the political subject is in scope, identitarian othering is not. The line is real. An argument about visa policy, work-permit thresholds, integration funding, capacity planning, or housing pressure is welcome. A post that frames a group of people as inherently other or inferior is not.
Coordinated inauthentic / paid influence
Astroturfing, sock-puppet networks, coordinated talking-point insertion, and content originating from paid influence operations are removed. The same IP-address and user-agent signals the moderator uses to spot obvious cases also surface patterns when accounts coordinate.
Low-quality slanging
Ad hominem, sniping, performance-for-audience without substantive engagement. Right-wing argument is welcome when well-made. Left-wing argument is welcome when well-made. Pile-on sniping from any direction is removed. The bar is the quality of the argument, not which way it points.
The contrast that informs this rule is The Journal's comments, which over time slid into a culture of low-quality back-and-forth. The forum's design choices below (no upvotes, no avatars, no reply threading, no real-time updates) are anti-slanging mechanisms in themselves.
Spam
Mechanical promotion, off-platform marketing, and content with no genuine engagement with the discussion are removed.
Off topic
Threads have a subject. Reader-initiated threads in Off topic have wide latitude. Article-anchored threads stay on the article.
What's been deliberately left out, and why
This forum has no avatars, no signatures, no profile pages, no post-count display, no upvotes, no downvotes, no reply threading, no direct messages, and no real-time updates. None of this is an oversight. The exclusions are the anti-bias architecture in the small:
- No avatars or profile pages: closes the ego-economy that makes old forums about identity-performance rather than argument quality.
- No upvotes or likes: removes the pile-on dynamic and the spectator-performance incentive that punish substantive minority views.
- No nested reply threading: flat oldest-first per thread, reduces the quote-war escalation pattern.
- No direct messages: removes the harassment vector that ran old forums into the ground.
- No real-time updates: page-refresh model, deliberately slower pace, less compulsion-loop.
- No accounts at MVP: name and optional email per post, not a registered identity. Lowers contributor barrier; the moderation queue does the identity-verification work.
Moderation honesty
Removed posts leave a [removed by moderator] marker, not silent deletion. The forum record stays honest. If a post of yours is removed, it's because it crossed one of the lines above. The category is recorded so the pattern is auditable.
How decisions are made
The moderator is xbard. Judgement calls happen; that's the point. The substantive question for any forum participant is the one the publication puts to every politician: which of these design features do you oppose, and why? If the answer is none, the design stays. If the answer surfaces a real gap, the design changes.
The aim isn't to silence disagreement. Argument is the point. The aim is to keep the floor high enough that the discussion is worth reading.