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Discora — Community Guidelines

Standards of Epistemic Integrity, Constructive Disagreement & Discourse Safety

Foundational Principles

Discora exists to advance understanding over engagement, evidence over popularity, and reasoning over tribalism. Unlike conventional platforms that reward emotional outrage, rapid-fire virality, and polarization, Discora is designed to map disagreements rigorously and thoughtfully.

These Community Guidelines establish the standards of intellectual honesty and mutual respect required of every participant.

Discora Is Not an Arbiter of Absolute Truth

Moderation on Discora exists to protect discourse integrity, platform safety, and statutory legality. Discora does not adjudicate scientific, historical, philosophical, or political truth. We do not censor hypotheses or non-conformist ideas simply because they are controversial or unpopular. We moderate conduct, grounding, citation integrity, and safety, not orthodox consensus.

1. Epistemic Standards for Contributions

To ensure discussions remain constructive and intelligible, participants are expected to uphold the following epistemic norms:

A. Structured Claims

Clarity & Precision: Formulate claims as clear, falsifiable propositions that can be supported, questioned, or challenged by others.
Good Faith Formulation: State opposing claims charitably rather than creating weak straw-man distortions.
One Proposition at a Time: Avoid compound or rambling claims that combine multiple unverified assertions into a single node.

B. Evidence & Citations

Grounded Assertions: Provide verifiable citations, empirical data, peer-reviewed research, official records, or documented historical sources when introducing factual claims.
Honest Quotation: Quotes and excerpts must accurately reflect the meaning of the cited author or source in context. Misleading selective quoting ("quote mining") violates our integrity standards.
No Fabricated Evidence: Fabricating sources, inventing nonexistent papers, generating synthetic fraudulent citations, or linking to known malware/phishing domains is grounds for immediate account suspension.
Distinguish Facts from Interpretation: Clearly demarcate empirical evidence from your personal commentary or deductive inference.

C. Socratic Inquiries & Questions

Genuine Curiosity: Inquiries attached to claims should seek genuine clarification, underlying assumptions, or missing definitions.
No Badgering or Sealioning: Repeatedly demanding evidence with disingenuous, bad-faith inquiries intended to exhaust another contributor rather than understand their perspective is prohibited.

2. Prohibited Conduct & Safety Standards

In compliance with Rule 3(1)(b) of the Indian Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, and to ensure a safe environment for all participants, the following behaviors and content types are strictly prohibited:

A. Harassment, Threats & Hate Speech

Targeted Harassment: Directing insults, abuse, derogatory slurs, or sustained hostility at another individual.
Violence & Threats: Making threats of violence, bodily harm, physical injury, or destruction of property against any person or group.
Hate Speech: Inciting hatred, discrimination, disparagement, or violence against individuals or protected groups based on religion, race, caste, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or nationality.

B. Illegal, Dangerous & Harmful Content

Child Sexual Exploitation & Abuse (CSAM): Any content depicting, promoting, or facilitating child sexual exploitation or abuse is subject to immediate zero-tolerance account termination, content removal, and mandatory reporting to law enforcement authorities.
Non-Consensual Sexual Imagery: Uploading or threatening to share intimate, nude, or sexually explicit imagery without the subject's explicit consent.
Terrorism & Violent Extremism: Promoting, glorifying, or recruiting for designated terrorist organizations or violent extremist movements.
Illegal Acts & Substances: Facilitating or encouraging illegal transactions, prohibited weapons sales, money laundering, or illegal gambling.
National Security Violations: Content that threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security, or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states, or public order.

C. Privacy Violations & Impersonation

Doxxing: Publishing another individual's private, non-public personal information—such as private phone numbers, residential addresses, personal email addresses, financial details, or national identity documents—without their express consent.
Impersonation: Creating an account or publishing contributions intended to deceive others into believing you are another person, public official, entity, or organization.

D. System Manipulation & Abuse

Spam & Commercial Promotion: Posting repetitive messages, unsolicited advertisements, affiliate links, or promotional campaigns.
Coordinated Brigading: Organizing off-platform campaigns to overwhelm rooms with mass-downvoting, coordinated stance switching, or report flooding.
Sockpuppetry & Sybil Attacks: Operating multiple accounts to artificially manufacture consensus, skew agreement ratios, or manipulate reputation metrics.
Malicious Automation: Deploying unauthorized automated scripts, web scrapers, or bot accounts to interact with rooms.

3. Understanding Epistemic Signals on Discora

To prevent misunderstandings, participants should recognize how Discora interprets platform metrics:

Votes Are Stances, Not Truth: Clicking "Agree" or "Disagree" registers your perspective within the room's current participant pool. A 90% agreement ratio indicates local consensus; it does not prove objective fact.
Reputation Reflects Grounding, Not Authority: User credibility signals and topic expertise reflect consistency in providing verifiable citations and engaging in good-faith inquiry; they do not grant infallibility or administrative superiority.
Founding Participant Recognition: The "Founding Participant" badge is a descriptive marker of early platform participation. It confers zero moderation authority, zero epistemic weight, and no special privileges.

4. Moderation Workflow & Discretionary Enforcement

Discora maintains a phased moderation process designed to preserve community safety and discourse integrity:

Reporting: Any registered user may flag a message, claim, question, or evidence item using the "Report" button, selecting an appropriate reason (e.g. Harassment, Misinformation, Prohibited Content, Spam).
Anonymity-Preserving Queue: Reports enter an administrative queue (moderation_queue) where authorized moderators review the flagged content and context. To prevent retaliation, the identity of the reporting user is not disclosed to moderators.
Discretionary Enforcement Actions: Depending on the nature, severity, and context of the violation, platform administrators and moderators may take corrective actions, which may include:
- Content Obfuscation: Hiding an infringing contribution from public views, replacing it with a notice such as [Message hidden by moderator].
- Tombstoning: Neutralizing an invalid or infringing claim while preserving conversational child nodes to prevent thread breakage.
- Administrative Warnings & Temporary Restrictions: In appropriate circumstances, administrators may issue direct warnings or temporarily restrict posting capabilities.
- Permanent Account Termination: Complete ban and credential revocation for severe or repeated violations (such as threats, CSAM, doxxing, or malicious bot automation).

5. Appeals & Grievance Escalation

If you believe your content was moderated in error, or if you believe an urgent safety concern was improperly resolved:

You may submit an appeal or statutory grievance directly to our designated Grievance Officer in accordance with our Grievance Redressal Policy.
Grievances are reviewed by human operators under defined statutory timelines.