Community rules, moderation policies, and FAQ

The Prepared - May 12, 2020

Meta

This forum is a place for anyone to talk about prepping — not for preppers to talk about anything.

This forum is heavily moderated. We wish that wasn’t necessary and we’ve fought to protect free speech. But the internet can be an unkind place, especially when dealing with topics that touch survival, politics, firearms, and so on.

To create the best space for the most people, we actively enforce these policies and ask for your help in creating a place you’re proud to be a part of — because everyone benefits from stronger, more prepared communities.

Community rules:

1. Be civil and kind. Follow the Golden Rule or think about “would this get me fired from my job?”
2. Content must be directly related to preparedness.
3. Everyone is welcome here regardless of color, orientation, nationality, and so on. That means no bigotry or other slang used to divide people.
4. Avoid topics like politics and religion that just tend to cause worthless bickering and flame wars.
5. No unfounded conspiracy theories or fake news.
6. Debate is encouraged, but do it constructively, cite your facts, and debate ideas, not people.
7. No sales or links to sales of legally-controlled items (eg. firearms).
8. Do not advocate violence. Discussing self defense is fine.
9. Do not out other people, post other’s private information, doxx, etc.
10. No copyright violations, blog spam, no-value self promotion, etc.

Please don’t make these kinds of repetitive posts:

• “I’m new here, what do I do?”
• “Thanks for the add!”
• “Are there any preppers in [state]?”
• “What are you prepping for?”
• Personal introductions without value to the community / teaching

No politics

Most people understand the goal: There’s plenty of other places to argue about stuff like politics, and it just distracts from why we’re all here, so let’s avoid it.

But the details get tricky. Many of the risks in our world are in some way related to politics, so it’s hard to talk about preparedness without in some way referencing government and laws.

For example, some local laws don’t allow people to collect rain water on their property. That’s directly related to prepping and worth talking about in the right way.

Let’s look at some examples:

“The US federal government didn’t handle COVID as well as other developed countries.”

That’s fine because it’s factually correct and isn’t worded in a way to attack someone or their supporters. And it ties to preparedness because knowing what our government can or can’t do in an emergency is relevant.

“tRrump made COVID worse.”

That’s not okay. It’s a worthy debate to have in the public arena — in the way holding all of our leaders is appropriate — but it’s too subjective, likely to cause bickering, and will just distract from the prepping conversation. And leave the silly names like “Nobama” and “tRump” at the door.

“I think California made a lot of bad decisions over the last decades when it comes to mitigating wildfires.”

That’s fine. Even though it’s an opinion, it would ideally have some supporting evidence for the claim, and it’s worded in a way that can allow a civil debate.

“Those Commiefornian libtards need to go rake some more forests if they want to have fewer wildfires.” 

Not okay, and would likely result in a ban.

Avoiding fake news, conspiracies, and other disinformation

There’s plenty of actual problems in the world — we don’t need to make it worse by adding unfounded or fake problems on top. And we certainly don’t want to aid our enemies who try to pour fuel on these fires to create even more problems within our society.

We’re just as distrustful of institutions like the media and government as you are. But that doesn’t mean the tin-foil-hat person yelling in a Youtube video is correct.

Sandy Hook was real. 9/11 was not an inside job. Fluoride in water is not used for mind control. FEMA is not tapping your computer to find out what supplies you have. And the Illuminati have your best interests in mind — they promise! 😉

The more outlandish a claim, the more we’ll judge if there is any dependable evidence for it. For example:

“The Chinese engineered COVID-19 in a lab with strains of HIV so they could attack the West.”

Maybe that’s true. We don’t know and neither do you. But we do know there is a lot of evidence against that being true, and vice versa, no real evidence supporting it is true. So until there is credible evidence — at which point we would stand alongside you and say “we should talk about this” — that’s not okay to say here.

Remember folks: “Science” is not an opinion or point of view that somehow conflicts with your world-view. Science is just the search for verifiable truth.

We won’t always get it right — but we will always try

Feel free to ask questions or give feedback below about these policies and how we can make them better over time.

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Hi everyone! My name is Gideon and I am the new community moderator. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the forum, kit builder, or preparedness.

A little bit about myself, I live in the mountains of Colorado, have a beautiful wife, enjoy making all sorts of things from furniture to small electronics, and life is so wonderful!

One of the main reasons I got into preparedness years ago was to give me that peace of mind that comes with knowing you have your needs met. And as a husband, I want to ALWAYS be able to provide for my family, even if the economy collapses and food is scarce.

My wife and I are saving up for a house right now and that means saving as much money as we can. This has forced me to get creative with my prepping, think of cheaper ways to do things, and come up with multiple uses for each item. This has been a fun challenge for me.

On top of being physically prepared, I also am interested in preparing my digital life as well. I see prepping against cyber attacks, hard drive failure, and more as an increasing threat as time goes on and more and more of our lives are online.

I am here to help you! If you have any questions or have suggestions for the forum, kit builder, or website, let me know!

 

Howdy everyone. My name is Ef and I’m helping with moderation as my friends at The Prepared boot up the new forum. Happy to help!

 

Hi Ef!

Quick question: I created a new forum, but it didn’t appear.  Do new forums get vetted by the moderator before going live?  (Sorry if you wrote this somewhere and I missed it.)  I want to make sure so that I don’t repost gratuitously.

Thanks!

 

Hi! It should be live. Some terms trigger the filter, but I’m pretty quick to move it along. If you make edits and it goes into the filter again, feel free to ping me if I don’t get to it within a few minutes. 🙂

 

Thanks, Ef!

 

It’s taken me just a few minutes to realize this is the group I’ve been looking for. It seems that trying to find something that is based on rational thought and common sense is hard to do anymore. I’ve been a “prepper” for a long time, not as a lifelong, all encompassing goal like some, just enough to be prepared and have some sort of a plan in case of emergencies, partly because of how and where I was raised, and life experiences since then. THANK YOU! I’ll be back.

 

Glad you found us! I’m new to prepping but have found the site’s approachable/sane point-of-view to be a far less intimidating path than the “all encompassing goal” that you described. Welcome to the community!

 

A couple more questions, Ef:

1) There is a button to ‘follow’ certain discussions, but I don’t see any way to sort the discussions so that I can see the ones I’m following or see the latest updates on those discussions.  Is there something I am missing?  Or does following only work if I have enabled updates to my email?

2) There are buttons to upvote/downvote posts.  Is there a way to sort posts, to see what people think is the best answer to a given a query?

Thanks!

 

No problem!

1. The forum topics you’re following are listed in the “My Followed Topics” tab on your profile page. We don’t currently have sorting enabled, however. They’re listed by date of original submission. Following basically equates to getting an email when a new comment is added to a thread you’re following.
2. Sort-by-votes is not yet a feature, but it’s something we’re planning to add.

 

Thanks, Ef!  I missed that after clicking into my account I had additional options.  I appreciate the quick response!

 

Hi everyone! My name is Gideon and I am the new community moderator. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the forum, kit builder, or preparedness.

A little bit about myself, I live in the mountains of Colorado, have a beautiful wife, enjoy making all sorts of things from furniture to small electronics, and life is so wonderful!

One of the main reasons I got into preparedness years ago was to give me that peace of mind that comes with knowing you have your needs met. And as a husband, I want to ALWAYS be able to provide for my family, even if the economy collapses and food is scarce.

My wife and I are saving up for a house right now and that means saving as much money as we can. This has forced me to get creative with my prepping, think of cheaper ways to do things, and come up with multiple uses for each item. This has been a fun challenge for me.

On top of being physically prepared, I also am interested in preparing my digital life as well. I see prepping against cyber attacks, hard drive failure, and more as an increasing threat as time goes on and more and more of our lives are online.

I am here to help you! If you have any questions or have suggestions for the forum, kit builder, or website, let me know!

 

Hi Gideon, Did the site eliminate the ‘login with Google’ option?  The last two times I’ve tried to long in, it has been gone, so I have not been able to access my original account.  I made a new one today just so I could post this query!

 

I am sorry that has happened to you! I will bring it up to our development team right away and see how we can best get that sorted out for you. 

I personally am still seeing the ‘login with Google’ option on my end, but let me find out if there is something they recommend doing that can help.

I’ll probably reach out to you again using your email you used to sign up.

 

Thanks.  Good to know.  I can also try using a different browser.  I’m using Firefox currently and I have the problem even when I disable security features for the TP page.

 

As I mentioned in a previous post I was involved in a prepping forum for several years.  I really wish it had some set of guidance on the common sense rules posted above here.  The last 6 months that site became more and more radical with fake news, conspiracy theories, political hatred and divide, etc.  In the beginning it was a really good forum.  It is really easy for a few radical people to hijack topics without some ground rules.  I am all for debate, and have had my eyes opened many times to different sides of an issue from it.  We all can learn from others, even when we see different sides, especially when we’re civil and respectful.

 

Well said 💪

 

Agree