Community guidelines

These are written as rules rather than aspirations because they are enforced, and because a member who is moderated is entitled to know exactly which sentence they fell foul of. Each has a stable anchor — #R1 through #R15 — so it can be cited precisely in a topic or in the log.

1. Be civil to the person, rigorous about the claimAttack arguments as hard as you like. Do not attack people at all. A claim can be wrong, badly sourced, or internally inconsistent; a member cannot be stupid, dishonest or a shill, at least not on this site. If you cannot separate the two, write the post and do not send it.
2. Quantitative claims need a source, on requestYou may state a number without a citation. If someone asks where it came from, you supply it, or you withdraw the number. This is not an accusation and asking is not hostile — it is the mechanism the site runs on. A claim that cannot be sourced after a reasonable interval gets the "needs a source" tag, which is a label rather than a punishment.
3. Nothing here is medical advice, and nobody may present it as suchDescribe what a label says, what a trial found, or what you personally did. Do not tell another member what dose to take, what to stop taking, or what their result means for them. Clinicians and pharmacists on this site hold to this more strictly than anyone, and they are right to.
4. Research-use-only material is not approved for human useWe discuss it because people do use it and are better off informed. We will not pretend it is something it is not. Posts that describe research-use-only compounds as approved, safe, or equivalent to a licensed medicine are corrected, and repeated after a correction they are removed.
5. No sourcing facilitation of any kindNo group buys, no brokering, no referral codes, no discount codes, no private messages offering to obtain anything for anyone. Structured supplier documentation is welcome and is the whole point of the Sourcing category. The line is between documenting and arranging.
6. Allegations require evidence"This lot tested low" is a report. "This supplier is a scam" is an allegation. Reports need a batch, a date, a method and a document. Allegations without them are hidden, and the hiding is logged with this rule cited. If your evidence arrives later, the post comes back.
7. Stay in the category, and expect to be movedTopics get moved. It is not a judgement on the topic and it is usually because a specialist subcategory will answer it better. A moderator who moves a topic says so in the topic and in the log. If you think a move was wrong, say so in Meta and it will be reconsidered in public.
8. One topic, one questionFive questions in one post get one answer, usually to the easiest of them. Split them. A topic with a single answerable question is the most useful artefact you can produce here.
9. Wiki edits carry a revision noteAnyone at trust level 3 or above can edit a community wiki post. Every edit records who made it and why. An edit with no note may be reverted by any wiki editor without further discussion, and that revert is logged.
10. Do not edit around a disagreementIf two members disagree about the content of a wiki post or a maintained document, the disagreement goes on the topic, not into a series of competing edits. Documents can hold two positions and say which is contested; edit wars cannot.
11. Urgent means urgent — stop posting and get helpSevere abdominal pain, persistent vomiting, signs of dehydration, chest pain, thoughts of self-harm: these are not forum questions. The Safety category will tell you so, immediately and without judgement, and a moderator will lock the topic if the conversation starts substituting for care.
12. No personal data, yours or anyone else'sDo not post laboratory reports with identifiers on them, screenshots containing names or addresses, or another member's off-site identity. Redact before you post. Staff will remove unredacted material on sight and the removal is logged.
13. Sponsorship buys placement, never editorial outcomeSponsor placements are labelled and appear in fixed positions. No sponsor has ever been given, or will be given, influence over documentation, verification records or moderation. See the funding disclosure. If you believe a page reads like it was bought, say so in Meta and it will be answered.
14. Disagree in public, revise in publicChanging your mind on the evidence is the most respected act on this site and there is a badge for it. Deleting a post you have been corrected on, rather than editing it with a note, is not.
15. Do not repost a removed postIf something was hidden or removed with a rule cited, reposting it unchanged is a separate matter from the original post and is handled as one. Ask in Meta instead — the answer is often that a rewritten version is fine.

How these are enforced

Staff act on flags and on their own reading. The scale is deliberately shallow: an edit with a note, a hidden post with a note, a topic closed with a note, and — rarely — a silenced account. There is no secret tier and no shadow-banning.

Every action is logged in public, with the acting staff member, the rule cited and a written rationale. The moderation log currently holds 205 entries and nothing is ever removed from it, including the entries that read badly for us in hindsight.

What we ask rather than require

• Search first. 1,535 topics and 68 maintained documents mean your question has often been answered better than it will be today.
• Mark the solution. If a reply answered your question, mark it. 452 topics carry a marked solution, and those are the ones that keep helping people.
• Promote what deserves it. When a topic produces something durable, propose it for the documentation commons. 68 of 68 documents began as a topic.
• Correct yourself in the open. Edit, note the correction, leave the original readable. Nobody has ever been thought less of here for it.