The AgainstAllArchons guide and FAQ

What is this community about?

Archons?  Please explain!

Please read An archon-based understanding of voluntary relationships.

So what's the mission of this subreddit?

We are dedicated to the realization of an archon-free world.  See an archon-based understanding of voluntary relationships for more information on the topic.

We discuss philosophical topics, current events, and ethics of all topics related to archist-based relationships with archons, whether they be politicians, teachers, abusive parents, police, priests, or any other people and groups who advocate aggression.  We do so from a strictly uncompromising voluntary perspective.

We collect, share and learn knowledge about these topics.  We also discuss and come up with voluntary and rational ways, strategies and methodologies to living free in a voluntary manner, to strip archons and archists of their authority, power and influence, and to bring about an archon-free world.  Such tactics include (but are not limited to) includes peaceful parenting,  therapy, self-discovery, agorism, using the "against me" argument effectively, shedding toxic relationships from one's life, and all forms of advocacy for voluntary relationships.

This is a community of people who are 100% anti-aggression, and we will keep it that way.

Aren't there other subreddits with similar missions?

The other similar subreddits either have no policy on rejecting abusers, or have an explicit "hands-off" policy that lets shills, defenders of abuse, abusers, and liars run amok and control the discourse.  As a result, those subreddits have become overrun with people who constantly "throw wrenches" into good conversations, making the community unwelcome and enjoyable conversation a rarity.

We aim to be better than that.

While the upvote/downvote system clearly has its place and can be effective in many circumstances, it is not enough.  Moderation is one of many strategies that we will openly wield, not to "stifle reasoned dissent", but to deliberately create a better place for our subscribers.

Useful information and suggestions for our members

The knowledge base

We are growing a knowledge base for newcomers and people interested in non-violence and voluntaryism alike.  The current link is at http://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstAllArchons/comments/uj2dv/knowledge_base_thread/.  Though the thread is moderated, feel free to post good finds, perhaps even own a comment where you will grow your own facet of the knowledge base.

Meme images?  Books?  PDFs?  Links?

Sure!   But we strongly requiest that people posting certain types of content mark them up with tags on the title.  For example, we would appreciate if you added [image] or [meme] to your image / meme submissions.

Many of us here use Reddit Enhancement Suite and some of us would prefer to be able to auto-hide image posts with RES. If you wish to do this, go to your settings panel, click "Filters", then "filtereddit", then put in the keywords you wish for RES to auto-hide.

How to effectively participate, interact with, and triage people

1. Ask him what his conclusions are, and why he believes it.  Inquire as to which information would change his mind.
2. Socratically question him, slowly presenting him or confronting him with the necessary contradictions, evidence and logic that would change their mind.
3. Do not waste your time doing this more than once per person.  Once is enough.
4. If he changes his mind, great.  You have changed someone's mind.
5. If he doesn't change his mind, he refuses to understand, or he starts bringing up new excuses to negate your arguments, triage him as resistant to reason, point it out so that others can benefit from your discovery, and move on.  Do not engage him any further, as engaging him more is only going to cost you your time and further headache.
6. If he becomes abusive, starts attacking you, or starts openly advocating for aggression, report him to the moderators using the "report post" link or the  "message the moderators" link (attach an explanation with evidence).  We will remove him at once from the subreddit.

Not all debates are real debates.  Not every interlocutor will be upfront with you.  Learn to spot this early.

A fundamental key point that cannot be stressed enough: people who have genuine questions or motives, don't abuse you or seek to provoke anger in you.

If a person, confronted with peaceful and reasoned argumentation, displays inexplicable stubbornness, says things to provoke you, mistreats you, or abuses you, this person doesn't really want to have a debate with you.  No matter how superficially "polite" he may appear initially, your ideas have provoked cognitive dissonance in him, his rational mind has been shut down by his emotions and, as such, there is literally no reasoning possible with him at this point.

When such persons engage in "debate", they really are only engaging in a toxic form of self-manipulation.  The goal of the self-manipulation is to suppress cognitive dissonance, suspend rational thoughts and "dangerous questions" to their belief system, and to calm their negative emotions.  Their actions clearly telegraph "I don't want to think.  Please make it stop.  You are hurting me with your ideas."

They accomplish that by (unconsciously but) deliberately transferring their own frustrations and negative emotions onto you, both by abusing you directly or indirectly, and by generating copious amounts of frustration on you.  It's quite literally an attack on your well-being and peace of mind, falsely posing as an "argument", to get you to stop questioning their belief system, so that they can return to their previous emotional state.  This behavior is both dishonest toward yourself, and dishonest toward themselves.

People who behave in that manner, may or may not be helped with therapy, but they are almost certainly guaranteed not to be convinced by any rational arguments.  Remember: it is not their conscious mind speaking, but rather their subconscious hiding a mountain of lies and abuse inflicted on them.  You can't fix people.  Only they can fix themselves.

There is another class of people who will behave in the same manner (or almost indistinguishably).  It is the paid shill, tasked with generating the same reactions out of you, and / or applying COINTELPRO tactics on your community.  If you have a well-founded belief that a person is engaging in this type of activity, please report them immediately to us.

I hear the word "moderation".  Won't this become a censorship fest?

Look, if you have genuine questions, or you can present your ideas in a voluntary, non-violent, non-abusive and respectful way, you are welcome here, even if you disagree with others.

If, on the contrary, your aim is to generate frustration, to provoke negative emotions, or to advocate for aggression, yes, I am afraid that this place will not welcome you.

Governance guidelines

Moderators' prerogatives, suggestions and criteria

Unlike other hands-off subreddits, you have significant discretion in what to moderate, and you are encouraged to use it.  You are also encouraged to familiarize yourself with common forum disruptive tactics by reading the Forum COINTELPRO Techniques post.

If it helps to visualize your mission, think of yourself as a nightclub co-owner and part-time bouncer.  You will get loud and obnoxious drunks at the door, trying to get in to grope the girls, or trying to create an unpleasant environment for decent clubgoers so that they will go to another club.  You accomplish your job best by standing completely impassive, arms crossed, denying them entrance,  not giving a shit about whatever lies they yell.  From time to time, they may even repeatedly attack you -- in those cases, you simply rough them up a bit strictly in self-defense, humiliate them publicly so that others will identify them for the obnoxious pricks they are, and return to your previous usual chill.

People to be kept off the premises include anyone who is verbally abusive (particularly if they are repeatedly verbally abusive, or if they have a hostiry of defamatory behavior and false accusations), and anyone who advocates for archon-based relationships (especially if the person is deliberately trying to pass off archon-based relationship or aggressive actions as "voluntary and consensual").  You are also encouraged to ban people with whom you have had a disagreement in the past that ended up in him being verbally abusive or advocating for aggression.

 You will get flak for this.  The whole point of the flak is precisely to manipulate you, through guilt and fear that your reputation will be tarnished, into backing down from your decision, no matter how justified.  They will alternate between trying to win you over and tryiing to hurt you.  That is normal; it is nothing but their childish manipulation tactics at play, and they behave in this manner because it worked for them in other situations.  You should do your best not to care about (or let yourself be manipulated by) the flak -- this is your house and you are entitled to keep undesirables off it.

Handling Occupatio effectively

When people are moderated, one of their favorite tactics is to falsely complain about "censorship" (likely calling you names of famous mass murderers in the process).  This is what is known as Occupatio (or "Breaking the banhammer") in COINTELPRO operations, and it is a deliberate tactic to undermine your authority and destroy the respect of others for you:

An agent may come to the forum in question with an anti-authoritarian, anarchist tone. This seems legitimate enough at first glance, as any research or activist forum is certain to be aware of the corruption of "The System", and those in charge of it. However, by directing this anti-authoritarian attitude towards the very moderation team who are there to ensure that research and activism can take place, they attempt to undermine the authority of and respect for the moderation team. "You mean you're banning people? Aren't you about free speech, the constitution?" Etc. This is a technique known as "Occupatio", and presents the moderator with a catch-22; either ban the troublemaker and lend credence to the claim that the moderation team is hypocritical, or don't ban him and continue listening to him complain about how the site's staff is hypocritical.

If there are other agents on the forum, and the moderators ban the troublemaker, they may begin hurling accusations of "witch hunts" and "McCarthyism" at the moderators, attempting to rile the userbase into a shitstorm against the moderators. Divide and conquer.

Disregard and ignore those complaints.  We -- like any other private property operator -- reserve the right of admission to this community; it is a good fact of life that ugly people aren't allowed in expensive clubs, filthy people aren't allowed in restaurants, drunk people aren't allowed in amusement parks.  Furthermore, the actions of these agitators aren't "exercises of free speech" in the least; if anything, a more honest analogy to their behavior would Einstein and Gödel trying to have a conversation while these obnoxious people intrude, blasting a vuvuzela at them.

Preferably, you should justify your banning actions by providing evidence as to why a particular user was banned (this information should make it much less likely that others would reverse your decision).  You are encouraged to use RES to keep tabs of this information.  Also, please do post on the ban thread (http://www.reddit.com/r/AgainstAllArchons/comments/uj7md/ban_log/) whenever you ban anyone.  Post the nickname, the reason for the ban, and evidence (quotes, screenshots and/or links) that back your claim up.  The ban log is intended for you to communicate with each other, and to serve as reference to look up the reason why someone was banned in the past.

You are also encouraged to transmit this policy to the moderators you appoint.

Practical guidelines to identify unwelcome people and behavior

There are a few consistent patterns of behavior that will lower the value of a community for its participants, and those patterns are well-known and well-studied.

To protect the value of our community for our members, people engaging in the following behaviors -- whether the behavior happens in our subreddit or in other subreddits -- will be banned on the spot:

• People who repeatedly display verbally or physically abusive behavior towards others.
  Such behavior might not always be against the NAP, but we don't tolerate gratuituous assholes.
• People who make false or unsubstantiated accusations against others, in particular if the accusations are intended to defame, discredit or character-assassinate.
  Such behavior might not be strictly against the NAP, but we don't tolerate slanderers.
• People who advocate or make apologies for the initiation of violence against others (whether political, religious or familial), particularly against defenseless persons.
  Such behavior advocates and normalizes the violation of the NAP.
• People who repeatedly fog, prevaricate, disinform, mock, condescend, engage in concern trollery, engage others with logical fallacies, post inflammatory remarks, or in any other way act to provoke anger and frustration in people.
  Such behavior might not always be against the NAP, but we don't tolerate liars, fraudsters and agent provocateurs. 
• People who display a systemic pattern of undermining, disrupting or sabotaging our community's members, discussions, morale and / or mission (as stated above), whether they do it alone or by conspiring with others.
  Such behavior might not be strictly against the NAP, but we don't tolerate shills, paid or unemployed.

Anyone with a history of engaging in the aforementioned behaviors won't be allowed participation here either.

We recognize every single item in this list of guidelines is a judgment call on the part of the moderator.  We default to trusting the moderator when making such a judgment call.  They weren't randomly selected from the phonebook -- they were selected for their exemplary integrity and contribution to our community.

In addition to that, moderators enjoy full discretion to ban people for reasons outside this guidelines list.  Such decisions will be subject to revision by other moderators.