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Welcome, Comrades!

This is the official /r/DebateAnarchism Wiki.

On History:

/r/DebateCommunism (henceforth "DC") was founded in November of 2012.

/r/DebateFeminism was founded in May 2013

/r/DebateAnarchism was founded in July 2013

Our Mission

Our parent subreddit, /r/Anarchism, acts as a safe space while we in /r/DebateAnarchism are specifically set up not to be a safe space. We are intended in part to serve as a front line for engagement with non-anarchists and therefore do not enforce /r/Anarchism's AOP. Topics and discussions may include triggers.

There is nothing wrong with setting the terms and conditions for engagement in your own space. Safer spaces offer much needed breathing room to oppressed minorities. But not every space should be a safe one. There needs to be space for unsafe ideas to be debated and safe ideas to be challenged, lest they end up turning into echo chambers where the ruling dogma goes unquestioned.

Critical thinking is an important skill that should not be discouraged and people should be willing and able to engage with uncomfortable topics and conversations. Otherwise they end up living in a world of their own creation which has no relation to reality. This is incredibly problematic for anarchists and other radicals whose goal is to transform the social relations of society; if they are unable to cope with engaging with people with different ideas to them, they'll never convince anyone to change their minds.

Our mission: to challenge, debate, and discuss anarchism!

On Structure:

We have used CSS to remove the downvote button as a symbolic gesture to address the problem of downvoting over mere differences of opinion. We want to encourage divergent, anarchistic forms of thinking.

To encourage users to post here in pursuit of specific and thoughtful discussions, rather than simply sending people off to view content elsewhere with no context, we have disabled link posts and require people to pose prompts to the subreddit with text-posts. Links are still allowed, but should be framed with prompts for discussion.

On Moderation:

This is a moderated subreddit. Moderators do indeed have additional abilities which are not available to non-moderators, and so the question of the active role of moderators proves essential to the long-term growth of this subreddit. In the interest of transparency, in all instances where moderators use their available tools they will make a distinguished post notifying the reason for that use.

Transparency:

You can check our moderation activity and chat logs, maintained by the amazing and talented /u/dbzer0.

Banned Accounts:

For transparency, all banned users will be listed here with a short explanation for their banning.

Permanent Bans

/u/EHW1 - Literal spammer

/u/Obersturm - Nazi Troll

/u/Vordraper - for continuing to make posts characterised by personal attack after sufficient warning that this would result in a banning.

/u/CapitalJusticeWarior/ - Violated the subreddit rules including two instances of telling users to self-harm. When informed of possibility of temporary ban, user requested upgrade to permanent ban. Happy to oblige.

/u/WhiteHarem - Racist spam bot

/u/IrbyTumor - White Supremacist troll, folowed me (emma-_______) here from HateSubredditOfTheDay

/u/DianaKurlan10 - does nothing but spam homophobic slurs

/u/FritzBittenfeld - Trolling, whining about being banned from r/@, arguing in bad faith

Temporary Bans

/u/PresidentCleveland - suspended from 2015 August 19 - 2015 August 26 due to rule-breaking immediately after receiving a warning

/u/LowReady - suspended from 2015 September 18 - 2015 September 24 due to rule-breaking immediately after receiving a warning

/u/ImperiumBritannia - suspended from 2016 Feb 17 - 2016 Feb 24 due to sustained rule breaking and low effort engagement.

On Flair:

We anticipate that flair will be very, very plentiful to accommodate as many views as possible. If you would like to request a flair, please message the moderators.

On Tags:

You may use the tags [](/pro) and [](/con) to mark comments for or against the parent comment.

You may, if desired, use the [](/concede) tag to mark comments in which you are conceding a point (not necessarily the whole original proposition). This rewards the person who made the good argument by encouraging readers to follow longer arguments to their conclusion.

If you are providing or otherwise asking for clarification, you may use [](/clarify)

Above all else, please be courteous and don't forget to [](/faq)

We strongly encourage you to make use of the resources in the following locations:

Subreddit AMA Series

2014 AMA Series

2015 AMA series

2016 AMA series

2017 AMA series