Philosophical Research:Ground rules

Policies on what is allowed and prohibited on Ontology pages.

Ontology pages are a creative exercise, not a strictly "factual" or "encyclopedic" one. They are allowed to contain hypothetical concepts and arguments that are not directly attested in any existing sources, but which are merely "predicted" to appear in a future existing source. However, each of these hypothetical concepts should make logical sense in reference to entries which do represent or cite existing sources. It should not be difficult for an outsider to figure out what an abstract entry refers to or where it came from based on only Ontology pages.
Ontology pages are not owned by specific people. Changing the arguments on Ontology pages to better reflect what is factually true is acceptable and recommended, as long as you do not remove anything just because you do not understand it. If something is confusing, make the attempt to understand it first, and mention it on new versions of the page if it is relevant.
Most Ontology pages should not feature images. This is mainly to promote Ontology pages being easy to download and store cheaply in text form. If an image is truly necessary for some reason, it should be one that is well-preserved somewhere else, such as a Wikimedia Commons image.
- Because this rule is for Ontology: pages, it does not apply to articles in the Research: namespace.
Ontology pages are not prohibited from being "offensive". It is generally acceptable to cover propositions which would be offensive to any reasonable person as long as you do not endorse them.
You may not endorse propositions that promote violent real-life acts. This is mostly in reference to propositions that take place inside a single population. It is acceptable to cover the day-to-day existence of violent social phenomena without endorsing them.
You may not endorse killing minority demographics, such as in murder, group shootings, or police violence.
You may not endorse invalidating homosexuality or bisexuality.
You may not endorse invalidating someone's gender identity.
- This includes attempting to rid society of either cis women or cis men.
- Covering the concept of somebody labeling a cis person "an egg" is not a violation of this rule unless that somehow turns genuinely abusive.
You may not endorse invalidating the national identity of a tribal population.
You may not endorse invalidating the national identity of another nation-state.
- You might notice here that there are already hypothetical scenarios or propositions involving characters who are xenophobic. These Items are acceptable if they do not endorse the problem.
You may not endorse invalidating a national or ethnic language.
- This includes giving editors a hard time for not being fluent in English. In this case, just make a subpage in the other language, and try to work with the editor to translate the overall sentiment on the other-language page for the English page. Include the citations for works in the other language if any were provided.
- Likewise, if an editor makes a mistake translating a page from English, correct it, but don't make a big deal of it.
It is acceptable to invalidate religion if it does not simultaneously invalidate a national or ethnic identity.
It is acceptable to invalidate businesses and industries. Categories such as "artists" and "scientists" are not considered sacred, and are to be treated similarly to ideologies.
It is acceptable to invalidate ideologies — including anarchism, center-Liberalism, mainstream Marxism-Leninism, Western-Marxism, and Trotskyism — if that does not simultaneously invalidate a national, ethnic, or whole-populational identity.
- This one is both easier and harder than you likely think it is. When something extends to literally 100% of center-Liberals who are all predestined to be in that population and not just 99%, such that it would be impossible for anyone in the population being criticized to leave it and create a new population, it is considered unacceptable. Likewise, invalidating the whole population of the Soviet Union for being loyal to their own country would be unacceptable. However, if there is any leeway for center-Liberals to be non-Marxist progressives and not get slammed just for being "The Woke", it's fine.
You may not endorse misinformation. Misinformation is any statement which is willfully spread around yet can be objectively shown by any educated person in any country using appropriate verification methods to be factually wrong.
- This will in some cases extend to things like sloppy definitions of Communism by Tory types, or pervasive wrong accounts of historical events such as the Trotskyite conspiracy.
You may not endorse large language models. Covering the concept of controversy over large language models and image generators is acceptable.
You may not actually endorse suicide. Covering the concept of "depression arguments" about why people would believe life is not worth living is acceptable.
You may not endorse violent anarchist operations openly. This is honestly more to protect anarchists than to prohibit them. This is an aboveground organization for peaceful activities. It is not to receive knowledge of anarchist or Communist secret operations, unless they are not currently happening and instead happened at least 5 years ago. Secret operations which are currently happening should not be coded as Items or propositions.
- Certain astounding places where books are available when they should not be are to be considered "anarchist secret operations", despite their nonviolent character.
You may not document Communist violence as if you endorse it happening tomorrow. Again, this has to do with the separation of peaceful operations and secret operations in a country, and is not a morality-based rule.
It is not recommended to endorse Trotskyism. However, creating arguments fully in support of Trotskyism is not prohibited. The only part of Trotskyism that is prohibited is endorsing Trotskyite conspiracies, which include any attempt to destroy the government of a real-world workers' state in order to replace it with Trotskyism.
Sexual topics are not recommended, but allowed. It is recommended that if you see the need to add one of these topics, you add it only when it has relevance to oppression, social movements, or discussions of laws and The State. You will likely find that many topics which have had "drama" about them are acceptable to cover on grounds of analyzing the boundaries of cultures and societies.
You may not endorse pedophilia or pederasty.
You may not endorse zoophilia or bestiality. Covering the existence of the phenomenon for the purpose of studying the development of societies is acceptable. Creating arguments that real-world acts of zoophilia should be allowed or that endorse real-world zoophiles being allowed into furry spaces is prohibited.
If an argument is created on a prohibited topic, you are unlikely to get in serious trouble if it was an accident. However, the argument or proposition will be removed. This wiki deals with some fairly serious and edgy topics, so mistakes are bound to happen.
The range of topics which is prohibited or allowed may change, and this list of rules may be updated in response to new edge cases.
This list should not be updated spontaneously, and from the moment this becomes possible, all new rule changes should be logically supported with a chain of policy propositions.