General Guidelines

Don’t post your opinion. All material must be attributed to a established source.

A contributor’s role is to place an existing, documented position, already established in the public discourse, in the correct spot on the tree. The idea of Policy Tree is to mirror the public debate, not serve as a soap box for personal ideologies. To do otherwise would reduce this site to a graphically-enhanced web forum—a chaotic soup of redundant, irrelevant, trivial and off-the-cuff observations. While established arguments are often foolish, they are never irrelevant simply by their nature as “established.” If a lot of people believe a thing, it belongs on Policy Tree.

That said, it’s more than likely that someone out there is already pedaling your position; you just have to find out who. Contributions need not be mainstream, provable, or even reasonable, but they must be accredited.

Use direct quotes as much as possible

Original writing is sometimes necessary to clarify a position, but when possible, quote the source directly. Pulling several paragraphs of text verbatim doesn’t violate copyrights, as long as it’s properly attributed.

Make sure your position doesn’t exist

Please read carefully before posting to make sure the position you’ve discovered doesn’t already exist. If it does, strengthen it by adding your source to the existing leaf.

Try not to attribute positions to specific people, political parties or ideologies

The intention of this guideline is not to distort the argument—indeed, ignore it if you fear this result—but to eliminate polarizing associations when they actually have nothing to do with the position. As much as possible, the reader should be arguing with their computer and not “the Democrats,” “the Republicans,” Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore. We’re all wrong sometimes, and it’s easier to stand down to a chunk of metal than a pompous pundit.

What is considered an “established” source?

This definition will develop with the site, but in a word, “circulation.” The more people that view a source, the more it’s ideas are promoted, whether it be a newspaper, magazine, book, radio, television or blog. This is not an excessively limiting restriction, it’s basically meant to keep out references to your friend’s 5 hit per day political blog.