House rules

Short, because you have all had enough briefings. The terms are the legal version; this is the one that actually matters day to day.

1. Wind-ups are allowed. Punch-downs are not. You know the difference. Taking the mickey out of someone who can give it back is half the point of the place. Going after someone who is struggling, new, or on their own is not the same thing and never was.
2. Nothing current. No operation still running, no location still in use, no route in or out, and no names of serving personnel. If you are weighing up whether something is still sensitive, it is.
3. It is not your story to tell if it is about someone else. Photographs and details of other people — serving, retired, or family — need their say-so. Someone else’s bad night is not your anecdote.
4. Nobody has to prove themselves twice. An administrator has already checked every member here. Quizzing someone about their service to catch them out is not vetting, it is having a go. If you genuinely think somebody is not who they claim, tell us rather than the whole room.
5. Say the hard things if you need to. Bad tours, bad decisions, the ones who did not make it, the years after — that is what this is for. Nobody here is going to flinch. If it gets heavy, the support page is there and no one thinks less of anyone for using it.
6. Look after each other. Somebody had your six out there. It works the same way in here. If a yarn reads like a bad week rather than a good story, say something — to them, not about them. You do not need the right words and you are not expected to fix anything; turning up is most of it. Nobody gets left on their own with it.
7. Wear your own badge, not somebody else’s chest. Tier 1 members can put their unit badge, their medals and their ribbons on their profile and choose who sees them. Yours to show, and the site keeps the record of you saying so. Nobody here checks them, and claiming what you were not awarded gets you removed, not warned. In several of the countries this site covers it is also a criminal offence. A badge says where you belonged and a medal says what you were decorated for — this is the one crowd that can tell, and the one crowd that will. If a force asks for something to come down, it comes down that day.

Break these and you will hear about it from a person, not a system. Keep breaking them and you will not be here. Everything an administrator does is written down, with a reason, and you can ask to see it.