Straight answers

A site where ex-service people tell the stories that never got written down. Anyone can read it. To post, you register and an administrator approves you by hand.

Serving and former service people, wherever you served. Every branch, plus police, first responders and private contractors. No country is on a list and none is kept off one — the job is the same job in any language.

You must be 18 or over. The terms say so and it is not negotiable.

No. Reading is open to anybody, and always will be. Registration is what lets you write — post a yarn, reply to one, salute one.

Exactly that. Every registration lands in a queue and a human being reads it and decides. There is no automatic approval, no score, and nothing that lets you in because you clicked the right boxes.

It is the whole trust mechanic of this site rather than a step on the way in, and it is why the writing here is worth reading.

As long as it takes a person to get to it. We will not promise you a number of hours we cannot keep — you are emailed either way, and if something in your application needs clarifying you are asked rather than refused.

One of the first 500 people through the door. It appears on your profile automatically, with your number on it, and it is free — there is nothing to buy and nothing to opt into. Being early is the whole qualification.

It is not the same thing as the First 500 rate, which is a price the first 500 Tier 1 subscribers pay and keep. Two separate counts of 500, and you can hold either, both or neither — the badge is never something anybody bought.

No, and most people do not. You write under a handle. Your identity is confirmed on the way in and then it stays out of sight — approval is what makes the site trustworthy, not publishing who you are.

There is no separate section to find, and that is deliberate — a door marked “women” is a door everybody watches. Instead, any member who answered Female at registration can tick Women readers only on a yarn as she posts it. Only other members who answered the same can open it: not on the feed, not in search, not on her profile, not the photographs attached to it.

Free, and part of the ordinary composer rather than anything paid.

One exception, and it leaves a trail. An administrator can open one to moderate it — a report nobody is allowed to read is a report nobody can act on, and that would make the safest corner of this site the one place a bad actor could work unchallenged. Every time an administrator opens a women-only yarn it is written into the log with their name against it.

The answer cannot be changed afterwards. It is given at registration, and it is fixed the moment a person decides the application — so somebody who registered as male cannot switch to female later to get in. Changing it after that takes an administrator, and it is written into the log when they do.

Be clear about what the lock still is. It is an answer somebody gave on a form, and nobody checks whether it was true. What the lock stops is a member changing their mind about it to reach these yarns. It is not proof of anything, and it is not the thing to trust with something that would put you in danger if a stranger read it.

Yes — both, and your ribbons. It is part of Tier 1, and you choose who sees them: anyone, members, or Tier 1 only. There is a line under each one for what it was for, if you want to use it — the year, that it was a unit citation, who else got one.

Nobody here checks them, and we will not pretend otherwise. Looking at a photograph of a ribbon rack tells an administrator nothing about who earned it, so a tick from us would be an appearance of a check rather than a check — and that is worse than none. What we do instead is written into the House Rules: 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. This is the one crowd that can tell, and the one crowd that will.

It stays on your profile. It does not go on merchandise, into an email or onto a link preview, and Daggermen’s own marks stay original and abstract — nothing here should ever read as a defence force endorsing this site. If a force or a unit asks for a badge to come down, it comes down that day.

Worth thinking about before you pick an audience: insignia beside a handle narrows you. A unit badge on a small unit narrows you a long way and a decoration can narrow you to one person. That is exactly why the setting is yours.

Nothing but the fact of it. An administrator has checked the service claim behind your handle; the badge says Service Verified and does not print the detail behind it. It is a badge, not a membership level — the memberships are the free one and Tier 1, and nothing else.

That is deliberate. A branch beside a pseudonymous handle narrows somebody to a small group of people, and a number of countries place legal identity restrictions on exactly that. You choose separately whether your branch shows at all.

It has nothing to do with who can read your writing. That is the three audiences below, and being verified is not one of them.

It is re-encoded and every scrap of metadata is thrown away — GPS coordinates first. Not a setting, not a tick box, not something you can turn off: the file that reaches the site is not the file that leaves your phone.

Location data in a veteran’s photograph is the specific harm this site was built to avoid, so it is not left to a preference anybody can get wrong at two in the morning.

You choose, on every single post, from three and only three:

• Anyone — readable by the whole internet, and the default.
• Members — approved members only.
• Tier 1 members — the paid membership, and the narrowest audience there is.

Anything narrower than public is kept out of search engines, and a reply to a post can never be read by anybody who could not read the post itself.

A Tier 1 post is read by the members on that tier — the narrowest audience on this site, and the smallest room in it. Your own writing is always visible to you, whatever you chose.

Laid out in full on the privacy page, including what we deliberately do not hold. Short version: no advertisers, no selling anything to anybody, and no tracking pixel in a single email we send.

We do use Google Analytics, and only if you agree to it when the site asks. It tells us which stories get read and which pages nobody ever finds, which is how this place gets better at being what it is for. It is never told which member you are, and nothing you write is ever sent to it — not a yarn, not a comment, not a message, not a Vault entry. Which pages you opened is sent, all of them, with the address cleaned first: no query string, and no entry or thread identified. Say no and nothing is stored on your device; the site works exactly the same.

Yes to both. There is a download of everything you have written on your own account page — a ZIP you can keep, open and read without this site. Deletion is done by hand when you ask — say the word — which is slower than a button and means a person makes sure it actually happened.

Printing or exporting your stories is part of Tier 1 — the ZIP, and a print-quality PDF alongside it once that is built. It is free for everybody while the paid tier does not exist, and you will be told before that changes.

Whatever you have got. It does not have to be dramatic and it does not have to be tidy. The ones that land are usually small.

No current operations, no locations, no names of serving personnel. It is written next to the box you type into rather than buried in a document, because that is where it is any use. The House Rules are the rest of it.

Both, any time. Withdrawing hides it immediately; nothing is destroyed, so ask if you want it back.

Only if you let them. There is a tick box on the compose form, ticked by default, and you can close replies on any post later. A reply inherits the visibility of the post it is under — always, and it is not a setting.

Yes — up to three minutes, and it is part of Tier 1. Record it in the browser or upload a voice memo. You choose whether it goes up in your own voice or pitch-shifted, and the form is honest that pitch-shifting is not anonymity: your pacing and your accent carry through it.

A spoken yarn is Tier 1 entire — the recording and the words. There is no audience control on the form and no wider option: your voice identifies you in a way your writing does not, so these are the narrowest thing on the site rather than the loudest. If you want a yarn read widely, write it.

You also write a line about what it is — not a transcript unless you want to. That is what a Tier 1 member who cannot hear reads instead, and what search has to go on. There is no automatic transcript, because the only ways to make one are to send your voice to another company or to run it on hardware we do not have. The first of those is not happening.

A person listens to every recording before it plays. Your words go up straight away; only the audio waits.

No. There is a salute, and only the author sees the count. A public tally would put somebody’s worst night in a popularity contest with a funny story about a cook, and that is not what this is.

Yes — joining and writing cost nothing. Reading, joining, posting, replying, your profile, your badges and the support numbers are free, and the ones that are free now are staying free.

The paid membership. This is what sits behind it:

• The Muster — the work.
• Standing By — who can do it.
• Printing or exporting your own stories.
• The Vault.
• Your unit badge, medals and ribbons on your profile.
• Telling a yarn out loud, and hearing the ones that were.
• Writing for the narrowest audience: a yarn only other Tier 1 members can read.

A membership on its own gets none of those. It gets the writing — telling a yarn, choosing who reads it, replies, salutes, your profile and badges, search, the daily wire and the support numbers — and that half is free and staying free.

Nothing starts charging without warning, and no card details exist anywhere in this system to charge — paying happens on the provider's own page, not on ours. Every page with something paid behind it says so on its face.

The two side by side — what each one gets you, and which parts of Tier 1 are built.

$6.99 a month, or $69.90 a year — the year is 2 months off, exactly. In US dollars, converted to your own currency at the checkout.

The first 500 people onto Tier 1 pay $3.99 a month or $39.90 a year — and keep it. That is 43% off for life, whichever way you pay, and $30.00 a year less than the standard rate. It does not go up when the standard price does, this year or in five. Take it when you join, or the day you move up to Tier 1 later — while there are any left.

And once you have taken it, it is yours. Switch between the month and the year as often as you like and the rate follows you; stop altogether and come back, and it is still there. It is not something you can lose by having a thin year. 498 of 500 are left.

Two things cost extra on top of the membership, and they are shaped differently from each other: a listing on the Muster is a one-off, and posting to Standing By is a small recurring add-on. Both are explained where you would meet them.

US dollars. Every figure on this site is USD, because the people here are in every time zone there is and one currency to quote in beats twelve.

At the checkout it converts to yours automatically — you pay in your own currency at the rate on the day, and what you are charged is what your bank shows.

If you want to. Chip in covers what this costs to run. Nobody is asked twice and nothing on the site changes because you did.

Work. Somebody with a job to fill posts it, an administrator reads it before it goes up, and the poster’s contact details are on the listing so you go straight to them. A listing runs 30 days or 90.

Anybody can read what the board is and the rules it keeps. Reading the listings and posting one are Tier 1.

Posting one costs $100.00 for 30 days or $250.00 for 90, in US dollars, converted at the checkout — a one-off charge on top of the membership. The listing fee is not running yet, so nothing is taken for one today. It is held when you send a listing and taken only if a moderator puts it up. See payment and refunds.

The other half: not the work, but who can do it. A short advert saying what you are good at, what you are licensed for and how far you will go. Not a CV.

You can change your own advert and see how it reads before anybody else does. Changing one sends it back in front of a person, and a live one comes off the board until they have read it.

It is priced differently from the Muster — see its own section below.

One button, and the site introduces you both by email — one to you saying who is interested, one to them with your address. Both sides know, and after that we are out of it.

We keep a record that somebody asked. We keep nothing about what they said. The message never passes through this site; there is no inbox here to read.

Not yet — on the Muster you withdraw it and post the corrected version, or ask us and it is done by hand. A Standing By advert you can change yourself, and the change goes back through review.

Both pages are open to anybody — what they are, and the rules they run on. The listings are the part behind Tier 1: a Muster listing carries the poster’s real contact address, and Standing By’s board is not readable by anybody yet, which is written on the page rather than glossed over.

When this site says the boards it means those two and nothing else. Your yarns are not on a board.

Reading it comes with Tier 1. Your membership gets you onto the board and lets you press the button on anybody there to be introduced. Nothing else to buy.

Putting your own advert up is a separate add-on — $3.00 a month or $30.00 a year, on top of Tier 1. It sits on the membership and cannot be held without it: if the membership stops, the add-on stops and your advert comes down with it.

But you write it and send it first, and that costs nothing. Lodging an advert needs only Tier 1. A person reads it, and the add-on matters after that: start it and the advert goes up, and if we say no you have paid nothing. The Muster is the same — a person decides, then money moves.

One price for everybody. The First 500 rate is a discount on the membership itself, not on this — holding it does not change what posting costs.

There is no public version of this board and there will not be one.

For as long as you keep the add-on. There is no 30 or 90 day term, no countdown and no expiry date — and no reminder email either, because there is nothing to remind you about.

This is the opposite of the Muster, and worth reading twice if you use both: a Muster listing is one payment for a fixed term and then it is finished; a Standing By advert is a small recurring payment and it runs on until you stop it.

The same shape as the Muster’s. Say which licence covers the work and where it is current — “none applies, and here is why” is a real answer. Nothing current: no operation still running, no client still under contract, no detail identifying a principal. Not a CV.

A person reads every advert before it goes up, and reads it again when you change one — a live advert comes off the board while it waits. The full list is on the page itself.

No, once a payment has been taken. Stopping the add-on stops the next payment and takes the advert down; it does not return the part of the month or year you have already had. That is the same answer the rest of the site gives, and for the same reasons — payment and refunds.

The exception is the same one too: if we are the reason your advert is not up — we take it down by mistake, or the board closes while you are paying for it — that is on us, and we put it right rather than keeping the money.

Somewhere to write it down that nobody can read. Not a draft folder waiting to be published — a locked one, for the things that help to put into words and are nobody else’s business.

Part of Tier 1. See the two memberships for what that is and what it costs.

Including us. There is no administrator page that opens a Vault entry and there is not going to be one. It is not a promise about how we behave — the entries sit in their own table that search, the feed and the daily email have no way to reach, and the one function that reads one takes your member id and refuses to work without it.

Deleting from the Vault is a real deletion, not a hidden one. It is the only place on this site where that is true, because nobody else has a claim on what is in there.

Yes, when you decide to — it becomes a yarn, and you pick who can read it like any other. The Vault copy stays where it is.

Nobody can rewrite it. There is no way for an administrator to put words in your mouth — not a typo fixed, not a sentence tidied. What you wrote is what stands.

What they can do is a blackout: take a few words out when they should not be on the page — a location still in use, a name that identifies somebody who did not agree to it. The words become a black bar, so you and everybody else can see that something went. The yarn stays up. Nothing else is touched.

You are emailed when it happens, with the reason, in plain words. There is no mark against you, nothing on your profile, and nothing anybody else can see except the bar.

Nothing keeps them. They are not moved to another column, not written into a log, not filed in a folder an administrator can open later. They are gone from the database.

That is deliberate and it is the whole point. The reason a location comes out is that it should not be written down — and a copy kept "just in case" would be that location sitting in this system for as long as the site exists, in a row nobody ever looks at. So there is no copy.

It also means a blackout cannot be undone. The record says that one happened, who did it, why, and how many characters went. It does not say what they were. If we get it wrong, tell us — but the words themselves will have to be written again.

At your request, yes. Some things lock once you are approved — the male/female/rather-not-say answer most of all, because it decides who can read the women-only yarns and somebody who could change it at will could let themselves in. If yours is wrong, or it has changed, ask and an administrator will set it.

The answer itself is still never written down. Not in the log, not in the note, not when an administrator is the one setting it. What gets recorded is which fields changed and who asked — never what they now say.

There is a report link on every yarn, every reply and every Muster listing. It goes to the administrators directly — you do not need to argue with anybody first, and you do not need to be the person it was aimed at.

Illegal work or the facilitation of it, unlicensed armed work, militia or sanctioned-group activity, credible threats, and anything that puts a serving person at risk. One standard everywhere — a yarn, a reply, a Muster listing and a Standing By advert are all held to it.

Anything over that line comes down without warning and the account goes with it. Every approval, refusal, suspension and removal is written into a log that does not get quietly edited.

We keep an eye on this page. Anything that smells off gets reported to whichever alphabet-soup agency wants it — CIA, FBI, MI5, MI6, GCHQ, SIS, GCSB, ASIO, CSIS, BND, Mossad, SBU, you name it. We’re not fussy who we call.

That is about what people put UP on the two boards — the Muster and Standing By. It is not about your yarns, your Vault or an introduction between two members — none of which we would have to hand even if somebody asked.

Use the report link, or tell us directly. It goes to a person, not a queue nobody reads.

If it is you, and it is now: the support page carries crisis numbers by country. It is free, it is not behind the login, and it never will be.

The reset link emails you a way back in. If the account is locked after too many attempts, wait it out or ask — an administrator can unlock it.

One email with what has gone up lately. You confirm the address before anything is sent and there is an unsubscribe link on every one of them that works in a single click. No tracking pixel, ever.

There is a whole page on it — the name. Short version: the Sicarii, first century, named for the dagger they carried into a crowd. The first organised political assassins anybody wrote down.

Yes — the ones who waited is theirs, and Lest We Forget is for the ones who did not come back.