New moderation policy on "just a sceptic here" drive-by posts — please read

Hello everyone. After a fairly lengthy discussion among the mod team - and yes, it did involve a shared Google Doc that got quite heated at one point, which is peak Quirk Reports - we're implementing a small but important change to how we handle a particular type of post that's been causing friction. Effective immediately, posts whose primary or sole purpose is to tell an OP that their experience has a mundane explanation, with no engagement with the specifics of the report, will be removed under the pre-existing Rule 4 ("contribute, don't dismiss"). This isn't new policy, we're just enforcing it more consistently.

To be absolutely clear: sceptical viewpoints are welcome and encouraged on Quirk Reports. We've always been proudest of the threads where believers and sceptics actually talk to each other like adults, and we intend to keep it that way. The Rendlesham Forest thread from 2021 is still one of the best discussions on this whole forum precisely because it had both sides going at it properly. What we're not interested in is the two-sentence "it was a weather balloon, have you considered not being credulous" post that adds nothing and makes the person who spent twenty minutes writing up a genuine experience feel like an idiot.

There's a meaningful difference between "here's why I think this is likely to have a prosaic explanation, and here's my reasoning" and "lol swamp gas." The first is a real contribution. The second is just noise, and frankly it's boring. We're a paranormal forum. We're already aware that most things have mundane explanations. If you want to make the sceptical case, make it properly and make it interesting.

Any questions, reply below or drop a message to the mod team. We'll also be pinning an updated version of the community guidelines to the front page by end of this week - Dave is handling that when he gets back from his holidays in Skegness, so, uh, probably give it a fortnight.

Fair enough on the enforcement side. I'll be honest, I've probably been guilty of a quick dismissive reply when I was tired and couldn't be bothered to engage properly. Point taken. The Rendlesham thread really was excellent - that's the bar and it's a high one but it's achievable.

One request though: could you also apply something similar to the opposite problem? There's a reciprocal issue of believers dismissing every sceptical point as "you just have a closed mind" without actually engaging with the argument. Both failure modes undermine the forum equally in my view.

Completely reasonable. I run a small local ghost walk in Edinburgh and I link people to Quirk Reports as a resource, and I've slightly cringed a few times when a newcomer's first experience is getting a terse dismissal. You want newcomers to feel like the weirdness they experienced is worth discussing, not like they've wandered into a pub quiz where everyone already knows the answers.

Dave is handling that when he gets back from his holidays in Skegness, so, uh, probably give it a fortnight.

I've met Dave (at the Leeds meetup, 2019) and this is the most accurate thing ever written on this forum. Godspeed, Dave.

The counter-point to the first reply is well made. There's a version of "you just have a closed mind" that's equally lazy to "it was swamp gas" - it's a thought-terminating cliche that closes down discussion rather than opening it up. Hopefully the spirit of this announcement covers both directions even if the specific wording targets one. Would be good to have that confirmed by the mods explicitly.

Long-time lurker, rare poster. I just want to say that this forum is genuinely one of the last places on the internet where this kind of discussion happens without it immediately becoming a screaming match, and I think that's worth acknowledging. Good moderation is invisible when it works and only noticed when it fails. Apparently it's been working well enough that this is the first major policy clarification in... how long has it been? Years? Anyway. Good forum. Carry on.

I note that "lol swamp gas" appeared in a thread literally yesterday so the timing on this announcement is exquisite. Not naming names but they know who they are. Looking forward to the updated guidelines and hoping the section on Spring-heeled Jack has been updated because the current one cites a source from 2008 and there's been decent new research since.

Sensible stuff. The best sceptical posts on here have always been the ones that actually do the work - look up the NOTAM, check the geological survey, find the historical record - rather than just asserting that something must have an explanation without finding out what it is. If you're going to be a sceptic on a paranormal forum, be a useful sceptic. That's the only version of scepticism anyone here actually respects.

Can we also talk about the people who post extremely dramatic sighting reports and then never reply to any follow-up questions? That's a separate frustration but it's adjacent to the same issue of people treating the forum as a broadcast rather than a conversation. Just a thought. Also hi everyone, been away for a few months, glad the place is still standing.