Read before posting

How do we define an actual conspiracy?

A plan developed in secret between two or more people that is either unlawful or harmful that has been discovered and investigated by a reliable third party organisation.

They can be criminal, military, business, political or simply immoral.

Make your submissions interesting.

Here's our philosophy in a nutshell:

Katherine K. Young states, "the fact remains, however, that not all conspiracies are imagined by paranoids. Historians show that every real conspiracy has had at least four characteristic features: groups, not isolated individuals; illegal or sinister aims, not ones that would benefit society as a whole; orchestrated acts, not a series of spontaneous and haphazard ones; and secret planning, not public discussion". Above all else a real conspiracy is evidenced by provable facts.

All conspiracies can be investigated with the scientific method.

Link post template:

• [YEAR] NEWS ORGANIZATION reports on CONSPIRACY SUMMARY
• Submitters have to have both read and summarized in their own words or with quotes all the key aspects of the conspiracy in the title. No headline copying or vague submissions.
• Link posts can only contain references to established third party news organizations which include liberal amounts of third party evidence that can be publicly corroborated.
• Any banned media sources will be killed.

If the actual conspiracy is from a while back, prepend the year, e.g. [1984], to your submission.

No fringe, unsupported and highly speculative conspiracy theorist sources will be allowed here.

Why is the organization so important?

It's because readers must clearly know who is reporting on something, because that is just as important as what they are reporting. We don't have infinite time, so use reputable sources.

Text post template:

• Hypothesis: What's the conspiracy? Be specific.
• Players/Incentives: List all relevant players with their incentives. Be specific.
• Estimated likelihood: X% chance of reality matching hypothesis.
• Third party evidence/Arguments: References supporting the hypothesis. Be specific.

Then the community verifies what you think using extreme scepticism + empiricism + science. This is a bastardized version of peer review.

The default position is that the "conspiracy does not exist".

After tearing your references to shreds, if the hypothesis still stands to probabilistic reason, the conspiracy is upgraded to "plausible".

Unless third party evidence (court documents, investigative pieces by reliable news organizations, etc.) arrives to explicitly support the theory it will remain "plausible", after which it can be listed as "confirmed".

Theories that are debunked will only periodically be allowed back in the sub.

All of this stuff is also in the sidebar.

submitted by /u/Enginerd
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/actualconspiracies/comments/bek811/read_before_posting/