Rule 13 and the LiS forum

[Moose]

Life in Space has long been a bit of a problem child for CQ in that it has occasionally been used as a place to publicize non-mainstream claims about the existence, nature, and origins of extraterrestrial life, while using LiS's placement in the Astronomy forums group to avoid CQ's mandate to require the evidence-based support and defense of such claims.

Advocacy claiming the existence, nature, and origin of extraterrestrial life, or non-mainstream ideas about the origin of life, will bear a Rule 13 burden. Depending on the precise nature and defensibility of such claims, these posts and threads can be moved to CT or ATM as appropriate and will thus bear the full responsibilities of claims made in those forums, as detailed by Rule 13. These claims can alternatively be dealt with as is other non-mainstream advocacy outside of either CT or ATM, including closing of the thread, infraction, or suspension.

Examples of topics bearing a Rule 13 burden are:

* Advocacy of specific ET visitations.
* Advocacy of the existence of intelligent extra-solar life.
* Advocacy of microbial life on Mars/Jupiter's moon(s)/Saturn's moon(s), etc.
* Advocacy of panspermia.
* Advocacy of knowledge of specific values for Drake's Equation.
* Other similar topics for which a non-mainstream claim is asserted.

The following topics (among others not mentioned) remain valid uses of the LiS forum and will not be affected by Rule 13:

* Questions or topics about the search for life.
* Questions or topics about the search for water.
* Questions or speculative topics about what conditions might be suitable to sustain life.
* Questions or speculative topics about the form(s) such life might take.

Referenced sources should be confined to articles and reporting from credible publications. Space agencies, major news organizations, peer-reviewed print journals, and other academic-quality sources are generally considered credible. Blogs, tabloids, and Pravda are generally not. The moderation team is entitled to determine, when necessary, what constitutes an academic-quality source within these guidelines.

[ToSeek]

Note that the final item in the above post has been expanded upon in order to make more clear what the moderator team considers to be a "credible publication."

[Swift]

Please note that we have again updated the rules about LiS and ATM.

We have removed the possibility of allowing ATM discussions in LiS with ATM claim burdens (the wording was "Specific claim threads or posts made here and left here may be assumed to bear the same evidential burden as they would in the CT forum"). We have clarified that any ATM claims will be dealt with as ATM outside of ATM is dealt with in the rest of the forum. We have also clarified that ATM topics include non-mainstream ideas about the Origin of Life.