Community Guidelines

FinancialPress exists to make credible financial thinking easier to find. These Community Guidelines describe the conduct we expect from everyone who participates and the culture that makes the Platform worth reading. They apply to all Members and, where relevant, to Visitors, and they work alongside the Terms of Service, the Content Policy, the Acceptable Use Policy, and the Moderation and Enforcement Policy. Terms defined in the Terms of Service carry the same meaning here.

The Platform is built on a simple premise. Visibility should be earned through credibility rather than volume, and the contributors who consistently do careful, honest work should be the ones others encounter first. These Guidelines translate that premise into practice. They are not a comprehensive list of every prohibited act, which is the function of the Acceptable Use Policy and the Content Policy. They describe how a credible professional community treats its subject and one another.

Several principles run through everything on the Platform, and understanding them explains most of what follows.

We value evidence over emotion. A claim supported by data, sourcing, and reasoning is worth more here than a confident assertion, however forcefully expressed. We value transparency over opacity, which is why disclosure of positions and relationships matters. We value durable reputation over momentary attention, which is why the Platform is designed to reward sustained, accountable participation rather than the pursuit of a single viral post. And we value constructive discussion over engagement farming. Disagreement is welcome and often productive; provocation staged to harvest reactions is not.

None of this requires formality for its own sake. It requires that you treat the subject seriously and treat other participants as people whose time and judgment are worth respecting.

Engage as you would in a serious professional setting. Address the substance of an argument rather than the person making it. Assume that others are participating in good faith until their conduct shows otherwise, and respond to weak analysis with better analysis rather than with hostility.

Personal attacks, slurs, threats, and demeaning conduct have no place on the Platform and are addressed in the Content Policy and the Acceptable Use Policy. Persistent incivility erodes the quality of discussion even when no single message crosses a bright line, and it is a factor moderators and the community may weigh.

The most valuable discussions on the Platform are the ones where informed people disagree well. State your view clearly, show your reasoning, and engage with the strongest version of an opposing argument rather than the weakest. When someone identifies a flaw in your analysis, acknowledging it strengthens your standing rather than diminishing it.

You are not required to reach agreement, and you are free to hold and defend contrarian positions. What matters is that disagreement remains about the ideas. Dismissing a counterargument with ridicule, dogpiling a contributor, or trying to win by volume rather than substance works against everything the Platform is designed to reward.

Content that presents analysis should give readers enough to evaluate it. Show the basis for a conclusion, distinguish fact from opinion and from speculation, and be candid about the limits of what you know. Confidence should track the strength of the evidence. A well-framed thesis that is later proven wrong, with its assumptions disclosed and its reasoning visible, reflects well on a contributor; a lucky call made by concealing conflicts or deleting a prior position does not.

You do not need to be right to build credibility here. You need to be honest, transparent, and accountable in how you reason. Guidance on doing this well appears in the Best Practices for Contributors.

Credit your sources. When you rely on data, reporting, research, or another person’s analysis, identify it and, where possible, link to it. When you build on another contributor’s work on the Platform, attribute it rather than presenting it as your own. Passing off others’ work as original, whether by copying text or by laundering another analyst’s thesis without acknowledgment, is a form of deception, and copying protected material can also infringe the rights addressed in the Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy.

Attribution is not only a courtesy. It lets readers verify claims, and verifiability is central to how credible Content earns its place.

The Platform organizes much of its discussion around specific securities, symbols, sectors, and topics. Tag Content accurately, and keep posts relevant to the symbols and topics they address. Attaching popular or unrelated tickers to Content in order to reach a larger audience, sometimes called tag stuffing, degrades the experience for everyone and is treated as spam under the Content Policy and the Acceptable Use Policy.

Relevance is a form of respect for the reader who came to a symbol or topic looking for genuine discussion of it.

Disclosure is a core expectation, not a technicality. When you hold or intend to take a position in a security you are discussing, say so. When you have been compensated to publish, or have any relationship that would reasonably affect how your Content should be read, disclose it clearly and at the point of publication. The Platform provides fields and prompts to make disclosure straightforward.

Undisclosed promotion is one of the most serious violations on a financial platform. Presenting paid or interested content as independent analysis deceives readers and manipulates the market of ideas the Platform is built to protect. Content that is sponsored through the Platform is labeled as such, and compensation arranged off the Platform must still be disclosed by the contributor. These expectations are detailed in the Content Policy and the Third-Party Advertising and Sponsored Content Disclosure.

The Platform is for genuine analysis and discussion, not for moving markets through coordination or deception. Do not use the Platform to manipulate the price or trading activity of any security. This includes pump-and-dump schemes, coordinated promotion designed to create a misleading impression of interest, spreading information you know to be false to affect a security, and similar conduct, whether carried out alone or with others. Market manipulation is prohibited by the Content Policy and the Acceptable Use Policy and may also violate securities laws.

Honest advocacy for a position is not manipulation. The difference lies in truthfulness and disclosure. Making a sincere, disclosed case for a stock is welcome; orchestrating a false impression of independent enthusiasm is not.

Participation on the Platform must come from real, verified individuals acting as themselves.

Impersonation.

Do not impersonate any person, company, or organization, or misrepresent your identity, credentials, or affiliation. Parody or commentary must not be presented in a way likely to mislead a reasonable reader into thinking it comes from the person or entity referenced.

Fake and duplicate accounts.

Do not create accounts using false identities, and do not operate multiple accounts to evade limits, inflate signals, or circumvent enforcement. Access to contribution features depends on verification precisely because authenticity is foundational to a credibility-based platform.

Coordinated abuse.

Do not coordinate with others to manufacture engagement, endorsements, or reports; to amplify or suppress Content artificially; or to target a contributor. Coordination by real people can be as damaging as automated abuse, and the Platform treats it as a serious violation. Related detection and enforcement are described in the Moderation and Enforcement Policy.

Keep the Platform readable. Do not post repetitive, bulk, or automated Content; flood symbols or topics; or use the Platform primarily to drive traffic elsewhere. Automated posting and programmatic access outside the interfaces we provide are prohibited by the Terms of Service and the Acceptable Use Policy.

This includes AI-generated spam. Using generative tools to produce content is not prohibited in itself, and the disclosure expectations for AI-assisted Content appear in the Content Policy. What is prohibited is using such tools to mass-produce shallow, derivative, or misleading posts that add nothing for readers. The test is not how Content was made but whether it is genuine, relevant, and worth someone’s time.

Do not harass, threaten, intimidate, or target others. This includes sustained unwanted contact, encouraging others to harass a person, revealing private information without consent, and coordinated pile-ons. A financial platform involves strong opinions and real stakes, and vigorous debate is expected, but it must never become the targeting of a person. Detailed prohibitions appear in the Content Policy and the Acceptable Use Policy.

The Platform is not a venue for unsolicited commercial promotion. Do not use Content, profiles, or messaging to run unsolicited advertising, recruit into paid groups or schemes, promote unrelated products, or solicit in ways that disrupt genuine discussion. Legitimate commercial activity that the Platform supports, such as clearly disclosed sponsored content or future consent-based commercial features, is governed by the Third-Party Advertising and Sponsored Content Disclosure and by the specific terms of those features. Everything outside those channels is treated as spam or solicitation.

The community helps keep the Platform credible. If you encounter Content or conduct that appears to violate these Guidelines or the other Policies, report it using the reporting tools available on Content and profiles. Reports are reviewed as described in the Moderation and Enforcement Policy, which relies on human review together with automated tools and weighs the context and history of both the Content and the reporter.

Report in good faith. Reporting is not a way to silence disagreement or to coordinate against a contributor you dislike, and false or coordinated reporting is itself a violation that carries consequences. Because the Platform is publicly viewable, some Content is reportable by people without accounts; copyright complaints in particular may be submitted by anyone through the process in the Copyright and Intellectual Property Policy. Reports about most other matters carry the most weight when they come from participants acting honestly and are supported by context.

Violations of these Guidelines are addressed under the Moderation and Enforcement Policy, which describes the range of actions available, from labels and reduced visibility to warnings, restrictions, suspension, and removal, and the emphasis on proportionality and repeat conduct. Where an action affects you, the Appeals Policy explains how to seek review. We apply these Guidelines with judgment and context rather than mechanically, and we may update them as the community grows. Material changes will be communicated as described in the Terms of Service.

Questions about this Policy may be directed to: