The League Is Open

Vera has a forum now. It's called The League, and the door is at /forum.

The name is older than it sounds. "League" comes from the Latin ligare, to bind. The same root gives you ally and oblige. A league is, literally, people bound together. And a league is the one arrangement in games where rivals actually trust each other, not because anyone is nice, but because the record is kept. Standings, seasons, results. You don't have to take anyone's word for anything.

That's this forum in one word. Rivals, bound by the record.

What's different here

Most forum software asks you to build a second self: a new username, a new reputation, a karma score to tend. The League doesn't. You are your Vera handle. Your posts link to your profile, and whatever record you keep there travels with you into the conversation. Paste a proof, a clip, or a Field Guide entry and the thread can check it on the spot. Show me is a complete sentence here.

There are no downvotes and there is no karma. A downvote is a verdict without a record: a drive-by judgment with no reasoning attached, and we don't deal in those. If a post is good, tell it so. The reactions are GG, Helpful, and Clean, and that's the whole scoreboard.

Moderation shows its work. The guidelines are five short rules, and the first one is the house in miniature: talk about the play, not the player. An AI sweep reads new posts against those rules and files anything questionable to a human desk. It never posts, never argues, and never decides alone. Every action taken, every hide, every restore, every lock, lands in a public moderation log with the rule cited. Reversals are logged too. There is no shadow moderation here because the system has nowhere to hide an action; the moderators are on the record, same as everyone.

One rule deserves its own line, because it is the most Vera rule in the set. Claims about a person travel with a record. "This clip looks impossible" is a conversation, and a good one. "So-and-so is a cheater" is a verdict, and verdicts are not what we do. Threads that exist to accuse a person get closed, every time, no matter who the person is. If it matters, link the record and let it speak.

Four rooms, on purpose

The League opens with four rooms and no more: The Lobby for introductions and good nights, Games for the play itself, The Record for the product, and Field Guide for anti-cheat, drivers, and hardware. Forums die of emptiness, not fullness, so rooms split only when the traffic earns it. Genius plays are welcome in all four.

You're early, again

If you read You're Early, this is the same invitation one door down. The first people in a room decide what the room sounds like. Reading needs no account. Posting needs your handle, and the guidelines take two minutes.

Come say hello in the Lobby. Bring the clip worth arguing about. Bring the question you've been sitting on. The League is open, and the record is already yours.