WorldRealDebt.

Community guidelines

Welcome

The WorldRealDebt community is a space to verify and discuss national and household debt data together. You can join in with reactions, polls, predictions and comments — every activity should stay grounded in the data and aim for constructive discussion. Participation is anonymous, but we expect a respectful conversation.

The rules below apply equally to comments, reactions, polls and predictions. Wherever a number is given, it is a limit the site actually enforces automatically.

Rules for posting

Before you post, please check the following.

  • Comments run from 1 to 500 characters, and nicknames up to 24 characters. Replies can nest two levels deep.
  • On any one country page you can post up to five comments per minute per IP address — a limit that stops floods of rapid-fire posts.
  • When you assert a number, give its source: the institution, the release date and, if possible, a link. Figures without a source read as opinion.
  • You are free to state political views, but frame them as an interpretation of the data rather than an attack on a person or party.
  • Do not post information that identifies a person — a real name, contact details, an employer — whether it is yours or someone else’s.

Prohibited behavior

Spam and flooding, abusive or hateful language, spreading clear misinformation, posting someone else’s personal information, commercial advertising and abuse of the service (multiple accounts, automated scripts) are all prohibited. Violating content is hidden, and repeat offenses lead to account restrictions.

Automatic hold

To cut down on spam, the following comments are not published straight away but held for moderator review. Held, hidden and deleted comments appear as [hidden] in public listings instead of their text.

  • The same text (ignoring case and spacing) posted again on the same country page within five minutes
  • A comment containing two or more links
  • A comment with a link from an anonymous identity that first took part less than 24 hours ago

Reporting and moderation

Every post carries a report button. Pick a reason — spam, abuse, off-topic or other — and add a note of up to 200 characters if you wish. Each person can report a given post once, and content reported by three distinct users is automatically hidden and placed in the moderator review queue.

Moderators decide to keep it hidden, restore it or delete it, and for repeat violations they can restrict the account or reset its nickname. Restrictions can be lifted, and every action is written to an audit log recording who did what and when.

Appeals and removal requests

If you think your post was hidden by mistake, email [email protected] with where it was posted and roughly when. A moderator will check the audit log and the original text and decide whether to restore it. Requests to delete your own post, or to hide a post containing personal data, go to the same address.

Good posts and posts that may be hidden

Some examples to help when a call is hard to make.

  • Good: “The KRW 1,304.5 trillion settlement figure for 2025 is D1, so it shouldn’t be set straight against IMF tables. What does it look like on a D2 basis?” — a question that pins down the definition and source.
  • Good: “What worries me more is that household debt is larger than national debt. If rates rise, repayment burdens will bite first.” — an opinion grounded in the data.
  • May be hidden: the same promotional text and link posted repeatedly across pages.
  • May be hidden: language that demeans a user or a group, or a post that exposes someone’s contact details.
  • May be hidden: flatly declaring “this number is rigged” with no evidence. If you believe a figure is wrong, send it with a source through the corrections page.

Anonymous identity and cookies

On your first participation — a reaction, vote, prediction or report — the server issues a signed anonymous identifier as a cookie (kept for up to a year). It is only tied to your nickname, never a real name or email, and browsing pages alone never issues it. The cookie exists solely to prevent duplicate participation and confirm content ownership.

No more than 20 new identifiers are issued per IP address per day, so that clearing cookies cannot be used to pose as many different people.

Data reliability comes first

This site runs a debt clock built on official statistics. Community content such as comments, votes and predictions reflects user opinion and never replaces the official data. If you spot a data error, report it with a source and we will verify it and roll the correction into the next deploy.

Corrections and change log