The rules

Prairie Town has no moderators. These rules apply to everyone, and the website applies them by counting. Nobody judges people or posts.

Reading and subscribing

Anyone can read every town’s page and get its notices by email, with no account. Every email has a one-tap unsubscribe.

Prairie Town independently operates these community sites. Municipal participation is optional. When an office declines to participate, we can switch off municipal records, notices and office services while keeping community events, listings, photos and history. An independent community page does not imply municipal endorsement.

Joining

• To post, you need to be a verified local of your home town. Farm and acreage families pick the town they’d say they’re from. RMs have pages for their office’s notices and records, open to everyone, but nobody joins an RM.
• Two verified locals of your town vouch for you, or the town office verifies you on its own, so a newcomer who knows nobody isn’t stuck.
• Until a town has two verified locals, its residents start it together: once three neighbours have each been vouched for by two of the others, they’re all verified.
• Verified locals can invite a neighbour by email. The invitation carries their vouch, which counts once the neighbour accepts and says they live there. An address gets at most one invitation a week, and every invitation has a link to stop them for good.
• Lists of members are never shown publicly.

Staying

• Once a year you’re asked “still live here?”, answered with one tap. No answer within 30 days makes you a reader again.
• A year without signing in makes you a reader again.
• Three independent “doesn’t live here” reports from verified locals make you a reader again.
• Readers can still read everything, and two fresh vouches make them verified again.

Vouching

Only vouch for people you know live in your town. If someone you vouched for is reported as not local within 90 days of joining, your vouching pauses for 90 days.

Flags

• Three independent verified locals flagging a post hides it. Flags from people who were vouched in by the same person count once.
• Anything shared with nearby towns can be flagged by any verified local whose nearby circle includes it.
• The author can fix a hidden post and put it back up.

Pauses, never bans

If a second post of yours is hidden within 90 days of another, your posting pauses: a week the first time, a month the next, then six months. Membership is never taken away for conduct.

Limits

Five listings a week per person. Listings come down after 30 days, events when they end, and notices when the town office marks them resolved.

Nearby circles

Each town’s nearby circle starts at 25 km and widens until the towns, villages and hamlets inside it hold about 3,000 people, up to 100 km. It’s recalculated every night from census figures, so anyone can see why their circle is the size it is.

Illegal content

The one thing a person can remove is illegal content, which the host is required by law to take down.

These numbers may be adjusted as more towns join. Any change shows here.