Penn Quarter, Washington, DC
The format
Penn Quarter Rules is an adaptation of the Chatham House Rule for live, in-person argument: candid discussion, optional attribution, and audience participation that does not require anyone to identify themselves.
Most public argument is optimised for the audience’s applause. This is a structure built so that a room of people who disagree leaves with more than it came with.
These rules have never been tested. No Penn Quarter Rules event has been held and no date is scheduled. Everything on this page describes how the first one is designed to run.
The four principles
What is said here may travel. Who said it stays private until they choose otherwise.
Open room, protected people
The event is livestreamed — the arguments are meant to travel. Participants use pseudonyms in the live chat and the forum, and nobody appears on the stage or on camera unless they choose to. Anonymity is respected, not merely permitted.
Share the ideas, not the names.
Optional attribution
Arguments can be discussed anywhere. Attributing a specific statement to a specific person requires that person’s consent. When in doubt, it stays anonymous.
Push the boundaries of thought.
Candid exploration
No topic is off-limits, speakers are expected to defend what they assert, and the goal is truth-seeking rather than agreement.
Your ideas matter, not your identity.
Anonymous participation
Audience reactions and votes run over a local mesh network using temporary IDs. You can speak from the floor if you want to; anonymity is the default, not the exception.
Status/No stream has ever gone out, and the pseudonymous live chat and forum are a design on a relay that is not yet running. None of these rules has been tested with an audience.
How an evening is meant to run
- 01
Opening
15–20 minThe moderator introduces the topic and the rules, presents the featured speakers, and opens the anonymous channel for silent participation.
- 02
Main debate
60–90 minStructured rounds — arguments, rebuttals, questions. Speakers hold the mics; the moderator handles transitions and surfaces fact-checks. The audience scores arguments as they go.
- 03
The floor
30–45 minQuestions from anywhere in the room, including an anonymous voice option for anyone who would rather not be identified. Scoring continues.
- 04
Closing
15 minResults, recognition, and then the part that actually matters — people keep arguing at the bar.
Status/A plan, not a record. This shape has never been run with an audience, and the timings are intentions rather than measurements.
The room
The design treats the whole venue as the debate, not just the stage: four zones, each with its own microphone — the main stage, the lounge, and two bars. The moderator’s job includes making sure no zone gets neglected, because the best objection of the night is rarely standing at the front.
Status/The four zones and their mic routing exist as a design and in code. No room has been laid out this way, because no event has been held.
How contributions are scored
Recognition is meant to be earned in the room rather than imported from a following. Contributions are scored on four weighted components:
- Argument quality35%
Strength, evidence, logic
- Audience reaction25%
Anonymous reactions from the room
- Factual accuracy25%
Claims checked against the corpus
- Engagement15%
Participation, questions, responses
Status/Those weights are real, working code, and the badge logic is written. Nothing has ever been scored: no one holds a score, no leaderboard has ever had a row, and the free-entry reward for top scorers has never been awarded to anybody.
Fact-checking, during the argument
A debate about Bitcoin runs aground on the same handful of disputed factual claims every time. The moderator checks claims against a written corpus of sourced entries — and most of that corpus says the question is contested, because it is.
Status/The corpus is real and the fact-check tool loads it today. It has never been run at a live event.
Why bother
We live for this. No one is asked to die for it.
Penn Quarter Rules exists to prove that conviction and open minds can share a room. We live for the principles sound money represents — autonomy, privacy, and truth anyone can verify — and we serve them best by staying alive to everything else: family, health, community, and the possibility that we are wrong. So we choose sustained contribution over grand sacrifice, questions over slogans, and passion without fanaticism. We protect people while we test ideas: what is said here may travel, but who said it stays private until they choose otherwise. We measure ourselves not by the price of an asset but by the quality of an argument — and we leave every gathering with better questions than we brought.
The objections this does not answer are collected in the topic brief conviction without martyrdom.
There is no date yet. That is the honest position.
Register your interest and you will hear when the first one is set. It is not a ticket and it costs nothing.