Portal - Welcome.

You enter the Republic through the Portal. The Portal is essentially a splash screen that looks for your Cookie. If you don't have one you are given one as a guest. Then you get the Front Page. From the Front Page you can enter the Republic as an Observer or you can apply for general Citizenship. General Citizenship lasts for 30 days in which you will be relatively anonymous. You may speak up in any Thread in any House but you may not vote or thumb. You can, however, respond to surveys.

You can be a Citizen or an Observer.  As an observer, you have access to all public entities. In order to become a Citizen, you must sign a declaration to abide by the rules or risk deportation or various other punishments...An Observer cannot speak or vote. Observers can comment but observer's comments are not permanent and can only belong to a partisan group for the purposes of temporary wonking. Observer's comments die after 60 days - they can exist in sidebars.

Everyone is a member of the Common House