How Intensity News works
A short, plain-English guide to news, polls, predictions, bounties, cred, costs, and the words used on this site.
Cred is the unit of credibility
Everything you do on this site costs or earns cred. It is not money. There is no way to cash it out. It only means something inside the site.
- New accounts start with 0 cred. During the early launch period, admins seed accounts so people have something to play with.
- You earn cred when readers upvote your work, when your prediction stake wins, or when you complete a bounty.
- You can post up to 1 thing per day across news, polls, predictions, and bounties combined.
- Upvoting is not free. The longer you click and hold, the more cred you spend, and that whole amount goes to the author.
News
A single feed of links and short text posts. Anyone can submit. Submissions cost a small amount of cred.
- Upvote with click-and-hold. Tap for the smallest contribution, hold for more. The cred you spend go straight to the author after a short delay.
- No downvoting. If you disagree, comment. If you think a post breaks the rules, flag it.
- Comments form a tree. Reply to anyone. Threads close after 14 days.
- Edit window: two hours to fix typos. After that, the post is locked.
Polls
Two to ten options, one vote per person per poll. Useful for sampling opinion. Polls cost a small amount of cred to create.
To create a poll you need 20 in lifetime-earned cred. That is to keep brand-new accounts from spamming the surface.
Predictions
The full game.
Writing one
You write what you think will happen, set a deadline, and put down a deposit of 0 cred. The deposit comes back if your final ruling is upheld and is forfeited if it is overturned.
Staking
Anyone can put cred on Agree or Disagree. Click and hold the left mouse button for Agree (green), the right mouse button for Disagree (red). The longer you hold, the bigger your stake.
Resolution
After the deadline you pick the winning side and post the evidence. There is then a 48-hour window where players can challenge your ruling.
If nobody challenges, the pot pays out: the losing pool is split pro-rata among the winners, minus a 1% house cut and a 2% creator cut.
Disputes
If a challenge is upheld by an admin, your call is overturned, your deposit is forfeited, and your trust score drops. Trust is the share of your past rulings that survived review. Lower trust means your future predictions can attract less stake.
Bounties
You put cred on a question. Anyone can claim it, find the answer, and submit evidence. The bounty author reviews and either pays the claimant or rejects with a reason.
Other players can chip in to a bounty pool. The reviewer pays the full pool to whoever they accept.
Reputation gates
A few actions are gated by lifetime-earned cred (a counter that only goes up, not the same as your spendable balance):
- Flag a story or comment – needs 31 lifetime earned.
- Vouch a killed story back to life – needs 31 lifetime earned.
- Create a poll – needs 20 lifetime earned.
Moderation
- Admins and moderators can kill stories, lock comments, ban accounts, and overturn predictions.
- Every moderation action is logged in the audit log.
- If a post you made gets killed, you will see why on your account.
- If your account gets banned, that's the end of it. There is no email recovery.
Costs and earning
Every way cred move on this site. The numbers below are pulled live from current settings, so this section stays accurate as we tune things.
Ways to earn
| How | Amount | When |
|---|---|---|
| Admin seed (early launch only) | Variable | Granted by an admin during launch so people have something to play with |
| Someone upvotes your story or comment | 0.02 – 10 per vote | Lands in your balance after a 24-hour delay |
| Win a prediction stake | Stake back + share of losing pool | After resolution + 48-hour challenge window |
| Own a prediction someone else stakes on (creator cut) | 2% of the losing pool | At resolution |
| Claim and complete a bounty | The full bounty pool | When the bounty's author accepts your evidence |
Ways to spend
A few of the costs below are currently 0 cred. That is intentional, not a placeholder. Some of these may stay free permanently. If a cost changes, this page reflects the change automatically.
| What | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Upvote a story or comment | 0.02 – 10 | Click-and-hold; full 10-second hold = max |
| Submit a news post | Free | Anyone can submit. Daily limit is the only gate. |
| Create a poll | 0 | Needs 20 lifetime earned to unlock |
| Create a prediction | 0 deposit | Returned if your final ruling is upheld; forfeited if overturned |
| Stake on a prediction | Whatever you put down | Click-and-hold left mouse = Agree, right mouse = Disagree |
| Create a bounty | Whatever you fund the pool with | Returned only if you cancel before anyone claims |
House and creator cuts
When a prediction resolves, the losing pool is split:
- 1% goes to the house account. It funds moderation, hosting, and seeding bounties.
- 2% goes to whoever wrote the prediction.
- The rest is paid pro-rata to the winning stakers.
Help keep the site alive, get cred back
intensitynews is born in Scotland and run independently. There is no parent company, no advertisers, no investors. We do not sell anything about our users to anyone, and we never will.
The servers, the moderation, and the development cost real money. We would rather take that money from people who use the site than from anyone whose interests would not match yours.
If you want to support intensitynews, you will soon be able to send some cryptocurrency our way. In return, we put cred in your account. You are not buying cred, and cred has no cash value, no withdrawal, no resale. You are helping us stay online, and we are thanking you with credibility on the site.
This is not live yet. Until it is, the only ways to get cred is to earn them by playing the site (upvotes from readers, winning prediction stakes, claiming bounties) or to be seeded by an admin during the early launch period.
Glossary
Every word with a special meaning on this site, in plain English. Skim the headings, find the term you don't recognise, read the one-line definition. A "Like" line gives you a comparison to something familiar.
Money and reputation
Cred
Short for credibilities. The unit of credibility on this site. Earned by doing things people respect, spent on upvoting, posting, and staking. Not money. No cash out.
Like: arcade tokens that double as your reputation score.
Balance
The cred you currently hold and can spend.
Lifetime earned
A separate counter that only goes up. Tracks every cred you have ever earned across every action. Used for reputation gates — some actions need a minimum lifetime-earned figure before you can do them.
Like: total miles ever flown, regardless of whether you currently have any miles in your account.
Trust
The share of your past prediction rulings that survived review. Higher = your future predictions can attract bigger stakes.
Like: a referee's reputation. Get one call wrong on purpose and people stop trusting your whistle.
News
Story
A single news post. Either a link to somewhere else with a short title, or a short text post.
Upvote
Spending cred to push a story higher up the feed. The cred you spend go to the story's author. The longer you hold the upvote, the more you spend and the more you send.
Like: tipping a busker. The longer you stand there clapping, the more they earn.
Flag
Telling a moderator that a post breaks a rule. Flags do not auto-hide anything — they are a queue for moderators.
Vouch
Asking moderators to bring a killed story back. Costs reputation if you vouch carelessly for things that should have stayed dead.
Kill
A moderator removing a story from the public feed. The story still exists for its author and for moderators — it is just hidden.
Dead
A story that has been killed.
Penalty
A multiplier that lowers a story's ranking score. Applied automatically by domain or keyword rules, or manually by a moderator. A penalised post still appears, just lower down.
Polls
Poll
A multiple-choice question with two to ten options. One vote per person per poll. Costs a small amount of cred to create.
Option
One of the choices on a poll.
Predictions
Prediction
A claim about a future event with a deadline. "X will happen by date Y." Other players stake on whether X will or won't happen.
Like: a pub bet, written down, with witnesses, and an agreed deadline.
Agree / Disagree
The two sides you can stake on. Agree (green) means you think the predicted event will happen. Disagree (red) means you think it won't.
Stake
The cred you put on one side of a prediction. Click and hold the left mouse button for Agree, the right button for Disagree. The longer you hold, the bigger the stake.
Pot
All cred staked on a prediction added together.
Deposit
The cred the prediction's author puts down when creating it. Returned if the author's final ruling is upheld. Forfeited if it is overturned.
Resolution
The author choosing the winning side after the deadline. Comes with a piece of evidence other players can check.
Challenge window
A short period after a resolution where any player can dispute the ruling. If the dispute is upheld by an admin, the resolution is overturned.
Payout
The cred you receive if your stake won. Includes your original stake plus your share of the losing pool, minus the house and creator cuts.
House cut
A small percentage of every losing pool that goes to the site's house account. Funds moderation, hosting, and bounties.
Creator cut
A small percentage of every losing pool that goes to whoever wrote the prediction.
Bounties
Bounty
A cred reward attached to a question. Anyone can claim, hunt for the answer, and submit evidence.
Contribution
Cred added to a bounty's pool by anyone who wants the question answered.
Submission
A claimant's evidence and answer. The bounty's author reviews and either accepts (paying the full pool) or rejects with a reason.
Account state
Watchlist
Predictions you are tracking. You get a notification when their state changes.
Streak
How many predictions in a row you have won. Resets to zero on your first loss.
Notifications
Alerts about things relevant to you — new stakes on your prediction, payouts, comment replies, friend requests, moderator actions.
Recent changes
Notable changes to the site, newest first. The list will start filling up around launch.
Comments
Threaded replies on news posts and prediction pages. Same upvote-pays-author rules as news. Closure after 14 days unless an admin extends.
Be specific, attack the argument, not the person. Repeated personal attacks earn a moderation note and eventually a ban.