Community Policy

We’re all in this together

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

The community of our users is a very diverse one, and we see it as one of our main strengths. We are committed to maintaining our community as a safe, friendly, and helpful place for contributors of all levels of experience, races, ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), genders, sexes, sexual orientations, body shapes, ages, and other protected characteristics.

This Code of Conduct is here to aid the human judgment of our community members in keeping this forum a clean and well-lit place for civilized public discourse.

Acceptable Behavior

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say before you hit that “Reply” button.
Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

• Name-calling
• Ad hominem attacks
• Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
• Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

It’s Your Community, Too

Every conversation you have here contributes to the culture of the community as a whole. Help us influence this culture in a positive way by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

The platform we chose for our community, Discourse, provides likes and flags as tools you can use to help surface the good and remove the bad from this community. Use them, and you’ll see what an awesome community we can build together.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

ABC: Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

• Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
• Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
• Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
• Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.
• These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of the New York Times.
• This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

• Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
• Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
• Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
• Don’t sign your posts — every post already has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything that belongs to someone else without permission. If you want to discuss content that’s hosted elsewhere, post a link to it.

Never post links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

Unacceptable Behavior

The following behaviors are unacceptable within our community, online or in person:

• Violence, threats of violence or violent language directed against another person.
• Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or otherwise discriminatory and inappropriate jokes and language.
• Posting or displaying sexually explicit or violent material.
• Posting or threatening to post other people’s personally identifying information (“doxxing”).
• Personal insults, including, but not limited to, those related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability, or any other protected category.
• Inappropriate photography or recording.
• Inappropriate physical contact. You should have someone’s consent before touching them.
• Unwelcome sexual attention. This includes sexualized comments or jokes; inappropriate touching, groping, and unwelcomed sexual advances.
• Deliberate intimidation, stalking or following (online or in person).
• Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.
• Sustained disruption of community forums and events, including talks and presentations.

Unacceptable behavior from any community member, including sponsors and those with decision-making authority, will not be tolerated.

Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to comply immediately.

If a community member engages in unacceptable behavior, the community organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including a temporary ban or permanent expulsion from the community without warning (and without refund in the case of a paid event).

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This site is operated by your friendly local staff and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the Meta category and let’s discuss!

If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us via the staff page.

Terms of Service

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves – and by extension, you and your data – against unfriendly folks. We have Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.