This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

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.

These are not hard and fast rules, merely guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a clean and well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.

Cardinal Rules

  1. Please don’t make it one big advertisement.
  2. All posts MUST stay on the thread or category topic. For example, you wouldn’t want to talk about “Book reviews” in the “Site feedback” category.
  3. All threads that are nothing but a ‘test’ or an ‘ad’ will be deleted.
  4. If you link out randomly to your own site when it’s not relevant, the thread or post will be deleted. If the links are relevant to the thread, that’s fine. Please use your best judgment here.
  5. Be respectful of other people’s opinions and ideas. It’s okay to disagree and have different opinions, but present your case tactfully. This is a community.
  6. Please don’t use affiliate links in this forum. When you externally link, do it because you want to help someone, not because you see a quick opportunity to make some cash.
  7. Try to add value when you post. Don’t just type something along the lines of “What they said.”
  8. Use proper grammar to the best of your ability. I understand that English may not be everyone’s main language, but make an attempt. You won’t get in trouble for a misplaced comma or for typos, but it would help everyone if you could make sure everyone understands your message.
  9. No adult material. Be mindful that there may be users who are a lot younger than you.
  10. “Bumping” threads should be kept to a limit. This means you shouldn’t keep replying to your own thread (without anyone else replying in between) to get it back to the top without waiting at least 3 days. As the forum grows, it can get very spammy with tons of users bumping constantly.

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 and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. 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.
We always give warnings (with the exception of unacceptable posts-sometimes we need to work fast), but we don’t necessarily give them more than twice to the same person. If you are disrupting the community, we will take action by suspending your account following the community regulations.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

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.

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 post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t add signatures to your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.
  • Don’t post blatant advertisements of competing products.
  • And of course, NO SPAMMING. No commercial-oriented posts, and no flooding with useless content.

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 digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

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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 site feedback 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 a 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.