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.
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.
You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That's fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:
Instead, provide reasoned counter arguments that improve the conversation.
Be Agreeable, Even When You DisagreeModerators 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.
Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:
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.
Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:
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.
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
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 lets 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.