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. They are guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a kind, friendly place for civilized public discourse. Please read this document carefully to avoid accidentally violating these guidelines.

If we see posts that we judge to not meet these guidelines, we will actively remove them, but will also let you know privately why we’re doing so.

Everything in this forum is also covered by our Code of Conduct.

Encourage each other

This is first and foremost an educational space - a space to learn and share ideas, to uplift each other. It is not a space to prove yourself, show off your knowledge, compete with others, create a sense of “us vs them”, or put others down. We take a strict approach to this, and so topics that would be considered ok in other forums are not considered ok here.

Some examples:

• A discussion exploring what the tradeoffs would be between using C# vs F# could be a positive and educational experience. However, a comment saying “C# is rubbish because …” is not helpful, does not add to the educational experience and would be deleted.
• Any conversations around topics such as politics or religion are not appropriate in this space. Neither are topics that are fought with a religious fervor (e.g. whether VIM or Emacs is better).
• Any sort of comment that implies “noobs do …” or “real developers use …” will be deleted.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something positive to the discussion. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

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.

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.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond by disagreeing. 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 thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.

Write your opinions as opinions. Rather than saying “everyone knows Python is the best language for beginners” or “Python is the best language for beginners”, say “I feel that Python is the best language for beginners because …”. We take this seriously as it’s an innocent looking habit that can be extremely disruptive to an online community. If you constantly write opinions as facts, we will ask you to stop and refer you to these guidelines. If you continue, we may choose to ban you.

Stay on topic - don’t derail

When posting, always think about whether you’re moving the conversation in the direction that the original poster intended, or whether you’re pulling it in a different direction. If it’s the latter, it’s generally better to create a new topic.

For example, if there’s a topic on cats, but you prefer dogs, don’t create a post saying “cats are rubbish - I like dogs” - instead create a new topic on dogs with your favorite puppy pictures in.

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, watching, muting 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. Replying encourages 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 a major news site.

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; please read the category definitions.
• 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 sign your posts — every post 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 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.

Powered by You

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.