This is a Civilized Place

Please treat this forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a welcoming, inclusive 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.

Improve the Discussion

Always try to promote meaningful discussion in some way, however small. Avoid memes and other low-effort content. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

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 use it for advertisements or spam, or otherwise vandalize it.

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.

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. Avoid name-calling and ad hominem attacks. Respond to a post’s content instead of its tone and provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

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.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that incorporates someone else’s work (this includes memes). You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property, 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 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.

This document was last updated February 1, 2021.