This Community is For You — And Your Past & Future Selves

Please treat your fellow community members as you would like to be treated.

We’ll have an awesome :champagne: time if everyone sticks to that rule :wink:.

For example, if someone has less knowledge, think about how you felt when you were in the same place and interact accordingly.

It’s simple – be cool :sunglasses:.

Don’t be Afraid to Improve the Discussion

While the community team will share a ton of great content, we want you to feel unencumbered when it comes to sharing your insights and experiences.

Sometimes people are reluctant to share in community because they think they might look silly for asking a certain question — this makes the SMP team sad :cry:.

There are no silly questions. If you’re thinking it and feel the need to ask it, have no doubt dozens of others have the same question.

And this place only works when nobody is trying to make anyone feel silly :grin:; i.e. this really isn’t a place for “Search before posting, noob!”

Rather, when someone posts a subject that you know has already been heavily covered or solved, humbly respond with a link to the applicable conversation to assure the loop is closed.

So, in summary — we love silliness, but not making people feel silly :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:.

Which leads us to …

Be Respectful

You may occasionally wish to respond to a fellow member with disagreement. Obviously, you are free to do so. But maintain respect and remember to challenge ideas, not people.

Please avoid:

  • Name-calling :-1:
  • Personal attacks :-1:
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content :-1:
  • Knee-jerk contradiction :-1:

Always assume positive intent, always function with positive intent, and provide thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.

Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness :frowning_face::

  • Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Don’t impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.
  • Don’t post anything inflammatory; i.e. something from which a reasonable person would expect negative reactions from a significant percentage of a reasonable audience — we all know when we’re saying something that will rile people up; the answer to your “Do I send this evil :smiling_imp: Tweet? (as your finger hovers over the send button)”-type impulse is always a hard NO here.

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 :newspaper:.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

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

If 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 :triangular_flag_on_post:. 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.

Keep It Tidy :sponge:

Make the effort to put things in the right place:

  • Align your new topics to the applicable categories (work to understand what each is about).
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple locations.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.

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 :no_entry_sign:.

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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 Community Help category :sos: 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 support email.

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.