PHP Fusion Community - Code of Conduct
Reviewed by: Sheldon, KEFF and kneekoo
Reviewed on: Monday, February 8th 2010
Published Date: Monday, February 8th 2010
Document Revision #: Rev 2 Version 17
The PHP-Fusion Community is well known for its friendliness and willingness to help. In order to keep that reputation up, and to be able to act on instances where our reputation may be damaged, we have introduced a set of simple rules every member must consider and follow.
This etiquette applies to all members at any time, on each and every Official PHP-Fusion Support website, national as well as international.
Keep in mind that all Support Crew, Moderators and Administrators are regular members just like you and offer their support in their spare time. Please respect that and be patient, even if you don't receive an answer straight away. Remember that official technical support for PHP-Fusion is a privilege, not a right, according to our license PHP-Fusion comes with no warranty!
Support will not be given to sites / site owners that do not respect our proper copyright notice. All support is based upon mutual respect; we do not feel obliged to give support to anybody that does not respect our wish to keep our copyright notice intact.
As PHP-Fusion v7 is protected by the terms of the AGPL license we can demand that anybody keeps our copyright notice and choose whom we wish to give support to. We choose to help and give support to those that respect the hard work so many of us have laid down in this software, by keeping the copyright notice.
Registration on this website and/or use of the PHP-Fusion websites constitutes an agreement to this Code of Conduct and Terms of Services.
Table of Contents
- Basic Behaviour
- Good behaviour is required
- Illegal copied material (piracy)
- Pornographic and provocative content
- SPAM, multilevel marketing and affiliated links, etc
- Respect moderators and administrators
- Complaints
- The Forum
- Search first, ask afterwords
- Describing title on all threads
- Place your thread in the correct forum
- Use proper language
- All posts must make sense
- Double posting and "bumping"
- Guidelines for signatures
- Avatars must not be provocative
- Remember to give credit
- General
- Profile fields
- Products based on PHP-Fusion
- Consequences of breaking the rules
1. Basic Behaviour
1.1 Good behaviour is required
Upload, post, transmit, share, store or otherwise make available any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, unlawful, infringing, abusive, vulgar, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, hateful, pornographic or racially provocative, ethnically or otherwise objectionable is not allowed on any official support site and we have zero tolerance for it.
1.2 Illegal copied material (piracy) is not allowed
Sharing, or requesting sharing, of illegal copied material (piracy), of any kind of copyrighted material, software, music, videos, photos etc, is strictly forbidden. Sharing, or requesting sharing, of serial keys or programs that give you access to programs without any need of serials (cracks) is not permitted. You are not allowed to share links to sites that provide or contain such content. Publicising of information from other media, except from common knowledge, is not permitted unless there is a written permission from the copyright holder.
Discussion about technology and protocols such as BitTorrent is allowed, as long as the discussion is not about transaction of copyrighted material. BitTorrent is used for many legal purposes such as distribution of open source projects.
1.3 Pornographic and provocative content are not allowed
This project has participants of all ages. Try to remember, that what might be appropriate between people of the same age or gender might not be appropriate between people of different age groups or opposite gender. Pornographic, sexually demeaning or provocative content will be deleted immediately. If support is needed for a site containing or linking to provocative content, a warning notice must be given in your post.
1.4 SPAM, multilevel marketing and affiliated links etc are not allowed
You are not allowed to market for commercial products or services, hereby is also hidden commercial listed, unless written permission is given by site admin. Other unwanted information that classifies as SPAM is also strictly forbidden. So called 'affiliated' links where the owner receives money, points or other services when someone clicks the link is not permitted unless you very clearly state that if anyone clicks the link it benefits you.
We reserve the rights to remove any information that can be interpreted to violate this rule.
We also have zero tolerance for repeatedly marketing of commercial products or services without written permission from site admin(s).
1.5 Respect moderators and administrators
Moderators and Administrators are present in the forum to keep it in order and prevent bad and unwanted behavior. They are here to help you and the community as a whole. Any remark or correction from a moderator or administrator must be accepted immediately.
Remarks made by a moderator or administrator can only be altered by the moderator or administrator that put it there in the first place. Another moderator or administrator will not override the decision that has already been made without speaking to the staff member that made the decision in the first place.
1.6 Complaints regarding moderators, administrators or users
If a moderator or administrator have locked, edited a post or a thread of yours without really clarifying why the alteration was made, contact the responsible moderator or administrator in a polite manner via PM, asking them to clarify. However, keep this in mind that you should rather re-read the Code of Conduct before sending a message to the one who moderated your post because being unaware of the Code of Conducts is not an excuse.
If you have any complaints regarding a moderator, administrator or user, they shall be sent via PM or mail to one of the site administrators.
Complaints concerning moderators or administrators shall not be discussed in the forum under any circumstances, this shall always be dealt with directly with a site admin.
2. The Forum
2.1 Search first, ask afterwords
Before you post any questions in the forum you have to search for it in the forum. Our forum contains thousands of threads and the possibility that your question has been answered before is always present. Also search our FAQ/Wiki before posting in the forum.
2.2 Describing title on all threads
All thread titles must be as specific as possible regarding your problems of needs. That increases your chances on getting a fast and accurate reply and you will help us maintaining a clean forum with good overview.
Examples of subjects that shall not be used is e.g:. 'Help Me?', 'How do I fix this?' or 'This does not work!!!'. In worst case your thread might be deleted.
The title of your thread is as important as the rest of the thread is. If you do not manage to name the thread in a way which describes your problem or need, you can not expect to get a valuable answer from others. Naming threads correctly is also important for others who are viewing or searching the forum for help.
2.3 Place your thread in the correct forum
All threads must be placed in the correct forum. This will make the forum easier to view and search for you and everyone else as users. Also note, all support questions go in the forum, absolutely no asking for support in the Shoutbox.
2.4 Use proper language
Your language is important. Please express yourself without using too many capital letters, exclamation marks or SMS-language / shortcuts. This kind of excess is unwanted on our site because not everyone is used to that kind of language. Keep in mind that one forum thread can help hundreds or thousands of people if the language is understandable. Please also note that all posts should be made in the official language of that site.
This way the moderators and administrators will have more time to answer different questions instead of repeating themselves over and over again.
2.5 All posts must make sense
Remember to post responsively when you are writing in the content of the post. Posts such as �Agree�, �This is crap� etc. and does not give any more explanation of the statement or are not to any help should be avoided. Read through your post before posting it and make sure it's relevant for the subject which is discussed.
Grateful posts, when someone has contributed with something good are accepted, but there is absolutely no need for 10 persons or more to repeat the same thing. Also try to stay on topic, too many off topics posts in one thread are not good and makes it harder for other to find things they are looking for when viewing a thread.
2.6 Double posting and "bumping" are not allowed
Double posting is not wanted. A thread shall never be posted in more than one forum or on more than one support site at the same time. Edit your last post if you have something to add to the thread. The one and only exception of this rule is when your thread is no longer active and new information has been brought up. A thread is not active when there has not been active for at least a week (7 days).
2.7 Guidelines for signatures
Font size of the text in your signature should be no larger than the default text size for the posted text in the forum. Use of images larger than 468px in width and 60px in height (standard banner) for your signature is strictly prohibited. Use of of animated images is allowed but please make sure it is tactful and does not distract from the content in the forums; moderators and administrators have the right to ask you to remove anything in your signature or remove it for you if they deem necessary. The maximum size for such an image is 50Kb and you cannot use more than two images like that. The maximum number of lines in your signature shall not exceed four (4) lines. Any links posted in the signature according to paragraphs 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 are permitted.
2.8 Avatars must not be provocative
Any avatars which are provocative, violent, pornographic, threatening, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, abusive, inflammatory, harassing, vulgar, obscene, fraudulent, invasive or racially provocative will be deleted.
Avatars, which imitate the avatars of moderators or administrators, will also be deleted without further notice.
2.9 Remember to give credit
Remember to give credit. This goes not only for copyright issues but also for constructive solutions and constructive error handling. It's important to give this positive feedback. This makes life easier and more enjoyable for all parties.
3. General
3.1 Profile fields
Fields in the profile which optional can be left blank if wanted. However if you choose to fill out the non required fields be sure that the information you give is correct and relevant. There is absolutely no reason to type in "N/A", "Don't have this" and etc.
3.2 Products based on PHP-Fusion
We are pleased to find out you consider building your own product using the PHP-Fusion core. However, it should be clear to everyone that PHP-Fusion is the foundation of your product and what you distribute is a modification of the core, adding certain features you deem important for yourself and/or your user base. On top of that, you should understand and respect our work by advertising your product in such a manner it doesn't undermine the integrity or quality of the PHP-Fusion core. This is called loyal advertising.
Stating your product is better, faster, safer, smaller, more updated etc is something you might be right about but only in a certain context. This context applies when your distributed product has exactly the same features our core does - nothing more, nothing less. Adding or removing features implies a different amount of code - which means different code - and a new behaviour. This means you cannot directly compare our core to yours.
We have seen quite a few products based on PHP-Fusion and a good part of them advertised in a friendly manner. We reserve the right to remove any statements about a PHP-Fusion-based product if that advertisement is not loyal to our project. Members who repeatedly post such advertisements cannot be considered people of good faith and will be excluded from our communities, world-wide.
If you do have the necessary skills to make PHP-Fusion a better product and you are a person of good faith we will gladly discuss with you anything related to development. You can do this by contacting any active member of the Development Team and we thank you in advance for considering helping us.
3.3 Consequences of breaking the rules
Failing to comply with these rules can get you temporarily or permanently banned from this site and all our other National Support sites, this also goes for any site we may choose to develop in the future.
Breach of the aforementioned rules will lead to warnings, if you choose not to adjust to those warnings you will be banned for a period of time decided by the moderators or site administrators. Warnings will come from any moderator or administrator as a PM, e-mail or as a reply to your forum post.
Revision History
- kneekoo - 08-02-2010 - Added Chapter "Products based on PHP-Fusion"
- Starefossen - 06-10-2008 - First version
- Sheldon - 06-30-2008 - Revised wording, spelling and grammatical errors.
- Starefossen - 07-05-2008 - Revised suggested changes
- Starefossen - 07-14-2008 - Suggestion added to 1.3
- Sheldon - 04-15-2008 - Changed document header and removed footer
- Sheldon - 04-15-2008 - Document approved for publishing
|
