This is a living document and so it will be modified over time as our needs and goals develop (and we'll be sure to let you know when they change!)
This topic is locked but discussion, suggestions and comments are always welcome over on the Forum Meta Discussion board.
Posting guidelines1. Respect all users, regardless of your liking towards them. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Along these lines, discriminatory jokes and language related to one’s race, age, gender, disability, etc. are not allowed.
2. No commercial advertising whatsoever.
3. Don't share or discuss sexual preferences, sex acts, porn, content depicting sexual acts, etc. There are plenty of other places online where you can do this.
4. Don't share or post content depicting explicit gore and animal cruelty (art is okay).
5. Doxxing or harassment or encouraging self harm is prohibited.
6. Be mindful of the personal information you share. Forums are public and will be indexed by search engines. Share personal details at your own risk.
7. No shitposting. Be mindful of the quality of your contributions and how it impacts readers.
8. Don't share any personal information about yourself that you wouldn't be comfortable with having publicly on the internet. This includes things like your full name, address, personal IP address, and phone numbers.
9. No self-promotion. Many of us are here because we're tired of being marketed to by 99% of the internet. We want you to share your site, or get assistance with pulling it together. An easy to way to determine what is allowed is to ask yourself, "why am I promoting my link here? What does it contribute to the larger conversation? Am I just looking for visibility?"
A link to your website, in the context of a larger question/discussion, for example, is perfectly fine. A link to your social in a related thread is also fine. However, dropping links out of context, unprompted, is the type of thing we want to avoid here. If you're sharing something to create a discussion around it, that's fine, but please don't share self-promotions purely to gain visibility such as clicks, views, and especially anything that points toward commercial content (see rule #2).
No double posting: Posting immediately after your own last post (with no one else in between) is highly discouraged. If the new post includes new or different information, you can just edit the original post.
No excessive thread bumping: "Bumping" a thread means intentionally posting in order to have the thread displayed at the top of the new posts listing. This creates clutter and frustrates readers.
No excessive embeds: Don't post a ton of embeds (e.g., videos). They take up a lot of real estate and are in direct opposition to a text-based forum.
No thread hijacking: If you have a thought that is unrelated the current thread you are about to reply to, consider starting a new thread instead of replying to the one you were in at that moment.
Necroposting is okay: Unlike the old etiquette that precedes us, we don't really have a problem with necroing (that is, replying to a topic that was last posted in a long time ago) as long as your contribution is on-topic.
Create descriptive topic titles: When creating a new topic, try to make the Subject (i.e., title) of your topic as descriptive as possible. Whether you're asking for help or just starting a conversation, descriptive titles help clarify your topic and also makes it easily searchable on the forum, reducing the likelihood of duplicate topics.