Forum rules

The forum exists to help FlightGear users and content developers discuss and enjoy their hobby. To ensure that the forum is an enjoyable place, certain standards are required. Forum members are encouraged to flag posts they consider not to meet these standards to the moderators using the icon in the top right of the post.

Standards

  1. As a community of like-minded people who use FlightGear as a hobby, or professionally, we owe it to each other to be polite and courteous. Everyone deserves to have a positive experience on these Forums. Personal attacks are not tolerated nor will racism, sexism, bigotry or foul language.
  2. FlightGear attracts a wide age-range of users, some of whom are quite young. Therefore the Forums are no place for obscenity or adult material. Any posts should be acceptable to a parent reading over the shoulder of their 12 year old child.
  3. Just as we have a wide range of ages, the members of these forums are from all over the world, and have a wide range of political and personal opinions. This is not an appropriate forum for political debate. Political discussions will be shut down.
  4. Discussion on the forum takes place in English. Many members are not native English speakers. Discussions may have to be translated multiple times between the person making the post and those reading it. Members should therefore be careful in their use of language and generous in their interpretation of what they read.
  5. Our FlightGear community is diverse, and we must all respect each each and be tolerant of other opinions, particularly if they differ from or own. While politely disagreement is expected, to avoid flame-wars if it is clear that you are not going to changes someone's opinion, agree to disagree and stop. Moderators may lock topics that are considered to go around in circles.
  6. While differing opinions are fine, facts are facts. Continual disagreement with facts is considered trolling.
  7. Discussions should remain on-topic and be posted in the correct forum. Off-topic discussion may be moved, split, or deleted if considered to have no value.
  8. Quoting should be used sparingly and only if the context is not obvious. Quoting from another topic should only be done if immediately relevant to the topic at hand.
  9. While constructive criticism of the FlightGear project is OK, denigrating the project is not.
  10. Don't feed the trolls. If you consider someone is making a contentious post just to get a reaction, report it to a moderator rather than responding.
  11. Core development discussions take place on the FlightGear development mailing list. If you are interested in developing code, please post on that list rather than on the forum.

Moderator actions

Where the above standards are not met, moderators may take a variety of action (in increasing order of severity):

  1. Private PM messages to particular participants requesting that they behave in line with the standards.
  2. Comments on topics, clearly marked being made in their capacity as a moderator.
  3. Editing of posts that do not comply with the standards. The moderator will indicate the reason for editing the post.
  4. Warnings to individual users, which are private and displayed when the user logs in.
  5. Closure of topics to further posts. The moderator will add a final post to the topic stating this has been done and the reasoning.
  6. Deletion of posts. The moderator will add a final post to the topic stating this has been done and the reasoning. To avoid leaving posts without context, this may involve removing posts that did not in themselves trigger the moderation action.
  7. Temporary banning of members for 24 hours. Repeated or particularly serious offences may result in increasing bans (48hrs, 4 days, 8 days...). The moderator will add a publicly visible post indicating when this has taken place.
  8. Permanent banning from the forum. The moderator will add a publicly visible post indicating when this has taken place.

Finally, the moderators are not infallible, and we don't always get it right. If you have any issues with moderation, you may PM the moderator. Here is a list of moderators.

Last updated: 22 November 2017