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Forum Rules

Postby stuart » Sun Feb 07, 2016 6:34 pm

Hi All,

After 9 years (!), and at the suggestion of a number of regular and long-standing participants on the forum, Curt, Johan, Gijs and I have put together a set of forum rules. These largely just document the standards we have been using for moderation, so I don't expect there to be any surprises to those who have been participating for some time. I think the only notable change is that we will be more public in the moderation that we do - some participants have been unhappy that moderation has taken place in private.

The rules are available in the banner above under "Forum rules" and here: http://forum.flightgear.org/rules.php

We may change them in the future if we feel that clarification is required.

Best regards,

-Stuart (the mod)
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby Thorsten » Sun Feb 07, 2016 7:07 pm

Sounds clear enough - thanks.
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby legoboyvdlp » Sun Feb 07, 2016 8:17 pm

Thanks a lot -- very clear, fair, and reasonable. Thanks!
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby Bomber » Sun Feb 07, 2016 9:13 pm

Got to say disappointed.
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby hamzaalloush » Sun Feb 07, 2016 9:23 pm

@bomber Why?

personally, for starters i disagree about Core development discussion on mailing list, what about commentary, does that count in? perhaps people who'd like to enterain ideas and explore them before passing into the dev list without all clutter of the development behind the scenes, also, some users feedback would be nice about some core features proposed that i think you wont hear about in the mailing list.
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby Hooray » Sun Feb 07, 2016 9:34 pm

You can always use the issue tracker to make, and comment on, bugs and feature requests: https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/codetickets/
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby hamzaalloush » Sun Feb 07, 2016 9:42 pm

that's decoupled from the users. anyway, i wont go "in-circles" i think the rules are clear, which is fair when you want to ban someone based on them, then i suggest everytime there is a core development commentary or discussion someone should be warned. :)
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby Bomber » Sun Feb 07, 2016 11:41 pm

Why... because when asked this was my pm about the subject of restrictive rules..

I can see all your points of view, but to my mind you're all talking 'glass half empty' approach...

If the owners and moderators are going to make an announcement then make it a positive announcement about the forum and the culture you're sponsoring...Making it quite clear the things you want to occur such as..

Question are acceptable
On topic development debate is acceptable
positive criticism of a plane/code/system/fdm is acceptable

Don't highlight all the bad things but instead wait for the first post that's not on the acceptable list and then act..

Frankly I think that having a hissy fit as that I've had to put up with is unacceptable within a development forum, if you can't cope with people making comments about your work and trying to help, then get out...

sponsor constructive debate and more people will join in and less flame wars will occur..... as it is people just can't be arsed to put up with the response they get if they make any comment....

Simon
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby gsagostinho » Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:44 am

Looks all fair to me, all very clear as almost all others have pointed out. The only little comment I have is about the following item:

Quoting should be used sparingly and only if the context is not obvious


I understand what you are trying to avoid here as I have seen my share of the "quote wars", but the phrase above sounds as if people should avoid quoting unless ultimately necessary. You will see that often people use quotes even when replying to a post immediately above theirs, it's a matter of style and perhaps of making things very clear and avoiding any confusion. I would say at least half of my replies in the forum contain quotes, and I don't think those are the problematic ones that would require moderation of any sort! Take a look at this page here, more than half of the posts there have quotes (and this is true for all 170+ pages of that thread): viewtopic.php?f=4&t=25157&start=2565

So maybe we could think of reformulating that phrase in the rules, what do you think?

Cheers!
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby Johan G » Fri Feb 12, 2016 5:26 am

I think the two two things with quotes are the "quote wars" you mention (lovely way to put it by the way) and the rather annoying thing when usually relatively new forum members quote the entire preceding post, instead of just commenting it.

See also the quoting guidelines.
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby Lydiot » Fri Feb 12, 2016 7:34 am

Quoting people using the provided links to the posts from where the text is taken avoids any misunderstandings as to who said what, and makes things easier to follow. It's incredibly easy to not read a quote, whereas it's often a lot harder to figure out who's responding to whom.

I also find it annoying when people are quoted without the person quoting stating just who they're quoting.

Then again, we've been here before, and some people just don't care about guidelines, in addition to which this clearly isn't a collaborative community where the forum rules are discussed before they become rules, despite being open-source or whatever FG is.... so "whatever". You guys do whatever you want. You're holding the keys to the site anyway.
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby gsagostinho » Fri Feb 12, 2016 11:36 am

Lydiot wrote in Fri Feb 12, 2016 7:34 am:[...] this clearly isn't a collaborative community where the forum rules are discussed before they become rules, despite being open-source or whatever FG is....


I believe this has already being pointed out to you (and I am sure it has been pointed out to many others several times), but an open source project requires only that its source code is available via a free license, and that subsequent modifications, improvements, forks, etc. maintain that license -- nothing else. So just because FlightGear is open source project, it doesn't mean that the forum administrators must create polls for all the users to vote which rules they prefer to have, that's just non-sense.
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby gsagostinho » Fri Feb 12, 2016 12:50 pm

@Johan G those quoting guidelines are excellent IMO
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby curt » Fri Feb 12, 2016 2:01 pm

We desire an environment where people can be comfortable sharing their work and ideas with each other. We wish to keep things fun and interesting. We desire an environment where people can outlet their skills and creativity. We wish to keep things positive. Fair and honest discussion is great, but we are working hard to avoid bullying and toxic negativity. This process requires some basic structure and order. We have laid out these basic principles in the form of rules. Most of these are very basic community principles. Outside of some organizational choices that apply specifically to FlightGear, all the rules about interacting with each other apply just as much to online communities as the do to neighborhoods, schools, clubs, and any other community.

No set of rules will never be perfect, no set of forum admins will ever be perfect, no individual forum participant is perfect. But if we all work to bring out the best in each other, give each other some grace (allowance to make occasional mistakes), we can continue to build a positive community.
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Re: Forum Rules

Postby Lydiot » Fri Feb 12, 2016 7:20 pm

gsagostinho wrote in Fri Feb 12, 2016 11:36 am:
Lydiot wrote in Fri Feb 12, 2016 7:34 am:[...] this clearly isn't a collaborative community where the forum rules are discussed before they become rules, despite being open-source or whatever FG is....


I believe this has already being pointed out to you (and I am sure it has been pointed out to many others several times), but an open source project requires only that its source code is available via a free license, and that subsequent modifications, improvements, forks, etc. maintain that license -- nothing else. So just because FlightGear is open source project, it doesn't mean that the forum administrators must create polls for all the users to vote which rules they prefer to have, that's just non-sense.


If you understood the gist of what I wrote it wouldn't be nonsense. Clearly you don't.
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