Community Conversations principles

The opening statement

More and more people engage conversations through the internet.
While forums, chats, emails, social sites and many more ways of communicating are part of our daily life, often and regrettably a correct behaviour is not.
The few points here below are intended as a reminder for a better use of the internet and, possibly, for a better social life altogether.

1. Have a stable email address
2. Submit just your own comments and materials
3. Search or browse for existing answers before you ask a question
4. Ask/say anything you feel is relevant to you or to others
5. Stay on topic when discussing
6. Be polite
7. Do not disrupt a constructive conversation
8. Post constructive comments and questions
9. Do not needlessy post a URL
10. Do not send spam

The core points explained

1. Have a stable email address. Try and be a steady presence on the internet, so that people can contact you not just today but also in 5 years time without effort. When required by sites, you should register with a valid personal email address that you access regularly so that moderation emails, comments and any kind of activity can be sent to you; do not register with someone else’s email address, or with a temporary email address.
2. Submit your own comments and materials: do not grab text, images or whatever you find which you possibly not own. Mind that there are copyright laws and, which is more, it is not fine to post other people’s production without appropriate credits and permissions. As a general rule, give credits to people who deserve them. As an added suggestion, we’re sad to confirm that is it a safe choice not to post children’s images as well as personal details on the net.
3. Search or browse for existing answers before you ask a question. This is true for the whole internet and beyond.
4. Ask anything you feel is relevant, useful or even just interesting to you or to others. Also, do not avoid speaking: say without fear and hesitation whatever you feel is worth saying. Take care, though, that not everybody is candid and sincere (not to say honest) in this world: be prepared to have your own words twisted, distorted, altered, misunderstood or misrepresented by anybody and for any reason.
5. Stay on topic when discussing. Do not keep drifting off the given topic. If you feel that you can contribute with something not necessarily related to the original subject, please feel free to fork and open a new thread.
6. Be polite. Show respect for everyone, as everyone should feel comfortable reading and participating in discussions. Do not be disruptive or abusive, libelous, defamatory, indecent, illegal, harmful, harassing, intimidating, threatening, hateful, objectionable, discriminatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, sexually explicit, or offensive in a sexual, racial, cultural or ethnic context. Just try to be nice.
7. Do not disrupt a constructive conversation or impersonate another user by posting or otherwise writing under a false user name. Please avoid inappropriate or offensive user names or aliases, screen names and signatures. If you suffer disruptive behaviour by another user please let an administrator know (an email to the webmaster would suffice, usually).
8. Post constructive comments and questions. All you submit to the others should be nicely written in a plain English language; take your time to review your prose, correct typos, and remember that there is no need to stuff your text with acronyms, abbreviations or initialisms: you have plenty of space and a full-sized keyboard to type in.
9. Do not needlessy post a URL unless it directly answers a user’s question or is otherwise relevant to the topic under discussion. If any part of your submission, including any posted URL, results in any benefit to you, then you should note this in your post.
10. Do not send spam. Spam is defined as sending unsolicited email without the recipient’s consent. It includes chain letters and advertisements and/or any submission of any kind created solely to advertise a site, book, service, software or some other item for sale. Spam is also any reference, including a link, to any item (be it commercial or not) that is not directly related to the subject matter.

The closing statement

While we all know and acknowledge that few people really ever read Terms of Service notices (like those we have in our Photography Community Forum), copyright statements and the like when making use of internet sites and services, it is pretty safe to say that by following the few points above you will behave nice nine times out of ten.
Thus, it would be worth for you to read this whole page one more time, at least.