Like any Community, online and offline, regardless of how you feel about it there needs to be guidelines and a code of conduct to follow. This is not an exhaustive rule list. It is a basis of what is expected of you as a member posting on the Community and taking part, and actions you can take if and when you see actions which are disagreeable against these guidelines or where you have a concern.
To ensure element14 Community continues to be a place where all members feel free of harassment and free to share ideas, ask questions and discuss products, projects and technologies. Please read and familiarize yourself with the guidelines for participation. Additionally, please find a link to the Terms of Use.
Behaviour and Content
The element14 Community is intended to be a safe and inclusive space, free from violence, harassment, hate speech or exclusionary behaviour. This includes and is not limited to following these guidelines:
- Do not use exclusionary jokes (even “ironically”)
- The act of harassing or bullying of others is not tolerated, including suggestions of harm or violence, emotional, physical or otherwise.
- Using language or engaging in activity that is homophobic, transphobic, racist, ableist, sexist or otherwise exclusionary is not tolerated.
- People’s private lives are their own. Do not share details about others that they have not explicitly made public. This includes, but is not limited to, sexuality, gender, medical conditions, housing, relationship or financial status. Equally it is advised not to make assumptions about another's personal details or lives.
- Sharing of personal information of other members without their consent will typically not be tolerated and removed even where consent has been given to share (addresses, phone numbers, email, etc.) due to legal obligations.
- Negativity, such as baiting, starting or encouraging arguments, snark, narcissism, emotional abuse, etc. will be seen as behaviour that is hostile to the element14 Community and susceptible to moderation action.
- Don’t judge – instead share your knowledge! Knowledge is not a competition – instead of judging people for what they don’t know (or seemingly haven't google searched for), help them. Elitism is not welcome, even unintended. Remember that different people have different approaches and may have valid reasons for why they're asking.
- Similarly 'back handed' assistance which criticizes the person asking and then provides the answer requested is also not tolerated and can be seen as a form of emotional abuse.
- Non-Productive and Off-Topic Conversation, except where it contextually makes sense for the flow of discussion and conversation will typically be moderated.
- Intellectual Property infringement is not welcome.
- Impersonation is also not welcome.
- Spam of unrelated content and advertisement will be removed.
- Not all actions are inherently personally motivated or targeted. This includes using functionality such as a downvote of a comment. Downvotes for comments can be given for various reasons, including relevancy to the thread or topic, or in answer to the question. If you have a reaction to how your comment was voted on or liked, employ emotional intelligence in the first instance.
- Content relating to, implying or otherwise soliciting "free energy", "perpetual motion machines", or otherwise evidently suggesting equations, content, projects or otherwise that 'break the laws of physics' will be removed at the discretion of the element14 Community staff. Content such as this, while potentially an entertaining thought experiment, have no place on an engineering community based on verified facts and science, and any content that is derived or decided to be pseudo-science will be removed as it devolves into ill behaviours that are not supported in the code of conduct and participation guidelines.
Reporting inappropriate behaviour
All content on element14 Community is self-moderated, which means our moderation team may not review content unless it is reported to them.
All members are welcome to report violations of the Community guidelines by using the “Report Abuse” feature embedded in all content, you can typically find this at the bottom of a post or comment (you must be logged in to use this feature).
All content reported as abuse is reviewed regularly by those with access to the moderation queue. Any content that is found in violation of our guidelines and/or our Terms of Use, the author may be issued a warning, and the content will be deleted or edited.
If further reports are filed against the member, the content may be deleted or edited and the member will be banned from the element Community.
Please note that “Report Abuse” is not to be used to report content that a member disagrees with or dislikes.
Inquiries about these guidelines should be posted as a question in Feedback and Support.
Acceptable Behavior
Being excellent to one another, with productive, positive and respectful discussion, questions, opinions, knowledge sharing and healthy debate centered around products, technologies and projects are all welcome.
The Bottom Line
This is not an exhaustive list, attempted nuances and technicalities around circumventing the code of conduct, such as picking and choosing which rules do or do not apply and how they apply will not be respected, if a moderator, administrator, member of staff or site owner asks you to stop something, you should stop. Just because something isn't explicitly outlined in the rules doesn't mean moderators/administrators aren't going to use their own discretion.