Etiquette, blogging and usage guidelines

The eZ Community is a place where people can interact and have discussions about several different topics. However, eZ asks that community members follow these simple guidelines to ensure that any piece of communication leads to some productive conversation. Failure to comply with these rules may result in a ban from the forums or the entire site, as well as removal of posts and points. Those rules are common sense ones.

[ethics] [blogging guidelines] [forum guidelines]

Ethics

No flaming, badgering, spamming, or trolling.
No discussion of piracy or illegal material, or linking to these illegal activities.
Do not post material that is hateful or mean towards race, religion, sex, or any other offensive nature. Inherently disrespectful, aggressive, or otherwise abusive content will be removed
Do not post for the sake of forum post count... your posts will be removed if we see you posting multiple 5-7 word posts just for points.
Do not be excessive in promoting your consulting or hosting services. While eZ Community is a place for anyone to be contacted and to get more business by showing knowledge, the community will warn any abusive commercial approach in the forums.
Do not post links to lewd or offensive content. Keep everything Safe for Work.
Do not post any personal information about you or anyone else. We don't want to know your street address, neither would you want anyone else to know.
Do not post advertising or referral links
No excessive swearing or language.
Turn off your caps lock, do not use excessive ALL CAPS in your posts.
U must not use l33t speak or b short. Use plain English. If English isn't your mother tongue, try to rewrite any sentences where you stumble across words you don't remember or don't know.
Use words you know and keep the language simple. In fact, you might get help from someone who don't know English well either, but who is the best expert on the subject you need help in.
Do not copy or plagiarize comments.

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Blogging guidelines

To be qualified for the eZ Publish Community Portal, a blog post :

should be informative and share your unique expertise on eZ Publish, the Apache Zeta Components, PHP, the Content Management world or the Web in general. Include tips, strategies, techniques, case-studies, analysis, opinions and commentary in your post. Should the post get lengthy and educative, giving a thorough description of a problematic, we will consider making it a tutorial. Should your post be more of an on-the-fly, 5 liner, potentially asking a question or a tip, you should consider making a forum topic.
must not be a press release, advertisement, sales letter, promotional copy, or blatant and excessive self-promotion or hype.
must not be an article you ripped off from the public domain or bought.
should have proper English, spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure. While we know there is a variation in what is considered "proper English," we ask that you at least be consistent within your post.
must not contain: pornography/adult material, hate or violence-oriented, suggest racial intolerance, advocate against any individual or group, have insulting, obscene, degrading tone, or contain profanity.
must not contain information on: hacking/cracking content, bomb creation, support for terrorism/ radicalism/ religious fanaticism, illicit drugs or drug paraphernalia, steroid use or advocacy, weapon/ firearms/ ammunition, or the promotion of hard alcohol/tobacco-related products or prescription drugs.
must not contain any content that is a violation of any law, be considered defamatory, libelous, or infringes on the legal rights of others.
should not be a submission of the exact same post as one that you already submitted.
must not include a reply to a personal email, letter or other correspondence.
must not contain excessive and/or bolded keywords/ phrases. Bolding is limited to headings and subheadings ;)

eZ reserves the right to unpublish a non-complying post.

Licensing on blog posts

A survey was conducted to establish optimal licensing options for your blog posts. You can find it here.

As a blogger, you are allowed to pick, for any of your posts here, a license amongst :

GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
Any of the Creative Commons licenses http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

If you omit specifying one at the bottom of your post, the applicable one will be : CC by-sa ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 ), and this applies to all formerly written blog posts. Please update your previous posts in case you prefer another license.

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Forum guidelines

Choose the correct forum

Use a few minutes to consider which forum you should post to. Posting it to a "General" forum is not as effective as posting to the "Install" forum if you question is about install-related questions. Don't post in several different forums. If your question belongs in the "Install" forum, posting it in "General" or "Developer" aren't very helpful.
Consider this: If you post to the wrong forum the chances for someone actually answering it is lower than if you post it in the correct forum. Furthermore your off-topic post will just make it harder for those posting correctly to be noticed among those who post in the wrong forums.

Search the forums

Before you ask your question try to search the archives of the forum. You'd be surprised to notice how often your exact problem has been solved. You should also read any and all documentation available and search them for relevant info. After all, if it is allready written somewhere, why should someone have to rewrite it into a forum to answer your question?

Choose a clear title

Choosing a clear and describing title is important, it is the first information someone considering answering your question will read. Saying "I need help", "Newbie question", or "Installation question" doesn't help anyone who reads the title. Everyone needs help, and if you're posting in the installation forum, don't you think that people know it's about installation?
Also your title will let a reader decide if the question you are posting is something they can answer. If they from your title can see that the question is outside their knowledge, they can use their time to answer someone whom they might actually be able to help.

Describe your goal

Sometimes a clear idea of what you're trying to achieve is relevant to the question asked. Use a few sentences describing what you're trying to do. Be brief and precise.

Describe your problem

"Installation don't work" isn't very descriptive. More information is needed. How far have you got? What does work? What testing have you done? What system are you running on? You should take at least five minutes to describe your problem. If you get any error messages in your logs, always paste them into you posting. Look in your apache error log, in your php error log and any error messages encountered in your browser.
The extra minutes you use to get this information and describing your problem clearly is well worth the time, since it might help someone answer your question.
In fact, the few extra minutes you use on your question is well spent after using several hours on your problem. Who knows, you might even see the solution why you take the time to rethink your problem.
Remember to include the name of the program, module or plug-in you have a problem with, also remember their version numbers.

Reread before you post

Use a few minutes reading your posting. Try to see if you have left out important information, or if there are extra information you can supply.

Don't expect an answer right away

The forums are supported by the eZ Publish community. People answer at their leisure and level of knowledge. You will also find answers from the eZ crew and together with the community this will be a very valuable part of the eZ Publish documentation.

Do not post advertisements for commercial services. If you want to promote products please contact us for a special arrangement at community [at] ez [dot] no