This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

With one exception, these are not hard and fast rules, merely aids to the human judgment of our community. Use these guidelines to keep this a clean, well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.

That exception? Politics. There are plenty of other venues from your local pub to other online community sites where politics are fair game. Please use those other venues for political needs and help us keep Talk dedicated to makers and making.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Please spend some time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But, remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Politics.
  • Name-calling.
  • Ad hominem attacks.
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content.
  • Knee-jerk contradiction.

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for everyone. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: favorites, bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s try to leave our park better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, do not reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If at least 3 flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts in any way; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Do not post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Do not post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Do not harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Do not post spam, political topics, or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you are unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Do not start a topic in the wrong category.
  • Do not cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Do not post no-content replies.
  • Do not divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Do not sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a New Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

Terms of Service

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves – and by extension, you and your data – against unfriendly folks. We have a Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.

How Do I…

See the restricted categories?

Current Dallas Makerspace members can see Members Only categories (shown with a padlock next to the category name). If you cannot, go to the Member Access category, create a new topic (the plus sign on the right), and provide all the requested information. These requests are worked manually by our volunteers, thus are not instantaneous.

Create a poll?

Use the “Build Poll” function, accessible from the “gear icon” in the edit menu. This is a lovely guide.

Hide “Spoilers”/Create Shorter-Appearing Really Long Posts/Obfuscate Possibly Sensitive Material?

Use the “Hide Details” function, accessible from the “gear icon” in the edit menu, to create spoiler alerts, etc. Change the word “Summary” to “Spoiler” (or whatever), like so:

[details="Spoiler"]
The Colonel did it.
[/details]
Spoiler

The Colonel did it.