Community Rules
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.
These are not hard and fast rules. They are guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a kind, friendly place for civilized public discourse.
Improve the Discussion
Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something positive to the discussion, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.
One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend 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.
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.
Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree
You may wish to respond by disagreeing. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:
- Name-calling
- Ad hominem attacks
- Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
- Knee-jerk contradiction
Instead, provide thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.
Your Participation Counts
The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. 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.
Ontologize Answers provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, watching, muting and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.
Let’s leave our community 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, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough 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; 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. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
- Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
- Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
- Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.
These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a major news site.
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 that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:
- Don’t start a topic in the wrong category; please read the category definitions.
- Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
- Don’t post no-content replies.
- Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
- Don’t 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 Linked 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.
Hard rules
We follow a few hard rules. Please DON’T:
- Participate in or encourage personal attacks, call out other community members, or sabotage another user’s work. This includes purposely disrupting the conversation, and being aggressively critical without making any constructive contribution.
- Discuss politics, pornography or religion.
- Spam, blatantly self-promote or solicit for any kind of material support, donations or aid.
- Link to free items or products that compete with items sold through Ontologize.
- Talk about or link to piracy, warez, illegal activity of any kind.
- Link to competitor sites or items. Mentioning website names is fine in the context of a discussion, but don’t link directly to those sites here.
- Request or post personal (or identifying) information about any user or any other person.
- Post anything that would infringe on another person’s intellectual property rights.
Also, everything on these forums should be considered PG rated or below. Please keep avatars, profile header images, forum images and videos clean.
A Note on Self-Promotion
We want our customers and third-party service providers to succeed, and we see Ontologize Answers as being a key tool in helping them to do just that. To that end, we permit self promotion of your services and products in a context where it is clearly providing value to Ontologize Answers users. Such contexts might include:
- Topics in which Ontologize Staff are asking items to be nominated.
- Topics in which forum members have expressed a desire for item recommendations or services.
- Note that these forums are not a job board. You are welcome to post job openings to the Ontologize Jobs Board. You are welcome to post links to your Ontologize Directory profile. Any posts requesting that people contact you directly (email, LinkedIn etc.) will be removed.
Please note that the decision as to whether or not your self promotion is providing value and context appropriate is ultimately at the discretion of the Moderators and Ontologize Staff. If they feel your post or topic violates these guidelines, they reserve the right to remove it.
We value and preserve the right to be critical of decisions made, but that criticism must:
- Be directed at ideas, never people or groups.
- Be delivered in a way that endeavors to be respectful and constructive.
- Be professional: use clear, accurate and polite language. Remember that you may be dealing with someone from a different culture.
Additional User Obligations
To access some or all Ontologize Answers features you will need to register for an account and consent to our Terms of Service. If you do not consent to these Terms, Ontologize reserves the right to refuse, suspend or terminate your access to Ontologize Answers. Be aware that we have a specific Account Ownership policy.
You are solely responsible for ensuring that your account registration is complete and remains up to date. You have the right to discontinue use of, or terminate, your account whenever you like, and subject to our Privacy Policy, control the use and sharing of your account information. Please note that any content or information you share on Ontologize Answers is governed by the terms described in the Terms under the section titled “Content Permissions, Restrictions, and Creative Commons Licensing,” and you should be aware that once you place content in Ontologize Answers, you willingly give up some rights and control over such content.
Ontologize strongly encourages you to review our Privacy Policy, which explains how we will handle, process, and use your personal data, and with whom, and how we will share this data.
Some premium or additional features of Ontologize Answers may require a payment obligation for access and use. You are solely responsible for ensuring that your payment obligations, if any, remain current and not in arrears. In the event Ontologize charges for features you will be clearly notified of the terms of any payment obligations and provided the opportunity to refuse such obligations before you incur any charges. Please note, however, that your refusal to accept payment obligations may result in your inability to access or use certain premium or additional features of Ontologize Answers.
