Through this site, we hope to spark conversations and inspire those who are already involved to share their knowledge, while learning from the experiences of others. To that end, we ask that visitors and members of this site follow a few simple rules. 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.

Civility
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 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,

Improving 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 discussion or might detract from its usefulness, 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.

Disagreements
You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But, remember to criticize ideas, not people, and provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.
Please avoid:

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

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

Reporting Problems
Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just there to clean-up or enforce.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply – just flag it. Responding can perpetuate the bad behavior. 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 in any way; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

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

- Start a topic in the most appropriate category.
- Avoid posting the same thing in multiple topics.
- Avoid no-content replies.
- Avoid diverting a topic by changing it midstream.
- Every post has your profile information attached to it so signing posts is unnecessary.
- If you agree with a post, use the Like button rather than Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed” .
- Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a New Topic.

Event Promotion
There are lots of great events & donation drives that happen every day. We encourage you to share them with fellow Mode Shift forum users, but please submit them to the appropriate area of the forums – the aptly named “Events” section.

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