Forum Rules

[willm]

We’ve had some stupid threads here lately and I was wondering if they could be avoided by making some basic forum rules. It might not stop all trolls but some people like myself just didn’t know about what anon posters are allowed to say and what they shouldn’t.
As a start let me suggest the following:

1. If you just want to ask a quick question you don’t have to register, but if you are making comments on the software or responding to questions then you do. Some people have trouble finding the link, so it is here. Now you have no excuse 😉
2. Don’t come here just to vent about the problems you’re having with WordPress, this is not the place for that. This is a SUPPORT forum. That means that we SUPPORT the software and everyone who works on it, so if you have any criticisms or negative comments keep them to yourself. I admit it took me a while to learn this rule but I totally get it now.

I can’t think of any more right now but I’m sure everyone else can!

[alexkingorg]

My opinion only (not speaking for any other devs)…
I think just being polite when giving feedback goes a long way… the developers know the shortcomings of the system better than anyone. I certainly don’t claim it’s perfect or can’t be improved. At the same time, we (the developers, documentation team, people that give helpful answers her ein the forums, etc.) are all donating our time on this project and don’t appreciate having that work blasted.
Criticisms and “better ideas” are certainly welcome (at least to me), but if you want your feedback to be well received and have it lead to productive discussions – be polite.
Also, to the other members of the community. Don’t necessarily feel that you need to defend the product. If there are claims in a post that are factually inaccurate, clarification is of course welcome; but if someone is just blasting away, you don’t have to respond. I appreciate that many of you like WP well enough to try to defend it, but I’m not sure it improves the situation.
Lets all just move on…

[willm]

I agree with that – it’s should be ok to give feedback that isn’t 100% positive, but only if you have the skills to phrase it nicely. Cool.

[willm]

Just adding to this since we seem to have gained a lot of new users over the past few days, and I expect when the final version of 1.2 is released we will be seeing even more traffic. Most of you seem to have registered which is great. Could I also just stress the importance of SEARCHING before you ask a question. A lot of the questions we get here are repetitions of previous ones, and if this forum is going to be busy it would help everyone if we avoided asking the same things over and over. For example if you have a bug to report, go to the existing beta thread devoted to that version, don’t start a new thread for something that’s been mentioned already.
Finally if you are asking for help, you MUST tell us which version of WordPress you are using. There are a whole bunch of versions floating around, from the last official release to the nightlys to the release candidate, and it’s very difficult for us to answer questions if we don’t know which one we’re dealing with!