Page 1 of 1

FORUM RULES - REQUIRED READING

Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 2:15 pm
by Brendan
The Official Forum Rules

1: Please try not to ask answered questions.
Many questions have been asked, and many have been answered. Before you post it's a very good idea to search the forum, the wiki, and even the entire web.

2: Please try to post where you should.
Choose the correct forum. Any questions regarding the implementation of your OS goes to OS Development. Only OS questions that are completely devoid of implementation details should be in OS Theory. Any programming questions that are not OS related go to general programming. The remainder of the questions go to General Ramblings or perhaps the Auto-Delete forum. I'm sure you can figure out what the OSDev Wiki and About This Site forums are for.

3: Please try to meet the intellectual requirements
We are not here to babysit new programmers. Operating system development requires academic thinking and a large amount of knowledge. If you don't have the required knowledge then you may learn faster elsewhere.

4: Please try to post smart questions
Follow how to ask questions the smart way. This helps people who are trying to help you. It will also help other people with the same problem find the information.

5: Please try to stay on topic
Simple: if you want to talk about something different, open a different thread. If you can't talk about the subject, don't post.

6: Please try to write legibly
The easier it is for someone to read and understand your post the easier it will be for them to help you. Use tags when posting code. Use indentation and source comments. Use a spell checker. Don't use colours - not everybody uses the same theme and colouring your text might render it invisible. Do not post long urls and large images. These will stretch the window and make it difficult to read normal text. Use .. tags for long links, post a link for images. Remember that some people are still on dial-up and have a 800x600 screen resolution.

7: Please try to behave
No spamming or advertising. No flaming. No obscenities. Don't provoke fights or participate in fights started by others. Windows vs linux and programming language battles have been fought many times and resulted in a draw every single time. After you've written a post, check to see if it's polite, professional and helpful; and if it's not then it'd be wise to rewrite it or delete it instead of sending it. If you feel that a post breaks these rules, do not reply to it. Please use the "report this post" link to alert the moderators.

8: Please consider your future
Other people will form an opinion of you based on what you've written. This includes people who can help you when you're having problems, people who might volunteer to write software for your OS one day, and occasionally even potential employers. These forums have been around for a long time and will be around for a lot longer; and anyone can search through all of your posts and see everything you have written, all the way back to your very first post.

The moderators may help others follow the rules above in a variety of ways; including moving posts to other forums to improve the chance of getting good replies, by deleting posts that the poster may find embarrassing in future, by locking posts to prevent opinions of people who would otherwise reply from being adversely effected, and (in serious cases, typically preceded by friendly warnings) by banning members accounts (either temporarily or permanently) to protect that member's reputation from excessive damage.