Community Conduct
The moderation approach values quality of conversation over volume of posts. These are the baseline expectations.
The core principle
Posts should contain something real: a problem, an implementation, a genuine question, a considered perspective. Engagement for its own sake is not what this forum is for. The moderation approach prioritises signal over noise.
What is expected
- Substance. Contribute something with actual content. Vague questions get vague answers. The more specific you are, the more useful the conversation is for everyone.
- Honesty. Don’t claim to have done something you haven’t. Don’t present speculation as fact. Be clear about what you know and what you are guessing.
- Directness. Say what you mean. If you disagree, say why. Indirect criticism, passive hostility, and social manoeuvring are not welcome here.
- Grounding. Especially in research-adjacent discussions: stay analytical. Speculation is fine. Incoherence is not. The Labs-adjacent territory in particular benefits from people who can hold uncertainty without losing rigour.
What will be removed
- Promotion. The forum is not an advertising surface. Vendor pitches, affiliate links, and unsolicited commercial outreach are removed immediately.
- Noise. Replies that add nothing. Posts that restate what was already said. Engagement theatre.
- Bad faith. Trolling, persistent derailment, and deliberate misrepresentation of other people’s positions.
- Off-topic content. Content that does not belong in any of the defined topic areas and cannot be reasonably placed in Open Discussion.
Moderation
Moderation is light but final. The moderators act infrequently, but when they do, decisions are not debated publicly. If you have a genuine concern about a moderation decision, raise it directly via email. Posting about moderation decisions in the forum is itself a removable offence.
Repeated minor violations are treated as a single serious violation. The moderators have discretion over what constitutes a violation and what the consequence is. There is no formal appeals process.