[I've just updated our site guidelines. Here's the new text]
DIY Drones is community site focused on amateur aerial robotics. Our aim is be a place where people can learn, teach, exchange and participate in projects and events. We aim to be as welcoming to those just starting as we are useful to experts. Our culture thrives on collegiality, sharing and openness.
We have many volunteer moderators who have admin rights to ban members, delete posts and otherwise do their best to maintain civil discourse and a high signal-to-noise ratio here. They will also encourage good behavior and guide people to get the most out of the site. Here are our policies, which the moderators are charged with enforcing:
1) Civility is paramount. Treat others with respect, kindness and generosity. Some of our most expert members are people who were once total n00bz but were helped and encouraged by others, and are now repaying the favor with the next generation. Remember the Golden Rule.
2) No discussion of politics or religion. This is not the place to discuss your views on the wisdom of military use of UAVs, any nation's foreign policy, your feelings about war, or anything else that is inclined to turn into a political debate. It is our experience that the rules for good dinner party conversation--no discussion of politics and religion--apply to online communities, too. DIY Drones aims to bring people together, and we find that discussions of politics and religion tend to polarize and drive people apart. There are plenty of other places to discuss those topics online, just not here.
3) Ask questions in the discussion forum; inform others in blog posts. Submitted blog posts that are just questions and should have been posted in the discussion forum will not be approved. The moderators may or may not message you with the text so you can repost in the right area. To avoid losing your post, put it in the right place from the start.
4) Blog posts are for informative topics of broad interest to the community. They should typically start with a picture or video, so that appears on the front page on the site and gives a sense of the topic as well as inviting people to click in for more. Videos should be embedded (paste the embed code in the HTML tab, not the Rich Text tab). The post should also include links where appropriate. Don't make people do a Google search for what you're talking about if you can provide a link.
5) The Discussion Forum is for questions and tech support. We prefer to do all tech support in public, so that others can follow along. If you have a problem, please describe your particular system setup completely, ideally with a photograph, and pick the right forum tags so that others can find the thread later.
6) No discussion of military applications of UAVs. This site is just about amateur and civilian use.
7) Do not type in ALL CAPS. It's considered SHOUTING. Posts in all caps will be deleted by the moderators.
8) Absolutely no personal attacks. It's fine to disagree, but never okay to criticize another member personally.
9) Share. Although we are not limited to open source projects, the ones that tend to get the most participation tend to be open source. Don't wait until your code or design is "finished"--post it as it is, and you may find that others will help you finish it faster. The best way to contribute is with your creativity--we love data, code, aircraft designs, photos of UAV projects, videos of flights and build logs. Post early and often!
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