New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year to all!


Some of our newer forum members (and some of the older ones, to be fair), seem to be unclear on reasonable behavior in our public forum. I thought I would help by suggesting some New Year's resolutions for these people.

Things I *will* do from this point forwards:

• Search the forums before starting a new thread, in case my question has already been answered
  
• Provide a good thread title (think of others searching) when I do create a new thread
  
• Provide a good, helpful description of a problem I have that I would like help with
  
• Post a new thread in the appropriate subforum
  
• Be patient waiting for my post to be approved (if moderated), and for the community to respond
  
• Use English for my threads and posts; other languages are only appropriate in the regional subforum
  
• Use the appropriate place for my threads - questions or issues get raised here on the forum, bugs get reported on github, security issues should go to hackerone
  
• Use helpful issue reports when reporting a bug on github
  
• Be respectful of others
  

Things I *will not* do from this point forwards:

• Post a thread multiple times, because it hasn't shown up on the forum, even though I am a new member and I know that my first few posts will be moderated
  
• Post a thread in multiple subforums
  
• Post a thread in multiple places (forum, github, stackoverflow), with cross-links that have to be followed to read my question/point
  
• Post inane threads, where the answer is in the question I am asking
  
• Use the forum as a way to learn PHP or programming in the first place
  
• Send emails to the admin, even though I understand that email support is not offered
  
• Ask support questions on twitter, since I know those are meant to be addressed here on the forum
  
• PM members without their permission, or without enabling receipt on my end
  
• Make bogus claims, eg in my signature or custom user title
  
• Encourage or participate in flame wars
  

This is not an exhaustive list of resolutions, but a good starting point. I am sure that many of you have your own dos or don'ts for forum behavior! If each of us (myself included) embraced 2 or 3 of these, the forum would be more rewarding

James Parry
Project Lead