Forum Policies

Any announcements about changes to forum policy, updates on forum upgrades and other technical issues will be made here. This forum is read only.

Moderators: Site Moderators, FAHC Science Team

Locked
bruce
Posts: 20910
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:13 pm
Location: So. Cal.

Forum Policies

Post by bruce »

Welcome to the forums!

Our primary goal is to help people who are having trouble getting the FAH program to work for them and, in the process, collect reports of bugs or other problems that potentially need to be fixed by the Pande Group. We wish to do this in a neutral environment that neither detracts from or contributes to any specific team -- other than the "team" of folks that contribute to the FAH project.

In order to keep the forums as friendly and helpful to people of all ages and backgrounds we ask that you adhere to a few simple common sense rules:

Harsh Language: Please try not to use harsh language. Filters are in place to block bad language and I will edit any posts in which the filters are not activated, either due to the forum software or a deliberate attempt to bypass them. As I have heard stated before (cant remember who said this):

Quote:
People are possibly going to be offended by the presence of harsh language, but few are offended by the lack of it.

Warez/Cracks/Copyrighted Material: Please do not discuss illegal software and software cracks here. Any discussion of breach of copyright or any other illegal software discussion will be met with action by the moderating team.

Signatures/Avatars: Please be responsible when using sigs and avatars. Please keep all content clean and polite. Also, use in moderation: Consider the modem user that has to download your gif on every page that has one of your posts. It is not necessary to include your signature in every post made in the same thread, especially if you are using a large image. If you post multiple times on the same page, in the same thread, only include your signature in the first post. Signatures in successive posts may be removed from those posts without warning. Excessively large images or text length in signatures may be removed from your forum profile without warning. The maximum allowable image height is 82px which is enough to fit an EOC/[H] style FAH signature. This restriction is subject to change however, at the discretion of the site administration.

Adult Material: It's not relevant here and it will be deleted on sight if posted.

Spam: Any spam will be deleted or edited by the moderators. User accounts involved in spamming will likely be blocked by the administrators. This is a forum for help and support with, and discussion of, the Folding@Home project - not a free advertising opportunity.

Bumping or Spam-like posts: Repeated meaningless posts or other excessive posting. We do not require that every post be precisely on-topic, but we expect you to use good judgment.

Personal attacks/flaming or specific comments that are not in the spirit of a friendly board will not be tolerated. Flaming (personal negatives aimed at another member) and trolling (attempting to cause others to flame) are not allowed here. This applies to signatures as well as posts. IOW, when it gets personal and negative, it is likely not going to be acceptable here.

Recruiting/Promoting : We run a team-neutral forum and offer support for anyone, without regard to team affiliation, or organizations. Attempts to encourage others to join your team/organization (explicit or implicit) are prohibited in all of the general forums.

If you wish to discuss a Teams/Organizations idea (in general), this will (in most cases) be allowed, if you follow certain protocols.
  1. Do Not use the name/team # of the Team/Organization, directly in your posts.
  2. Do Not use links that point to the Team/Organization in ANY form.
  3. 1 and 2 apply to everyone, regardless of if you are affiliated with that Team/Organization or not.
  4. Use appropriate wording, to remain neutral. Words such as -- Team, Teams, They, Them, Us... Etc...
  5. And that includes not having your username as the organization as well!!! That IS considered part of the post.
Posts that do not follow the above guidelines, regardless of the poster, will be edited or deleted at the site administration's discretion.

Sending obscene, threatening or insulting messages to any other members of the site is not in accordance with the rules, whether public or private. This is a family-oriented forum, so if you're not sure if something is obscene, it probably is and don't post it.

Do not post private messages in the forums without proof of author consent. This includes not posting anything illegal, unethical, immoral, etc.

This is a moderated forum. As Moderators, we'd like to do as little moderating as possible, but if you break the rules, we WILL step in. Any member may be banned at any time without warning or explanation if they are breaking the rules, and that such a ban is deemed appropriate by a member of the site administration. If you are following the rules mentioned above (not disruptive and your posts are respectful of others) you will not be banned. Normally you will receive a formal warning first, and if that is disregarded, you will be banned.

Mods are here to maintain a friendly discourse amongst donors. From time to time, Moderators will need to moderate, as described above. If you post here, you must be prepared to live with any edits, deletions or other moderator actions without public complaint. We are a MODERATED forum, not a FREE SPEECH forum. We will, however, attempt to retain the substance of your posted statements, within the constraints mentioned herein.

However, judgement calls need to be made and we acknowledge that reasonable people can disagree and see situations differently. Moderation is not subject to a public appeal. Any public mention of moderation is subject to removal. Private complaints may be addressed via PM to the Mod or Admin. While a moderator will try to explain an action taken on your posts, he/she will not argue about it. If you still have an issue with a mod action that cannot be resolved in a private discussion. or you feel that the Mod has violated our policy, please contact one of the Site Admins (Bruce, Sortofageek, or Uncle_Fungus). [Note: This PM discussion will be retained to facilitate internal review, if necessary but not shared for other purposes.] If you are not satisfied with the Admin's response, you can then further appeal this to the Pande Lab directly, with Prof. Pande being the final arbiter of issues related to Folding@home.

Not firm rules as such, but guidelines for forum users:

Please don't cross post. Its annoying when done, and easily avoided. If you are not sure where a thread should go, post it where you think it may be most relevant. If it is in the wrong section one of the staff will move it for you, to a forum where it may get better exposure.

Do not attempt to correct others when you feel they are not following guidelines. That generally tends to derail a thread and produce an argument. Infractions of the posting rules should be brought to the attention of the moderators privately.

Please pay attention to the intended topic of a thread and don't post off topic. Use the new topic button to start a new thread instead.

If you need help with some aspect of Folding@Home, especially when troubleshooting problems then please post the following details to help make things easier:

Computer Specs: Specifically CPU type and speed, RAM amount and number of CPU cores, especially. Don't forget your GPU type if you're folding with it.
Network Connection: Dialup? Cable? DSL? Via intranet? Any firewalls or proxy servers?
Operating System: Windows/Linux/BSD? What distro/version? Latest patches applied?
Overclocked?: What is overclocked? By how much?
Stable?: Try a few stability testing programs if you think that FaH is crashing your computer. It may be that your PC is just unstable overall.
Software: What version of the client are you using? Remember that Beta and prerelease versions can be unstable. What version of the core(s) are you using?
WU details: Gromacs, DGromacs, SMP, GPU? What WU? Run/Clone/Gen.

Also, when appropriate, please post the contents of fahlog.txt (V6 and earlier] or log.txt {V7]: this tells loads of information and is vital in helping to diagnose/troubleshoot problems.

If you spot any thread requiring attention please feel free to contact one of the administrators or moderators. (The easiest way to do that is with the "Report this post" function in the upper right corner.)

The admins are:
Pythagoras, Bruce, sortofageek and uncle_fungus

The moderators are:
susato, toTOW, and Macaholic, Joe_H, PantherX,.

The Pande Group also have moderator powers over the site but it may be best to contact one of the moderators rather than bother the Pande Group about general moderation issues.

Please, before posting, check that no-one has asked the same question in that forum. This saves having loads of threads on the same issue when all are just covering the same ground. We also have a search facility on the forums.

Please DO NOT double post. We do understand that it's not always possible to know if the same question has been asked previously (see above) but if you're the one who asked it in a different section of the board, one of your threads will be deleted or locked.

In an active thread, it's probably good to quote enough of a post that you're replying to so it's clear which post you're responding to. Moderation is the rule, though. Indiscriminately quoting long passages adds unnecessary length to the thread and is similar to duplicate posts mentioned above.
Locked