HL has been lobbying for this for some time now (since before Adam & Eve) along with several others here on Unity. Perhaps if we provide a list of suggested rules/guidelines then Boonex can consider adopting/adapting them to make the lives of those who help out here easier. I'm also hoping this will help some of the new members that have joined or resurrected their profiles with the release of D7 to get better assistance with their questions. So, without further ado here is my suggestion, it would be greatly appreciated if eveyone could toss in their 2 cents on this.
1. Please Post in the forum that applies to your problem or question. D6 Threads go in D6. D7 Threads go in D7. Beta & RC go in Beta & RC. This is not a difficutl concept and it will help out greatly in providing assistance to you. Right now we have a huge mess of D7 items landing in the D6.1 Forums. These need to either be moved or deleted.
2. Do NOT double post your question. This only annoys the people who are going to help you if we see 8 or 9 threads all by the same person for the same issue. Yes, we have seen that in the past. If you do accidentally double post (it does happen) please edit the second one marking it as a double post, requesting that it be deleted.
3. Do a SEARCH for your question. DB Errors can be and are often unique, most other stuff is usually being experienced by others and a search will normally provide you with much faster results than asking a question will. If you do a search and do not find the answer that resolves your problem, then please post a thread and we will be happy to help you. Keep in mind, when using search please do more than 1 attempt, trying multiple ways and look for the message, not the topic. We have way to many old threads titled help! Urgent! Emergency! and so on that have no reference in their subject line to the problem, but it is well described in the thread. We will often link you to the threads that have your solution and/or tell you to do a search if it's a very common item.
4. Post a Subject Line that actually tells us the base of the issue. Again, Help! Urgent! Emergency! do no good. A great example is: Bug: Photo Upload Security Attack. That tells us that when you try to upload a photo you end up with the security attack going off on your site. This enables the person looking at the overall list of threads to gain an idea of what they will see when they open the thread and be better prepared to help you. Yes, we know Christmas just passed, but we do not consider threads to be Christmas presents and we're not looking for a big surprise when we open it.
5. Do NOT go off on the people trying to help you. The vast majority of people here are doing it for free and each of them has a unique posting style. Some will be overly polite, some are extremely abrasive (looks around, wondering who that could be) and most are somewhere in between. You will find some will post the solution with nothing added, others will mix it in with sarcasm and/or humor. Don't take it personal and get worked up over it. Often the sarcasm/humor posts are done when a question is asked repeatedly and the answer is very easily findable in a search. It's our way of breaking up the monotony of the forums. Nothing more and nothing less. If you do take it personal and go off on someone providing free help to you, then don't be surprised when your next question garners very little or no support, or even worse, they return the favor of responding back to the attitude thrown to them. Look at it like this: If you ask someone for a loan and they give it to you, do you care if they give you a lecture on good money management and why hookers are a bad investment? I'm for one am willing to bet your kids will be eating on that money you asked to borrow that very night and not going hungry because you got offended. It's the same thing when you ask for help in here. Those who provide it are actually paying to provide it to you. Whether it's via a Premium membership (many have them), server fees, dolphin licensing and even some who own development companies and are utilizing those companies to replicate your problem. So don't take the position that we owe this to you, many, many, many here do actually pay for the ability to be able to help you out.
6. Do NOT post job requests in the forums. We have a market for you to post requests for people to work on your site and that is the proper place to put them.
7. Do NOT post an e-mail address at the end of your thread for people to respond to. Guess what? Noone will respond to it with an answer but you will get tons of e-mails in it. Unfortunately those will be e-mails for breast enlargement and scrotum tucks. Not the assistance you wanted. These threads almost always end up with either no reponses or smart arse responses about how we are so happy to bow down and serve you. NOT!
8. Do NOT ask us to post in the forums how to accomplish the work that is in a mod listed in the Market or on Expertzzz. We're not going to do it. The guys who develop those mods work hard and deserve to be paid for their work, when you ask us to do it for you for free your asking us to help you shoplift/steal. Not going to happen in here.
9. Do NOT come in here with a stolen modification (one you got without paying or from someone at a huge discount to the original or one that you got by swapping with someone. Mods off of warez/bit torrent/limwire and so on are stolen mods). Recognize that stolen mods are distributed by people who like to steal. What makes you think that mod will work and that it's not filled with malicious code that will steal your DB or wreck your site? If it does, we're not going to help you.
10. When you have a mod that does not work, please go to the mod creator first. They know their mod better than we do and the vast majority are very happy to help you out at no additional cost. It's called customer service.
11. Please provide Version your running, server type (shared, VPS, Dedicated), if site is adult oriented, problem that your having.
Well, I could keep going on here, but it would be more fun to see what eveyrone else wants to throw into this thread. Again, these are just suggestions and maybe we can get boonex to open a D7 Bug thread and adopt much of this into a type of sticky at the top of the threads to help organize all of it.
