Server Rules

Please be polite to each other, and remember that you are in a server which is mostly intended for discussion about Linux®.

General Rules: Linux.Chat on Discord

Do not break or joke about breaking Discord’s TOS or Community Guidelines.

The minimum age to use Discord is 13. Joking about this or claiming you’re younger puts your account at risk of termination.

Ban evasion using alts is also against Discord TOS and also puts your accounts at risk of termination.

This is an English-only server.

NSFW is defined as content that is Not Safe For Work. You may not send any NSFW content in any shape or form, including images, links, profile pictures, statuses and emotes.

Examples of NSFW content include, but are not limited to:
● Nudity, pornography, sexually suggestive material or comments, gore, violence, homophobia and racism
● Minors portrayed in inappropriate situations
● Disturbing material or material intended to deceive, including material that appears NSFW but is not
● Anything sensitive to the eyes or ears, including colorful flashing images or loud audio
● Excessive swearing
● Asking for or “trading” images, such as hand pictures for feet pictures

This includes text, images, emojis and reactions.

Spamming is defined as sending messages rapidly or on multiple lines or editing messages rapidly.

Flooding is sending overly long messages, such as walls of text which causes a disruption in chat.

Spamming is against Discord TOS and puts your account at risk of termination.

Advertising includes sending content that promotes something, including but not limited to a server, social media page … etc.

Advertising also includes indirectly promoting something by talking about it in an attempt to lure or interest members.
For example mentioning something about a server, or asking someone to join a server or check your social media page.

Harassment includes abusive, insulting, provoking, threatening, derogatory, condescending or demeaning language use towards other persons. This includes any form of sexism, racism or homophobia.

Excessively mentioning other persons or creating alt accounts to bypass moderation is considered harassment.

Any form of consistent, repetitive or bothersome behavior targeted towards other persons is considered harassment, including trolling or anything clearly intended to be intimidating.

“DOXing” or disclosure of sensitive or personally identifiable information is considered harassment and is against the law in many countries.

No defamation of character is allowed. False statements that damages the reputation of another person will not be tolerated.

Impersonation includes, but is not limited to the following:
● Copying another persons or bots profile picture, nickname or username
● Falsely claiming to be a staff member
● Falsely claiming that you are the person in an image (catfishing)

Excessive toxicity includes, but is not limited to:
● Starting arguments
● Backhanded or malicious comments
● Purposely making other members uncomfortable
● Trying to start drama, including bringing drama from other communities to this server.

Keep your interactions with others pleasant and civil.

Discussion of or joking about raiding will not be tolerated.

Raiding is defined as a coordinated effort that disrupts any platform or persons experience, including but not limited to Discord servers, online meeting platforms or games.

Discussions relating to mass reporting of user accounts is also considered raiding.

Raiding is against Discord TOS and puts your account at risk of being terminated.

Sub servers are defined as communities that form with the sole purpose of, or engages in, soliciting members from this server.

Examples of what would be classified as a sub-server include, but is not limited to:
● A new or growing server where the majority of the active members are members of this server
● A server that is being DM advertised to members of this server
● A server that is created with the purpose of being a “new” hangout spot

Any talk about wanting to harm oneself, or the encouragement of someone to hurt themselves is not allowed.

If you are suffering a crisis and need a professional to talk to please visit [Crisis Hotlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_hotline) and [Suicide Crisis Hotlines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines).

This includes spoilers relating to media content such as books, TV shows, movies … etc.

When reporting to staff, do not fabricate, exaggerate, or otherwise be dishonest or misleading with your statements. This includes any form of dishonesty by way of omission.

When questioned by a staff member we expect you to tell us the truth.

Attempting to bypass filters including but not limited to replacing characters, using fillers or obfuscation is not permitted.

Exploiting bots is not permitted, should you find a vulnerability or exploit please report it responsibly to staff.

Do not post fake links as these could potentially be malicious. This includes fake or misspelled image site links.

Do not post previously claimed Nitro links or fake Nitro links.

Other links can be posted in line with the rules when reaching the required level, however you will be held responsible should our bot detect a link as being malicious.

Begging will not be tolerated, this includes begging for Nitro, any game currency or item.

Do not feed, instigate, provoke or entertain trolls. Doing so disrupts chat more and will result in the same action being taken by staff against you.

This is not a dating server.

Do not discuss politics or religion. These are topics which may cause strong emotions and conflict.

Alts are not permitted. These are additional user accounts under the control of the same person.

Elitism is not allowed, this includes bashing another persons choice of distro or software.

NEVER click on links you receive via DM or in chat. If someone sends you links in DM, open a support ticket.

Voice Chat Rules: Linux.Chat on Discord

Voice chat rules are over and above the general server rules above.

External software such as soundboards, voice changers, and other sound altering software is not allowed.

Do not excessively join and leave channels.

Only one music bot is permitted per channel.

Server Vision

The purpose of Linux.Chat on Discord is to provide a fun and friendly medium for new and hardcore Linux® users alike seeking help, advice and constructive discussion on Linux® related topics. The server is for ALL levels of user experience, including none.

Issue Resolution Procedure

If you have an issue, here is the procedure to get it resolved:

  1. Support tickets can be logged using the #contact-staff channel
  2. If you are unhappy with the resolution provided by staff, you need to compile a list of logs and screenshots of the issue and the previous step you followed. Make a clear concise summary of what your issue is, why you think its not being dealt with properly and send a DM to the server owner OpenSourceCoder. If you skip the above step, start with personal attacks … etc, you’re more than likely not going to get a reply.

How to be a good server member

  • Be Nice!
  • Polish your catalyst skills. The catalyst role is key to keeping server interactions friendly and efficient. For more information on catalyst skills visit our Catalyst Guidelines page.
  • Don’t be elitist. Today’s newbies are tomorrow’s experts. A support server is a place where people with knowledge lead by example. Is the example you want to set that technical knowledge is a hierarchy of control, or that people with knowledge have an inherent social advantage over people who don’t? Please think before referring people to links, which combine suggestions for making support requests with a casual attitude of superiority over the newbie. Helping other people takes patience. It’s better not to answer a question than to use the opportunity to emphasize the limitations of the person you’re trying to help.
  • Avoid highlighting and repetition. Words and sentences in all-uppercase, heavy use of bold and repeating the same or similar lines over and over.
  • Avoid using foul language, remember we have a lot of young Linux® enthusiasts. In todays world people as young as 13 are installing and tinkering with Linux®.
  • Avoid advocacy debates. BSD versus GPL, vi versus emacs, centralized versus decentralized, RMS versus ESR, Linux® versus Windows: these discussions are frequently religious and may not involve significant new ideas.
  • Argue the point, not the person, i.e.: Don’t argue a point by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument, rather address the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.
  • You might not get too worked up if you’re arguing the relative merits of poll() or kqueue(), but if you walk into a discussion with a strong emotional need to “get your way”, consider the possibility you are simply arguing preference or personal affiliation. Advocacy discussions are best held quietly, via /msg, or on channels especially created for the purpose.
  • Pasting: Please use tripple quotes “` to paste many lines of text (or use a pastebin such as pastebin.com, paste.linux.chat or termbin.com).
  • Don’t be caught by support burnout. It’s nearly impossible to answer every technical question that comes to your channel. In many cases, the problem doesn’t lie in the technical aspects of the question; cultural barriers may get in the way of communication, or it may be difficult to explain to a newbie just where to begin. When you try to answer every question, regardless of difficulty, you set yourself up for support burnout.

Off-topic Discussion in On-topic Channels

Server staff will react differently to off-topic discussions in on-topic channels at different times of the day. Various reactions may be:

  • Absolutely nothing.
  • Request the discussion cease and be moved to off-topic, or to DM’s.
  • Request the discussion simply cease. In that case, please respect that request and consider moving your conversation to a more appropriate place or DM’s.
  • Muting one or several of the participants entertaining the off-topic discussion.
  • Banning one or several of the participants entertaining the off-topic discussion.

As the issue of off-topic debate is a sensitive topic for many people, factors influencing the ops decisions are briefly outlined below:

  • Time of day affect staff decisions, what is acceptable at early hours of the morning when only two people are active may not be acceptable at the busiest times of the day.
  • When on-topic discussion is taking place, it is more likely for off-topic discussion to be discouraged.
  • When the participants in the discussion seem to have little care for which channel they’re in. If two people join the server in a short time period and start discussing off-topic issues, they will more than likely be dealt with more harshly than someone that has taken part in on-topic discussion and knows what the purpose of the channel is.
  • The response ops get to warnings or actions taken. Swearing at, threatening, arguing with staff regarding a case of off-topic discussion is not a good idea.
  • The amount of and frequency of off-topic discussion.
  • Subject of the off-topic discussion, Topics that are more likely to generate a lot of traffic from random people like (politics, sex, movies … etc) are more than likely to get a response from a staff member.
  • As “unfair” as it may seem, it doesn’t matter if those in the channel are regulars or newbies, our channels have a purpose and a topic.

Discussions that have come up frequently enough to make specific mention for off-topic or borderline discussions are outlined below:

  • Installing Linux® as a dual boot OS is considered on-topic, if you can assist another Linux® user in running Linux® on his machine along with another OS, please do.
  • Non-standard devices and emulators: Nintendo, Playstation, X-Box, TiVo, etc, where the EULA contains provisions against reverse engineering or otherwise re-implementing the technology or modifying the hardware. Discussing these is considered against Discord TOS.
  • Android: While Android uses Linux® as its kernel, it’s highly modified for each device running it and lacks much or most of the userland and toolsets of common GNU/Linux® distributions. While we don’t directly support or discourage the use of Android, it may be better to find a server more suited to these discussions.
  • VPS & Hosting services: You may have Linux® through the use of a VPS or other hosting provider. Though it may be running Linux®, it may also be having problems beyond even your control to work with, fix, diagnose, etc. If you’re having problems with it, it’s always best to contact your provider’s help, because either it’s a restriction, terms-of-use issue, or just something that cannot be evaluated very clearly it is more up to the service provider to help you, and you are paying them for that fact. Setting up services like Apache and such will be acceptable if there’s no major complications that may be a result of VPS/Hosting setup.
  • Cygwin: Cygwin is made to be a Linux® like environment for Windows. It does not use the Linux® kernel, and has a lot of the GNU tools, but are compiled for use in Windows. The support channel for Cygwin is #cygwin and you may get better support there for any questions or issues you may have.
  • Torrents/Metalinks: Discussing torrents, metalinks and the like for purposes which do not clearly relate to GNU/Linux® is off-topic.

Despite this long and fascist-sounding list, staff are generally sane people and if you make a minimal effort to respect the channel rules and guidelines you shouldn’t have any problem.

ChangeLog

[2021-06-08] Added rules for Linux.Chat on Discord.