Code of Conduct

To participate in this community, you must treat others how they would like to be treated. This means being respectful, honoring people’s boundaries, and maintaining courtesy.

If you’re willing to abide by this code, you’re welcome here. If not, please don’t participate.

Guides

In addition to this document, you may find the following guides useful:

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Please spend some time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Don’t Harass or Dehumanize

You should treat everyone in the Exploit: Zero Day community with respect. We don’t tolerate harassment, including public shaming, persistent unwanted communication, and unwelcome sexual attention. Avoid sexualized content.

Don’t discriminate based on gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, psychological makeup, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion (or lack thereof). This list is not all-encompassing.

Roleplaying Respectfully

This community includes in-character roleplaying. You’re welcome to portray a character here that’s different than yourself. You’re even welcome to portray an unpleasant character; these characters help make stories interesting. However, keep in mind that there are real people behind the characters.

Don’t take part in roleplay that makes other players feel annoyed or unwelcome. If you’re not sure whether another player would welcome a certain kind of roleplaying, message them privately and get their consent first. With another player’s consent, you can participate in roleplay that wouldn’t be acceptable out-of-character, but the rules about discrimination still apply. In-character hate speech is never acceptable.

You’re welcome to be rude to non-player characters like the ZeroDay inner circle and Samsara associates as long as you’re not discriminatory or disruptive.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But, remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling.
  • Ad hominem attacks.
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content.
  • Knee-jerk contradiction.

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for everyone. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: favorites, bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s try to leave our park better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts in any way; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.
  • Avoid profanity. Don’t use swear words.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Handle Rules

We want our community to be welcoming. Don’t pick a handle or username that will contribute to an unpleasant environment. Some groundrules:

  • No profanity.
  • No references to sex or sexual anatomy.
  • No references to illegal drugs.
  • No slurs or deliberately provocative handles.

This list isn’t exhaustive. Be considerate of other members when picking your handle.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a New Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

Terms of Use

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves – and by extension, you and your data – against unfriendly folks. We have a Terms of Use describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our Terms of Use.

This guide is based on Discourse’s default FAQ.