Online forums are a great place for people to meet up and share thoughts on things they love. Forums have been around quite a while, but it can be very helpful to learn a few important things that can substantially improve your experience here.
Steps you can take to keep the forums running smoothly:
Please keep in mind that forum accounts are non-transferable.
Many of these guidelines are common sense, and serve to keep the forums useful, safe and secure for everyone. We thank you for your cooperation and support in this, and if you have any questions, suggestions or feedback regarding the Rules of Conduct, please ping a Moderator or Community Manager.
Welcome to PCBTalk!
Steps you can take to keep the forums running smoothly:
- If you see any posts by bots, spammers, or any posts that violate our forums rules, click the Report link beneath the post to notify a Moderator of an issue.
- Keep criticism constructive! If you disagree with an opinion, explain why, but never attack the person.
- Use formatting to improve the quality of your post. See below for a great, quick guide on how to format using BBCode.
- If creating a new post, create a post title that is short, but accurate. If more detail is needed, use the thread body to provide more.
- Check the date of the last post in a thread before replying. If the most recent post is more than 3 months old, create a new thread on the same topic. You can link to the previous thread as reference, but we want to avoid “necro” posts that attempt to resuscitate old threads.
- Don’t post in ALL CAPS or use excessive punctuation.
- If you have a lot of info to share, be sure to break your posts up into different paragraphs using the Enter key. It is very difficult to comfortably read a lot of info when it’s displayed as a wall of text without breaks.
- Don't bump posts, claim "First!" or give single-word replies. Clear and correct answers will encourage more people to stop by and engage with our community.
- Hijacking a topic. Keep to the original subject matter so the entire community can be confident that the posts they read will have info relevant to their questions. This also makes conversations easier to find when others come looking for similar answers.
- Spam or encourage spam. Commercial spam is handled with a zero tolerance policy. No posting links to any commercial service or product if you are personally affiliated.
- Be rude or impolite. Behind each user is a real person. Personal attacks or insults are not allowed.
- Attempting to manipulate forum features such as trophies, direct messages, time outs, bans, or any other aspects of the forum. Misuse, or abuse, of the forums will result in a permanent ban.
Please keep in mind that forum accounts are non-transferable.
Many of these guidelines are common sense, and serve to keep the forums useful, safe and secure for everyone. We thank you for your cooperation and support in this, and if you have any questions, suggestions or feedback regarding the Rules of Conduct, please ping a Moderator or Community Manager.
Welcome to PCBTalk!