The Core is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a beloved family member. This is a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

Take a few minutes to read through these guidelines to keep this a community we can all learn and benefit from.

Improve the Discussion

Make sure your comments improve the discussion in some way before posting. If you aren't sure your post adds to the conversation, take a step back and decide if you really need to make that post.

Most of the topics discussed here are pretty important to us, and we hope they are important to you too! Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Keep reposts to a minimum. Please spend some time browsing the topics before replying or starting your own topic to make sure it hasn't already been posted. This makes it easier to keep track of conversations and keeps the noise level down.

Be Respectful

Always be respectful to other! It's okay to disagree with someones ideas, theories, comments, spelling of the word color/colour, but you should never make personal attacks for any reason. Also, while sarcasm can be a fun conversational tool in real-life, it's hard to get it to come across right in text. Make sure you know your audience.

Please avoid the following at all times:

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

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, informative place to be.

The Core forums (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.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for keeping The Core a respectful, civilized place, but so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

If you see people being disrespectful or posting inappropriate content, don’t reply, 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. MaxPlay takes 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.

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.

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.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use the Reply as a Linked Topic option to the right of the post when hovered.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

Don't claim ownership of items that are not yours, if you post something someone else created, give credit where credit is due. 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.

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This site is operated by your friendly local staff and you, The Core. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the Ask The Community category and let's discuss! If there's a critical or urgent issue that can't be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us via the staff page.

Terms of Service

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