and to be merged/put in place instead of viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2
The following document will provide some rules and guidelines on how to ask questions the best way, how to answer to help your peers, and how to keep everyone happy and lessen the work for supporters, forum administrators and moderators.
Some basic information:
The international Mageia forum is a platform for information exchange, questions and discussions,
to receive support and give feedback, for complaints and acclaims, and user opinions in general.
The official language for the international forum is English, if you want to use another
language please have a look at viewforum.php?f=20
Currently there are supporting communities forums available in Chinese, French, Greek, Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish. The official German forum is not linked there, as it is no external forum,
but can be accessed at https://forums.mageia.org/de
Anyone can read the forums without the need to login or register. If you want to participate
actively, which means posting your questions or answering to other people's posts, then you need
to login with your identity.mageia.org account or register one, more on that topic at
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia.org_user_account
There is no commitment by registering such an account, every contribution to the forum is done
on a voluntary basis.
Before you post:
Be respectful, be nice. Don't assume. And please read and understand the implications of Mageias Code of Conduct: https://mageia.org/en/about/code-of-conduct/
How To Post
As described in the FAQ, click on the Forums link at the top of the page and select the correct Forum for your thread, after reading the descriptions. Once inside the Forum, look for the New Thread button on the top left. Click and you will have a box to begin typing. But, before you do, read and understand all of the Rules and Guidelines below.
Guidelines
These guidelines if followed can help you get more from the forum and make it a more pleasurable experience for everyone.
General
- Be polite. This is a user forum and we all do this as a hobby, in our free time. "Please" and "thank you" can get you a long way.
- Try to make understanding as easy as possible. We're an international forum with users from all over the world and not all of us are fluent in English. Write in as proper English as you are capable of. Honest mistakes are fine, we all make them.
- Any form of advertising or spamming is disregarded and unwanted. It will be handled by moderators mostly without warning and will result in permanent banning from the forum.
Remember: - Write in English.
- Add whitespace to your posts. Use enter for paragraphs.
- Capitalize Correctly. All uppercase is considered screaming and very rude. All lower is hard to read.
- Use correct punctuation. Never use more than one question mark or exclamation mark and only at the end of a sentence.
- Never use "texting abbreviations", "leet-speak" or slang. The purpose of language is being understood, not sounding cool.
- Never invent acronyms, use as few acronyms as possible. It's called a problem, not a "pb" and a question, not a "Q".
- Never use colors in all of your posts. Colors are there to highlight something important.
- Read your post over before posting it. Try to catch typos. If you find an error after posting, use the Edit button to make your corrections.
- Don't "bump" your post by adding a second post with no worthwhile content. The Forum controls will automatically add any additional post as an 'edit' of your first post within the first 24 hours. If you haven't received a response in over 24 hours, consider following up with the efforts you've tried in the meantime and their result. Naturally, if you forgot to add important information, an edit of your first post is acceptable.
- Report bad posts. If you discover an abusive post or someone posting a thread in the wrong section, report it to the staff using the "Report Post" link, that is above every post, displayed as a red exclamation mark inside a triagle, next to the Quote-button.
- Don't PM or email individuals with requests for help. The right way to get answers to problems is to post a thread and let everyone have a chance to respond. That way, the solution is there for the next member to view. The Staff and other knowledgeable members donate their time to help solve problems, but personal requests are impolite and an imposition.
- Go easy on the images, they may help to explain something more clearly or indicate a problem you are experiencing better but you have to remember that not everyone has the same amount of bandwidth to waste on downloading large image files. If you feel you have to post images, make sure that they're properly compressed.
- Images are not welcome in signatures, as they can significantly increase the load time for users. Your avatar is a space for an image, your signature is not.
- Trolling, Flaming and Whining threads will be closed. We're not here to pit one distro or OS against another. In fact, most of us use multiple OS's and/or distros. Likewise, if you're displeased with Mageia and want to leave parting remarks, comment to the developers using the appropriate mailing lists or bugzilla if you have any technical issues to report. Remember that the Forum is users helping users, but as we're a community-based distribution, we can fix problems with the distribution, if you report it properly.
When Asking Questions
- Please search the international Mageia forum, and current Errata/Release Notes for your Mageia version before asking questions and also give google a whirl as well. There's a good chance your question has been answered before.
- This is also explained in more details in this wiki page: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_ask_help
- Details, details, details! Don't be brief. Include your Mageia version number, the architecture of your computer (i.e. 32bit or 64bit, or in the case of video cards NVIDIA model or ATI model), the version of the component you're having trouble with and everything you think might help, and if you have a problem with your desktop environment, always tell which desktop environment you're using (KDE, GNOME, LXDE, XFCE ...). If you're using 3rd party RPMs explain where you got them from. Attach screen shots or other files if you think it might be useful, although text output is always preferred compared to screenshots.
- If you're posting error messages, please make sure you post them in english. You can do this easily by prefixing the command you want to run in a terminal by LC_ALL=C .
- Don't talk yourself down. Don't call yourself an idiot, we have all been newbies at some point. Don't add things like this to your posts:
Quote: I know I'm an idiot but I just can't figure this out.. - No question is too stupid.
- Don't mark your question as important or critical. All questions asked are equally important.
- Come back to the forum even after your question has been answered and give your thanks to the people who helped you. Try to generate that good, warm, fuzzy feeling amongst your peers. And, as your skills increase, consider coaching others.
When Answering Questions
- Don't be cruel. We have all been newbies at one point and no one needs someone telling them how stupid they are.
- Don't use jargon in your instructions if it can be avoided, newbies may not understand. If you don't have any better answer than RTFM (Read the fine manual), just be quiet.
- Point the user to existing resources if they can provide useful information.
This includes: official Mageia documentation on Installer and draktools, available in several languages: https://doc.mageia.org
the Mageia Wiki https://wiki.mageia.org or the Mageia mailing lists in your answers
Searching the Mageia Bugzilla is a good idea as well. - Always assume that the user has a default installation unless you're told otherwise. This means that you can't tell anyone to use APT without providing instructions on how to install APT or at least link to an APT tutorial, as APT isn't included in the default installation. If you tell people to use an application outside of Core, give instructions on how to install it.
- Always assume that the user is a newbie unless you're certain the user is not. Give detailed instructions.
- Use proper formatting, use [CODE] tags around terminal commands. You can attach files and pictures that you think might help.
- Do things the Mageia-way, be pragmatic. There is always more than one solution to a problem, choose the one you think will be the easiest for the user. Automatic package installation (using RPMdrake) over manual installation. RPM over source. Where possible get people to use the official Mageia repositories. They are of higher quality and also supported by Mageia. Don't replace any Core packages and never instruct users to do anything that might break their system, this includes using --force and --nodeps when installing an RPM. Try to think as a newbie and choose the simplest solution.
- Explain each step of the solution. The ideal solution to a problem should be able to teach the user how to solve similar problems in the future.
Teach people to fish, don't just throw them a salmon.