Community rules

This document is designed to clarify various responsibilities of community members here at the CEF forum. Please read it and become familiar with it, it's terms are retroactive and agreed by team and group members.

  1. Forum rules

    1. Posts are to be made in the relevant forum. Users are asked to read the forum descriptions before posting. Users consistently posting to the wrong forum may be given a warning (see policing below).
    2. Members should post in a way that is respectful of other users. Flaming or abusing users in any way will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.
    3. Members are asked to not act as “back seat moderators”. If members note an issue which contravenes something in this policy document they are welcome to bring it to the attention of a member of the Moderator Team. Do not respond to such topics yourself. Members who constantly “act” as moderators may be warned.
    4. Members should remember this board is aimed at a general audience. Posting pornographic or generally offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated and will lead to a warning.
    5. Members are asked to respect the copyright of other users, sites, media, etc. Users linking to or asking for information on warez, crackz, etc. or re-printing material without permission will receive a warning and their post will be removed.
    6. Members should respect the bandwidth of other users and sites. The use of inline ([IMG][/IMG]) image tags pointing to data stored on third party systems for which the user has not received permission to link to may be removed.
    7. Members should post in a way which is consistent with "normal writing". That is users should not post excessive numbers of emoticons, large, small or coloured text, etc. Similarly users should not SHOUT or use excessive punctuation (e.g. ! and ?) in topic titles or posts. Users consistently abusing this will be warned.
    8. Members should use an appropriate, descriptive subject when posting a new topic. Examples of bad subjects include; "Help me!", "I'm stuck!", "I've got an error!", etc. Examples of good subjects include; "Problem building CEF using Visual Studio 2008", "Cannot run CEF in multi-threaded mode", etc.
    9. Members are welcome to use the test forum for general "test purposes". These may include checking signatures, testing a link or image, etc. (subject to previous points on decency, warez, etc.).
    10. Spam is not tolerated here under any circumstance. This includes offering hosting services (charged and free), installation services, solicitation etc. Recruiting members for your own projects (moderators, designers, professional MOD work, etc.) is not permitted and is also considered spam. Users posting spam will be warned and their post removed. See specific item on spam and third-party linking for more information.
    11. The above forum rules where applicable also apply to private messaging. Abuse of the private messaging system may lead to warnings (as above) and/or the revocation of private messaging.
  2. Signatures

    1. Signatures may contain up to five lines of text (of small or normal size) and/or one image, valid combinations include; a single image of no more than 60px high, 468px wide and 6KiB (6144 Bytes) in size. Signatures containing an image this large may also include one line of small size text. Signatures containing an image of 30px high may include up to three lines of small size text or two lines of normal size text. Images of 15px height or less may allow up to three lines of normal size text or four lines of small size text. Animated images are not allowed.
    2. Text sizes should be between 75% and 100% (small and normal). Text in signatures is subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, warez, emoticons, and so forth.
    3. Links in signatures are permitted to a maximum of four unique pages or sites. Linked sites may be commercial in nature. You may not include links in a way which suggests you offer official support, software, etc. for CEF. You may not link to warez, porn or political, racist or other similar hate sites. Links are included in signature size limits.
    4. Users abusing these rules will be warned.
  3. Avatars

    1. Users are permitted to utilise a gallery avatar or to link to one of their own (subject to previous points on misuse of bandwidth). User defined avatars are to be no larger than 120 pixels square, contain no animation, contain no image which attempts to portray the user as having an official status here (e.g. mimicking ranks or copying avatars of team members), may not exceed 12KiB (12288 Bytes) in filesize and have a consistently high availability (i.e. links to images on slow servers or those prone to failure may be removed).
    2. Avatars are subject to the same conditions as posts with respect decency, and so forth.
    3. Users abusing these rules will be warned and/or may lose their avatar privileges
  4. Support of CEF

    1. The CEF forum exists to support CEF as made available on the CEF Project Site. No support will be given for versions of CEF released or made available from other sites. This includes but is not limited to; mirrors, modified source code, third-part components, applications, etc. Users of these boards should seek support at the site from where they obtained the package.
    2. Similarly no support is given to versions of CEF older than the version currently available by SVN at the CEF Project Site.
    3. Members who have others install or implement CEF-based applications for them should firstly direct support requests to that person/company. CEF is designed to be easily used and members are strongly encouraged to download and build the software themselves. Support is available for specific questions on building and usage.
    4. Likewise the support forums are not to be used to ask questions on Visual Studio, Windows, Google Chromium, etc. Questions regarding the applications CEF requires should be directed to the support site of the relevant software.
    5. Support is offered only via these forums. Do not contact team members privately (via any method) to ask for support. Users found to be contacting team members asking for support will be warned.
    6. Before posting a support question users are asked to try and solve the issue themselves. This includes reading the documentation on the CEF Project Site, the CEF source code, and using Search. Users who persistently ask questions without showing any desire to help themselves should expect to receive at best a delayed response and at worst no response at all.
    7. When posting a support question bumping is permitted only after six hours have elapsed since the last post to that topic. Users who abuse this will be warned.
    8. Members should note this software and board are maintained on a voluntary basis. No team member receives payment of any kind for time spent here. Users should therefore not post demanding support, bug fixes, etc. Users who disrespect the work of team members will be warned.
  5. Support for third-party modifications, applications and linking offsite

    1. If the author of a CEF-derived modification, project or application maintains their own support board (or uses someone elses board) they may direct users to that board or site for the purpose of offering support and/or updates to their modification, project or application. Alternatively authors may maintain a topic here at the CEF forum (in the appropriate forum) for each item they produce, directing users to that topic where appropriate. Such topics are intended for support only and not for general promotion of non-CEF product, sites, and so forth.
    2. Members may include or post links to third-party sites in an effort to render support for CEF in response to a support request (including requests for modifications, projects or applications not available at this site). Members are not permitted to post links to material unrelated to CEF or where linked material is not relevant to a given support request. The exception to this rule is the Apps Discussion forum, where posts to third-party sites are allowed within the constraints of that forum's intended usage.
    3. Members who maintain localised (non-English) CEF support forums may be allowed a link within the Support section of this site. Members should contact the website team leader to propose their site.
    4. General linking (within posts) to other sites is generally not permitted. Exceptions may be made where links are being offered in a "support context" for non-CEF related questions. Acceptable support contexts may include (but are not limited to): problems with third-party software, hardware, and so forth. Unacceptable support contexts include requests for paid programming services and so forth.
  6. Policing

    1. The CEF forum operates on a three strike policy. Users will be warned a maximum of three times for any and all offences in a three month period. If the need arises for a fourth warning a temporary ban will be put in place of between 1 to 7 days.
    2. Arguing with team members after having received a warning will lead to an immediate additional warning. Should this exceed three strikes a temporary ban will be put in place as above.
    3. Users who feel they have been unfairly warned are welcome to contact the relevant team leader, e.g. if warned by a moderator you should contact the Moderator team leader. If they feel you were treated badly they remove a warning.
    4. Any attempt to circumvent a temporary ban or other moderator action will lead to a permanent ban of your account(s). Circumvention includes re-registering or using an already registered account under a non-banned username. Other examples include changing IP addresses, using a new email account or other action that can be taken to evade moderator action to hide your identity as the owner of the sanctioned account.
    5. An exception to the three strike rule applies when users contact team members personally (via any method) and post insulting, indecent or vulgar material. Such users may be subject to an immediate permanent ban.
    6. Permanent bans are a last resort and thought is given before implementing them. While the CEF forum may consider lifting permanent bans from time to time this is a rare occurrence.