Rules 📕

1. Every platform has its own guidelines you must follow. Ensure you are following the terms of service for every platform you join.
2. Create an environment where people aren’t afraid to speak and ask questions. This means: No flaming, personal bashing, excessive trolling, out of control arguments, insults, and similar behavior. If something gets out of hand, ping an admin/mod and let them handle it.
3. Everyone deserves equal treatment and equal respect. No gatekeeping! Everyone is joining from different stages in their tech journey, so instead of disrespecting others, share ideas and information with them to help them grow.
4. To incorporate all ages and demographics, NSFW topics and content are strictly not allowed. This includes – but is not limited to – videos or images depicting sexual actions, whether real or illustrated; verbal descriptions of sexual acts; and any other discussions related to these topics.
5. Discriminatory jokes and hate speech are not allowed. Hate speech is an attack on an individual or group based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or disabilities.
6. All illegal content is strictly prohibited. This includes (but is not limited to) illegal licenses or key generators, ‘cracked’ software, illegal media content, personal threats, and other such topics and behavior. It is of the utmost importance that the security and privacy community is completely disassociated with illegal activities.
7. Respect all moderator decisions. If you have an issue with a moderator decision, please submit a report with as many details as possible to our contact page. Do not argue with the moderator either in chat or in direct messages, nor make any attempts to circumvent any actions they have taken. Not respecting this policy may result in an immediate ban.
8. Community bans apply across all Techlore communities and accounts. Do not attempt to circumvent bans by joining other Techlore-operated platforms. Doing so will result in a permanent ban extension.

Additional Community Guidelines 📗

These aren’t strict ‘rules’ but general guidelines we expect you to follow when chatting in Techlore communities. We expect all our community members to act in good faith, and if you continually disregard our guidelines you may lose certain privileges in our community. Continually violating these guidelines may result in formal warns or bans!

1. We expect members to follow a Burden of Proof model, where it’s the sole responsibility of the person making a claim to supply evidence of the claim. Ex. If you claim something is untrusted, you have to supply your reasoning & evidence for why you believe it to be untrusted. This allows community members to understand your reasoning and make educated assessments on the evidence provided, as well as engage in an open dialogue. Don’t expect others to do all this research, and don’t continually argue or disagree if you are unwilling to do so. It’s not others’ job to disprove you. It’s your job to provide evidence and proof.
2. Avoid discussing controversial or offensive topics. While occasionally warranted, oftentimes topics like politics or religion distract from our goals of education, and those topics may be better served elsewhere. More offensive topics including acts of violence, suicide/self-harm, or school shootings are always off-topic and should be avoided. Hate speech including racist, homophobic, sexist, or ableist slurs are always strictly prohibited pursuant to our rules above.
3. Please avoid avatar/profile names that may confuse you with a moderator, admin, or another user. If we notice community members are confused by your profile choices, we’ll ask you to make necessary changes.
4. We ask people to disclose conflicts of interest in relevant discussions. For example, if you develop a messenger and enter a discussion about another messenger, we ask you to clearly disclose your conflict of interest to the community for transparency. We also discourage our platforms being used by services to critique a direct competitor. For example, if you manage a VPN service, it is discouraged for you to open a thread criticizing another VPN provider. We want to avoid our platform being abused by services for self-gain, and we feel these criticisms should come from the community—not a direct competitor. If a service wants to criticize a competitor, it can always be done away from our platform.