1==================== 2 Mailinglist Rules 3==================== 4 5This is the first file you should be reading before doing any posts on PHP 6mailinglists. Following these rules is considered imperative to the success of 7the PHP project. Therefore expect your contributions to be of much less positive 8impact if you do not follow these rules. More importantly you can actually 9assume that not following these rules will hurt the PHP project. 10 11PHP is developed through the efforts of a large number of people. 12Collaboration is a Good Thing(tm), and mailinglists lets us do this. Thus, 13following some basic rules with regards to mailinglist usage will: 14 15 a. Make everybody happier, especially those responsible for developing PHP 16 itself. 17 18 b. Help in making sure we all use our time more efficiently. 19 20 c. Prevent you from making a fool of yourself in public. 21 22 d. Increase the general level of good will on planet Earth. 23 24 25Having said that, here are the organizational rules: 26 27 1. Respect other people working on the project. 28 29 2. Do not post when you are angry. Any post can wait a few hours. Review 30 your post after a good breather or a good nights sleep. 31 32 3. Make sure you pick the right mailinglist for your posting. Please review 33 the descriptions on the mailinglist overview page 34 (http://www.php.net/mailing-lists.php). When in doubt ask a friend or 35 someone you trust on IRC. 36 37 4. Make sure you know what you are talking about. PHP is a very large project 38 that strives to be very open. The flip side is that the core developers 39 are faced with a lot of requests. Make sure that you have done your 40 research before posting to the entire developer community. 41 42 5. Patches have a much greater chance of acceptance than just asking the 43 PHP developers to implement a feature for you. For one it makes the 44 discussion more concrete and it shows that the poster put thought and time 45 into the request. 46 47 6. If you are posting to an existing thread, make sure that you know what 48 previous posters have said. This is even more important the longer the 49 thread is already. 50 51 7. Please configure your email client to use a real name and keep message 52 signatures to a maximum of 2 lines if at all necessary. 53 54The next few rules are more some general hints: 55 56 1. If you notice that your posting ratio is much higher than that of other 57 people, double check the above rules. Try to wait a bit longer before 58 sending your replies to give other people more time to digest your answers 59 and more importantly give you the opportunity to make sure that you 60 aggregate your current position into a single mail instead of multiple 61 ones. 62 63 2. Consider taking a step back from a very active thread now and then. Maybe 64 talking to some friends and fellow developers will help in understanding 65 the other opinions better. 66 67 3. Do not top post. Place your answer underneath anyone you wish to quote 68 and remove any previous comment that is not relevant to your post. 69 70 4. Do not high-jack threads, by bringing up entirely new topics. Please 71 create an entirely new thread copying anything you wish to quote into the 72 new thread. 73 74Finally, additional hints on how to behave inside the virtual community can be 75found in RFC 1855 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html). 76 77Happy hacking, 78 79PHP Team 80
