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