Community Guidelines for newcomers

We do our best to welcome all newcomers to the Etherpad Foundation. Thank you for taking a moment to review our guidelines.

The guidelines are here to:

1. Help you become a valuable contributor to the community.

2. Explain what kind of conduct to avoid.

3. Make sure the community is enjoyable for - and respectful of - all our users.

Please interact with other users accordingly and conduct yourself as you would in any professional setting. The goal of the Etherpad Community is to empower our members to build and grow successful and collaborative rich-media solutions and further promote the open source video movement in general. We hope you enjoy visiting the community, return often, and become an active member and frequent contributor.

Keep it clean, keep it professional.

Every post/modification should make a positive contribution to the community and should be suitable for all users. The community is open to all points of view on the intended business-related topics; mature, polite debate is encouraged. But we will remove any post or reply that includes derogatory, abusive, offensive, obscene, violent or inappropriate content of any kind. Always interact with other users respectfully, as you would in any professional setting.

Stay on topic.

Good contributions help the entire community by providing relevant, insightful information or asking important questions.

Be honest, be yourself.

The community is intended to be used for the helpful exchange of information between members. False, inaccurate, or otherwise misleading information is generally not helpful. Please be sincere in your community participation by only contributing content you know is accurate and not misrepresenting your identity or your business qualifications. Keep marketing efforts separate; minimize clutter. A post or reply with a personal agenda only benefits the person who writes it, not the community as a whole, and unsolicited advertising adds distracting clutter to the forums. Please respect the community's mission by not using it as a marketing channel or submitting any content you've been paid or otherwise rewarded by a third party to write.

Submit only your own, original content.

Help us maintain the community's reputation and observe the intellectual property rights of others by only submitting content you have personally written or else properly attributed. The community should not be used to distribute unauthorized copies of any copyrighted material.

Respect the privacy of others.

It's up to you, and only you, to decide whether or not to share personal information about yourself or your business. Any post or reply that includes another user's postal or email addresses, phone numbers, or other contact information will be removed.

Remember your readers.

Writing in ALL CAPS or using HTML tags can make your contribution difficult to read. Excessive typographic symbols, special characters, and instant/text messaging slang can be equally hard to read and may also be confusing to users who are unfamiliar with their meanings. Try to follow standard email etiquette. Help look after your community. The community is here for the benefit and enjoyment of members like you. If you notice content within the community that is in appropriate or does not abide by the guidelines, please report it to our site moderators via the Contact Us form.

Useful links.

IRC channel (#etherpad-lite-dev on Freenode)

Mailing list (use for general discussion or requests for mentoring)

We track issues and accept feature requests here.

Other contact methods.

Basic programming guidelines

@pitapoison, please complete this. I found this book really useful: http://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockford/dp/0596517742 for basic formatting and design details.