This is a civilized place for public discussion

Please treat this community with the same respect you would a public park. We too are a public resource — this is a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation and discussion.

The conversations we have here set the tone for everyone. Help us shape the community by choosing to engage in discussions that make the community an interesting place to be and avoiding those that do not.

To ensure that everyone can understand and participate in the discussion, we ask that you keep all your public posts in English. But feel free to use whatever language you want when sending messages to other users, if you know they can understand you.

These are not hard and fast rules, merely aids to the human judgment of our community. Use these guidelines to keep this a clean, open place for civilized public discussion.

This is a crowd development forum

This forum exists for the purpose of crowd-developing great devices and accessories. Crowd development means that you can help us decide what products are made, and how they are made. Please note that though we value the input from our community members and may call on you at times to ask for advice, final decisions are ultimately still up to DOUGH.

Though the community helps to shape the product DOUGH develops, business decisions are made by DOUGH as is necessary to maintain a healthy company.

We appreciate that some of the people who participate in this community are also customers of DOUGH products. That said, customers do not have special status, and will be treated just like everyone else.

If you are in need of support, we recommend contacting our support team through the contact form on our website. They will be able to look into the situation and provide a fitting solution.

This applies to all issues regarding:

  • Defects, damage, warranty and repair
  • Orders, billing, shipping and delivery
  • Status updates on existing support tickets

There are some exceptions where leveraging the combined experience of the community is the right way to get an answer. Examples of valid topics for discussion include Windows or other OS issues, as well as third-party software and accessories.

Always be civil, even if you disagree

You may wish to respond to something you disagree with. That’s fine. But, remember to criticise ideas, not people. Provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the discussion.

We encourage users to share their constructive thoughts, positive or negative, provided it is presented in a civil and factual manner. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family, friends and work. Posts that are intentionally rude or insulting will not be tolerated and will be deleted regardless of how valid the ideas behind them are. Remember that nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness.

Avoid:

  • Using inappropriate language, including sexually explicit, violent, or offensive language and name-calling.
  • Verbal attacks on personas.
  • Venting your personal anger or dissatisfaction.
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content.
  • Impulsive contradictions.
  • Revealing or threatening to reveal personal details of other users. You are advised not to reveal personal information about yourself in the forum.
  • Harassing, griefing or impersonating people.
  • Using the forum or private messages for encouraging, promoting, endorsing or inciting any form of movement, in particularly legal action against anyone is strictly prohibited.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things.

Keep it tidy

Remember that things you want to discuss or ask may have been asked or discussed already. Therefore you should always make sure you search before you ask or start a new topic.

Make an effort to keep things tidy and in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up.

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.
  • Don’t post “+1”, “Agreed” or similar — use the Like button instead.

Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use the ‘Reply as a Linked Topic’ function found in the share button. Alternatively, you can send the user a message to talk about it in private.

Before you post something, think about whether, and if so, what, your post adds to the discussion. If it doesn’t, think about whether anyone really would want to read it or if it’s better to try again later.

Speculation, especially when it is negative and untrue, tends to incite flaming and trolling — if an issue deserves an official word, it will be communicated. Baseless speculation and the encouraging of such conversations is prohibited.

Posts that demand specific answers/dates/results that exclude public participation e.g., “When will the next project start?” can only be answered by DOUGH staff and are not constructive to community discussion in any meaningful manner. Such topics will be moderated accordingly.

Wording is important

Remember that you are in an English community where a large portion of the members aren’t native English speakers. Also, everyone’s culture and economic and political standing can greatly influence how they interpret certain words over others. Adding this all together, misunderstandings are bound to happen. So please:

  • Ask for further explanation if you don’t understand something.
  • If you think someone have misunderstood you, point it out and explain it to them.
  • If someone argues with you they aren’t arguing against you, but rather against your ideas.
  • Think about what you write and how it might come across to others before posting it.
  • Check your posts for typos and ambiguous wording.
  • If English is not your mother tongue, make sure you properly understand what the words you use mean before you post. You may not know their full meaning even if you’ve seen them used similarly.

If you feel insulted, think first about whether the person really wants to insult you or if they just picked their words poorly. Give them the benefit of the doubt just as you would want to be given it.

Flags, posts and you

When you see bad behaviour, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behaviour by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accumulate, action will be taken automagically or by Community Manager intervention.

But there is one case where flagging isn’t the answer. If a whole segment of a topic has gone off-topic, please send the Community Managers a message about it rather than flagging the whole segment as off-topic. It is far less work if you do it this way, while the result stays the same.

In order to maintain our community, the team reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time.
While the DOUGH team reviews new topics posted by Trust level 0 users and posts caught by our spam filters before they are posted, no one (except the posters themselves) reviews any posts before being posted beyond this.

Community Managers

This site is operated by the DOUGH Community Management team and you, the community. If you have any further questions or thoughts about how things should work here, open a new topic in the forum feedback category and let’s discuss. But remember to check if it has already been posted before. If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a feedback topic or a flag, please contact the Community Managers.

This community is governed by these guidelines and the Community Managers are entrusted with the relevant administration- and moderation abilities to ensure the smooth running of the community. Moderator actions, from post removal, post editing and the issuing of warnings and suspensions will be meted out on a case by case basis.

Private communications between the DOUGH Team and community members are not to be made public on these forums or by any other venue at any time. Posts or topics designed to appeal or contest a moderator action will be removed. If you have questions regarding a post or topic that has been removed, reach out directly to our Community Managers to resolve this.

Final considerations

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves —and by extension, you and your data— against unfriendly folks. We have Terms of Service describing your (and our) behaviour and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

These guidelines are a based on the default Discourse guidelines, and feature paraphrased and outright stolen quotes from various community members and DOUGH staff. We’ve also nicked some ideas from other forums’ rules. If you have thoughts on how better to word anything in these guidelines or think there is something that should be added, please contact the Community Managers.