Policy governing the use of the CiviCRM Community Blog¶

Welcome! At CiviCRM, you'll find a community of smart, enthusiastic people from around the world.

The goal of the CiviCRM Community Blog is to foster helpful, informative, and inclusive conversations around CiviCRM.

Blog content should be in alignment with the CiviCRM Code of Conduct and Community Guidelines which are formulated on the belief that the CiviCRM community:

"should be truly open for everyone. As such, we are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, religion, preferred operating system, programming language, or text editor (or lack thereof)."

We want to hear from you and encourage your posts, comments, questions, and conversation. The greatest strength of the CiviCRM Community is the diversity of voices and points of view.

What the blog should be used for¶

Please use the CiviCRM Community Blog to:

To provide information about how to use CiviCRM effectively. Tutorials, announcements about new features in CiviCRM core, extension announcements and case studies are all welcome as long as they discuss CiviCRM specifically.
To provide opportunities for engagement with the CiviCRM project and CiviCRM community. Requests for input/feedback about core/extension development, news from the Community Council or regional user groups, discussions about growing CiviCRM, etc, are welcome.

Information about events is welcome, as long as the primary purpose of those events is one of the two purposes above.

If you are unsure about your intended post, the Community Council are happy to support, so please do reach out on communitycouncil@civicrm.org.

We are all an important part of the CiviCRM Community, so if you see something that you think may violate our guidelines, please help us by reporting to the CiviCRM Community Council, at communitycouncil@civicrm.org.

Spirit of the Community

These guidelines will always be applied with a presumption of good intent / lack of awareness, until proven otherwise and the community blog is a place for encouraging education and respectful, open discussion about the use of language.

What the blog should not be used for¶

Here are things that will get your comment or blog post removed or may see your account temporarily or permanently blocked.

Spam: Regardless of if it comes from a human or a robot, spam will be deleted. This includes material that is more self or company marketing and promotion than sharing useful information for the community. Generally speaking, promoting your projects here will be treated like any other spam, although sharing your experiences will be appreciated.
Illegal activities: Posting links to illegal downloads, ways to steal service, and other nefarious activity.
Trolling: Trolls are people who leave intentionally offensive messages on the internet in order to get attention, cause trouble or upset someone and won’t be tolerated. This includes intentionally derailing a thread by hijacking it's original purpose or direction.
Spreading misinformation: We are not a platform for spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation and will remove posts promoting obvious falsehoods.
Multiple accounts and throwaway emails: We don’t allow multiple accounts per user. Using a disposable email address signals to us that you might not be here for the right reasons. You also may not create accounts designed to impersonate another person.
Cross posting or Redirecting posts: Avoid duplicate posts across different CiviCRM platforms where possible as it can fracture the conversation. Don't redirect the post to your personal, business, or organizational website if the primary result is to build clientelle or sell a service by getting folks to your site. Keep the full content on the blog post when possible as it is intended to provide information or support to the CiviCRM community. There may be exceptions to redirecting posts as long as they are clearly marked as cross posts, and there's a need to redirect if its for certain technical details that have a narrow audience. Please ensure that any external links are to pages that are openly accessible and do not require an account or submission of personal details to view.
Personal attacks: Don’t attack or insult another user. It’s not helpful and it doesn’t make CiviCRM a friendly place.
Racism, sexism, and other discrimination: Attacking entire classes of people is just like attacking a single person: we’ll ban you for it.
Commenting on someone’s physical appearance, voice, or style: Let’s keep discussion to the content, please. Even if you’re writing what you consider a compliment, it will be removed.
Doxxing: Don’t reveal someone else’s personal information.
NSFW (Not Safe for Work) material: Even images or links that could be considered borderline are not acceptable. A good rule of thumb is to ensure anything your share is suitable for anyone / everyone and our moderators reserve the right to remove any post deemed offensive. This goes for pornographic material, vile language, gore and generally gross stuff.

CiviCRM will not tolerate, and reserves its right to delete, any posts or comments that:

are defamatory, indecent, hateful, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, heterosexist, disgraceful, vulgar or inappropriate; encourage or suggest illegal activity, announcements from labour or political organizations and unintelligible or irrelevant posts.

Approved by CiviCRM Community Council 2021-10-13