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