Code of Conduct

Our mission is to build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, and to foster collaboration within a safe and welcoming community rooted in kindness, cooperation and mutual respect.

Whether you’ve come to ask questions or to generously share what you know, join us in building a community where all people feel welcome and can participate, regardless of expertise or identity.

We commit to enforcing and improving the Code of Conduct. It applies to everyone using Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network, including our team, moderators, and anyone posting to Q&A sites or chat rooms.

Our expectations for users

We have outlined below some expectations that are generally true across the network; some sites may have stricter requirements or use different policies for questions/answers/comments. Please adhere to individual site policies where they differ from these expectations.

Engaging with users

No matter where you engage on the network with your peers, we expect all users to treat one another with kindness and respect. Remember, we’re all here to learn, and sometimes while learning, people make mistakes. While comments and other actions may not be meant to be harmful, they can still inadvertently end up causing harm. If you encounter something that you believe is harmful, please flag it for moderator attention, and our moderators will assess the situation.

Asking

Most people visit the Stack Exchange network to get answers to their questions. For the Community to be able to properly answer your question, there is a minimum quality standard that applies to all new questions. Read more on how to ask a good question.

Answering

The knowledge sharing of the Community is the platform's foundation. To ensure the highest quality repository of information, we have adopted quality standards that apply to all answers on our network. Read more on how to write a good answer.

Voting

Our voting system is central to how Stack Exchange works. Votes are how the Community signals great content and rewards its members for their contributions. Improperly cast votes undermine the integrity of the platform. Read more on how users are expected to use the voting system. Please see the Unacceptable Behavior section below to find out more about improper voting patterns.

Curating content

Content on the network is refined through the hard work of community members, and is a vital step in our model. Community members curate content through reviews and edits to keep questions and answers clear, relevant, and up-to-date. Read more on how the community curates content.

Commenting

Comments are generally used in order to request clarification, leave constructive criticism, or to add relevant but minor or transient information to a post. They're largely regarded as potentially temporary and liberally deleted when no longer needed. Read more on the purpose of comments and their guidelines.

Unacceptable Behavior

We have outlined key forms of unacceptable behavior across the entire platform:

Abusive behavior

We do not allow harassment nor any content that promotes, encourages, glorifies, or threatens acts of violence. We also do not allow causing or contributing to an atmosphere that excludes or marginalizes. Curation activities such as voting (upvotes, downvotes, voting to close, etc) are typically not abusive behaviors. Read more in our Abusive Behavior policy.

Sensitive content and imagery

We do not allow any content that promotes, encourages, provides instruction for, or glorifies suicidal or self-injurious behaviors. We also do not allow content that promotes, encourages, provides instruction for, or glorifies harm or cruelty. Read more about our Sensitive Content and Imagery policy. If you or someone else is in need of help, please read more on how we treat situations where users are in crisis.

Harmful political content

We do not allow political content that encourages harm to others or that supports, celebrates, or furthers the cause of violent actors and hate organizations. We may, in some places, allow pointed or harsh criticism of political figures, their policies, and governments (including satirical statements) as long as they do not otherwise violate this Code of Conduct. Read more in our Harmful Political Content policy.

Misleading information

We do not allow any content that promotes false, harmful, or misleading information that carries the risk of harm to a person or group of people. We also do not allow content that promotes false or misleading information for the purpose of promoting the interests of a political party, government, or ideology. Read more in our Misleading information policy.

Disruptive use of tooling

We do not allow any use of privileges in a targeted and disruptive manner that causes harm to the community or compromises the integrity of the content. Read more about our Disruptive Use policy.

Inauthentic Usage

We do not allow any use of the system that violates our Acceptable Use policy or directly causes unnecessary and unwanted disruption and/or harm to users and/or the network. Read more about our Inauthentic Usage policy.

Reporting

Every person contributes to building a collaborative, respectful community. If you find unacceptable behavior directed at yourself or others, you can flag the harmful content. Moderators review flags regularly, and users who don’t follow the Code of Conduct in good faith may face repercussions deemed appropriate by our moderation team, including, but not limited to, account suspensions.

All actions will be taken on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of our moderators. If you’re not satisfied with a moderator decision, you are welcome to appeal it by contacting us directly. We review each report individually and will respond as quickly as we can.

Site Policies

This Code of Conduct is meant to work alongside individual site policies. Sites and Chatrooms may choose more restrictive policies for their content than what is allowed here, particularly around what is on-topic or off-topic.

Usernames and profiles

While we encourage users to express themselves in their profiles, all user profiles in their entirety are subject to the Code of Conduct and all policies outlined or incorporated therein.

Last update: 2023-05-31

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