Forum Code of Conduct

Conduct Standards

As a student on the Global Guitar Network, you are part of a large and diverse learning community. Like most communities, the GGN community has some basic ground rules. Please help us create a healthy learning environment by respecting the following standards:

  1. Be polite. Please respect your fellow students. Insulting, condescending or abusive words will not be tolerated. Use the same tone and behavioral judgement you would use when speaking face-to-face. Polite debate is welcome as long as you are discussing the ideas, not attacking the person.
  2. Be sensitive. This is a global forum with participants from many different cultures and backgrounds. Be very careful when discussing race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or controversial topics since others may be more sensitive about them than you are.
  3. Post appropriate content. Content that violates the Honor Code or Terms of Service is not permitted. You may not post inappropriate (eg. pornographic) or copyrighted content, advertise or promote outside products or organizations, or spam the forums with repeat content.

In summary, be proud of your posts. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t want associated with your name, and remember that anonymous posts aren’t anonymous to staff. We do not expect to see many of these issues because we trust students like you to keep our forum communities strong and healthy. However, posts that violate this Code may be deleted or made invisible to other students by any forum moderator. Students who repeatedly break these rules may be removed from the course, if necessary (we hope this never happens!).

​Forum Posting Guidelines

In addition, please consider the following guidelines when posting in the course forums. These guidelines were created by students to make the forums welcoming and easy to use. If you have other suggestions to add, please let us know!

  1. Vote wisely. Upvote helpful posts and only downvote posts if they violate the Code, not just because you disagree with their content.
  2. Use informative titles. Keep your post titles short and on-topic so the forums are easier to navigate. If you’re asking a question, it should go in the title.
  3. Read before posting. It is likely that a thread on your topic or an answer to your question already exists. Use the search function to avoid creating duplicate threads and find the most appropriate subforum to post in.
  4. Make it easy to read. Don’t capitalize or bold entire sentences since this makes the forums harder to read. Check your posts for spelling or grammatical errors.
  5. Stay on topic. Don’t change the topic of a thread or split a thread into multiple discussions. If you are discussing something that is not directly related to the course materials, pick one thread instead of discussing over multiple threads.​

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Examples:

Good posts: Examples of posts that follow the Conduct Standards and Posting Guidelines

  • Title: How do you install Balsamiq on Linux?
  • Post: I am running Ubuntu 12.04. I tried googling but didn’t find anything. Thanks!
  • The question is included in the title of this post. The post is concise and gives enough detail for the question to be answered.​
  • Post: How many attempts do we get for each quiz?
  • Reply: You can try each quiz three times and the grade you get will be your highest score. You can read more in the syllabus.​
  • ​The response is polite, answers the question, and points the student to where they can find more information.

Less good posts: Examples of posts that do not follow the Conduct Standards and Posting Guidelines

  • Title: Please help me with some computer problems.
  • Post: Hello everyone, I’M HAVING A BIG PROBLEM INSTALLING the newest version of the great mockup tool recommended to us by the instructors of the course. I am currently working on a machine running the Linux operating system Ubuntu version 12.04. I spent much of the afternoon searching for a solution, but I have had little success in finding any answers on the Internet. I was hoping that one of the other students in this class would have had a similar problem and would be able to help me solve this issue. Thank you very much!
  • The title of the post does not include the question and isn’t informative. The post is difficult to read because it is longer than it needs to be and uses unnecessary capitalization and bolding.
  • Post: How many attempts do we get for each quiz?
  • Reply: Hey stupid, did you even read the sylabus, lol? I did really well on the first quiz and got a full score, but then I made a mistake on the second quiz ughh. Does anyone know if there’s a final exam?
  • The response is impolite and does not answer the question. The response also changes topic and asks a new question without starting a new thread.