Safety comes first
This is a safety platform. What gets written here can end up informing a real decision on a real site.
- Do not present a guess as established practice.Say when you are unsure. An answer that reads as authoritative and is wrong costs someone a day, or worse. Nobody is penalised for saying they do not know.
- Do not tell anyone to bypass a control, a guard, an isolation or a permit.Even as a shortcut, even if it works. Posts doing this are removed.
- Say when something needs a competent person.Plenty of questions here have no safe answer from a forum. Naming that is a good answer, not a failure to give one.
Earn your standing
Renown reflects what other people found useful. It only means anything if it is not gamed.
- Do not ask for upvotes or helpful marks.Not in a post, not in a signature, not by private message. Every vote it collects is real, which is exactly why no automatic rule can catch it: it is dealt with by a moderator, and the renown comes back off.
- One person, one account.A second account voting for your posts is fraud against everyone whose rank was earned. Accounts found doing it lose the renown and the accounts.
- Vote on the contribution, not the person.The apprentice asking a basic question is exactly who this is for.
Respect the people here
- Do not post anyone else's personal information.Names, addresses, photographs, medical details. This includes people involved in an incident you are describing: the lesson survives without them.
- Anonymise incidents and near misses.Describe what happened and what was learned, not who did it or which site it was. What is useful is the mechanism.
- Disagree with the argument.Sharp disagreement about a method is welcome. Contempt for the person making it is not.
Keep it yours
- Post your own words.Quoting a source is fine when you say what it is. Pasting a standard, a course, or someone's paid material wholesale is not yours to give away.
- No advertising.Recommending a product because it solved your problem is a contribution. Posting to sell is not.
- Do not share commercially confidential information.Your employer's, or a client's. Check before you post if you are unsure.
How this is enforced
Reports go to a moderator who reads the post itself, not just the report. Most reports do not end in a takedown.
- A removed post costs 25 renown.It is a real penalty, applied by an accountable person, and it is visible to the author.
- A moderator downvote costs 5 renown and leaves the post up.For content that is unhelpful rather than harmful, and it is shown on the post so it is never a silent penalty.
- Repeated or deliberate breaches cost the account.Particularly farming and posting other people's personal data.