As many of you know, the Asterisk Community has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few years, and as such, we have experienced growing pains on our online communication systems. To that end, we will facilitate healthy but professional guidelines for all users. The forums, mailing lists, and front-page postings are for the Asterisk Community to use, learn, and exchange ideas and info on. We are hoping that these guidelines will help to keep the information professional and informative.

If you have any questions regarding these guidelines, ask someone on the Moderation Team, or send an email to communityrelations@digium.com. We are more than happy to clarify any questions and will take note of any comments you may have.

General Posting Rules

1. Posts are to be made in the appropriate and relevant forum. Members are asked to read the forum and mailing list descriptions before posting.
2. Members should post in a respectful manner. Flaming or abusing others in any way will not be tolerated.
3. Members are asked not to act as moderators, and should not respond to topics as such. If Members see a thread that violates the Posting Rules, bring it to the attention of the Moderator Team.
4. Members should post intelligently and considerately, and should not SHOUT or use excessive numbers of emoticons, punctuation, and sized or colored text.
5. The use of inline images pointing to data on third party systems requires Moderator permission. Links that have not received permission are subject for removal.
6. Pornographic or offensive text, images, links, etc. will not be tolerated.
7. Spam is not tolerated under any circumstances.
8. Please respect copyrights of the material, sites, media, etc.
9. Please clearly and concisely state the issue when posting a new topic in a support forum. Topics not provided in this manner may be ignored.
   • Bad examples of titles include
     • “I need help!”
     • “Does anyone know”
     • “VoIP”
   • Good examples of titles include
     • “[HELP]: Bridge/conference/transfer VOLUME LOW with Zap lines?”
     • “[HELP]: How can I implement Music on Call Transfer?”
     • “[HELP]: Need help to check if the zaptel.conf is correct.”
10. Please post any verified vulnerabilities and bugs to our issue tracker. If the developers do not respond within 4 business days, please post your concerns in the appropriate forum.
11. Moderators, Support Team, Developer Team, Website Team, and other related Asterisk Moderation Teams reserve the right to edit or remove any post at any time. Discretion of use as defined in these Posting Rules resides with the Asterisk Moderation Teams.
12. Posting Rules, where applicable, apply to private messaging.

Mailing List Specific

1. The Asterisk mailing lists are completely unmoderated. The views expressed are not necessarily the views of Digium or the greater Asterisk community.
2. Every mailing list user is expected to post in a considerate and respectful manner towards others. Profanity, name-calling, and flaming is not acceptable behavior.
3. The person originating the post is wholly responsible for his or her own post and the language and views expressed therein.
4. Users who commit libel or violate contracts or non-disclosure agreements within the Asterisk mailing lists will not be defended by Digium or anyone in the Asterisk community.
5. Digium reserves the right to exclude users who cannot abide by these basic rules.

Blog Specific

1. Where applicable, the Blogs follow the same rules as the Forums do. These are moderated and monitored regularly.
2. Excessive spamming of the Blog system will result in a warning, followed by removal of Blog access in the event the rules are not followed.
3. Make sure the topic you are posting about is relevant to the site you are posting on. If a post is not relevant to the site it is on, you will be notified and the post will not be authorized by a moderator.

Support of Asterisk and AsteriskNOW

1. The Asterisk Forums exist to support open source Asterisk and AsteriskNOW as made available for download on Asterisk.org and AsteriskNOW.org. No support will be given for commercial versions of Asterisk as found on Digium.com with the exception of support provided for open source Asterisk with the purchase of Digium hardware.
2. Although you may find Digium employees active in this forum, you should not expect a reply to your postings from Digium or any given participant of the forum.
3. Asterisk and AsteriskNOW have been designed to be easily installed. Support is available for specific questions on installation, configuring and troubleshooting Asterisk.
4. The Support Forums are not to be used for questions regarding Apache, Linux, etc. These questions should be directed to the support site of the relevant software.
5. Members are asked to attempt to solve their issue themselves first, which includes reading the Digium Knowledge Base, online documentation, and searching the Asterisk Forum for the issue in question.
6. Bumping of a support question is permitted only after 24 hours have elapsed without a response.
7. Members should note that the Asterisk software and Asterisk Forums are maintained by the Asterisk Forum Teams with the Asterisk Developers being the major contributors of Asterisk, a time-consuming responsibility. Therefore, out of consideration, Members should not post demanding support requests.

Any threads/posts of these types will be closed and marked as violating the rules, or in some circumstances, deleted. Any member found violating these rules are subject to warning, followed by banning from posting, and in extreme circumstances, account deletion. The Asterisk Moderation Teams have final word on violation decisions.