Publishing guidelines

TechDug is a place to explain things carefully. These guidelines describe what that means in practice. They apply to posts, author profiles and comments.

The spirit of it

• Explain what you know, and say clearly where your knowledge stops.
• Show your sources, and credit the people whose work you build on.
• Be honest about who you are and where your links lead.
• Argue with the approach, never with the person.

Not allowed, ever

Content in these categories is removed as soon as we find it, without notice:

• Anything illegal, or instructions whose purpose is to help someone break the law.
• Malware, phishing pages, or links built to trick readers into giving up credentials or details.
• Deceptive or harmful links, including links whose text hides where they really go.
• Harassment, hate speech or threats against anyone.
• Publishing another person’s private information, such as a home address, phone number or private messages.
• Impersonating a person, project or organisation.
• Plagiarism or copyright infringement.
• Any sexual content involving minors.

Original work and credit

Publish what you wrote, or what you have the right to publish. Short quotations from documentation, papers or other posts are fine when they are marked and credited. Copying an article, in full or in large part, is not. Translations and adaptations should say so and link to the original. Code samples taken from elsewhere should respect their licence and name where they came from.

Links

Good technical writing links out: to documentation, repositories, specifications and your own website. Every link should lead where its text says it does and add something to the post. A post that exists only to carry links is not what this site is for.

Code and commands

When a post asks readers to run something, make it clear what it does. Point out commands that delete data, change system settings or need elevated privileges. Do not publish code meant to damage systems or to collect people’s data without their knowledge.

Comments

Keep comments on topic and civil. Corrections, questions and examples from your own experience are welcome. Spam, advertising, personal attacks and off-topic replies are not published. Every guest comment is reviewed before it appears.

Names and profiles

Authors use their own name or a consistent pen name. Portraits, bios and website links must describe the author, not someone else. Commenters may use any name that does not pretend to be another person.

Moderation

Moderators may remove posts or comments that break these guidelines, and may close a blog that breaks them seriously or repeatedly. We aim to respond in proportion: an off-topic comment is simply not approved, a phishing link is removed at once.

Reporting

If you find something that breaks these rules, open the contact page and choose Report a post or comment, or Copyright if it is your work that was copied. Include the link. Every report is read.