# Community Standards
Pterodactyl has grown from a community of tens in 2015 to a community of thousands in 2020. During that time there have been countless growing pains and community has changed in an innumerable number of ways. At our heart however, Pterodactyl continues to exist for one purpose: to be the platform for running your game servers.
In order to keep true to that goal, and continue to foster one of the largest open-source game panel communities out there, we've adopted a simple set of guidelines for participating in this community. The goal of these guidelines is to foster an inclusive, welcoming environment for new users, and provide a space for the thousands of existing users, administrators, network owners, and hosting companies to co-exist.
These rules and guidelines extend to all facets of the Pterodactyl Community, including but not limited to our Discord Server and all activities within the GitHub Organization.
# Community Guidelines
At the most basic level, these guidelines can be distilled down to:
- Be a decent human.
- Patience is a virtue.
# Be Mature
You are expected to be mature and control your behavior in a manner that adheres to basic human decency. If you are unable to do this you will be removed from the community. Personal attacks, spam (in any form), "doxxing", or otherwise acting out is not allowed.
This community is fairly lax in regards to moderating language. However, the following are some examples of behavior that is absolutely not tolerated and for which you will be removed from the community.
- Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise deregatory speech, images, insinuations, or any language whose sole purpose is to denigrate any individual, organization, or class of individual.
- Threats of violence against any person, group, or organization including "doxxing" of these entities.
- Pornographic or excessively violent content.
# Limit the Drama
Discussion, including linking to or discussing sites or software, that exists to cast a negative image of other companies or users is not allowed. This includes calling out hosts using nulled software, attempting to elicit negative reactions towards services or websites, or otherwise stirring up drama.
TIP
Assume someone is acting in good faith when responding to them. You don't have to agree with everyone, and you don't need to respond to everything.
# Be Patient
This is an open-source project. No members of the development team are paid in an official capacity to write, maintain, nor support this software. The following actions are discouraged in this community.
- Repeatedly asking identical questions within the same channel (or across channels) within short periods of time.
- It is expected that some questions will be missed. If it has been a reasonable amount of time and your question remains unanswered, you're welcome to re-post it.
- Keep all support questions within the realm of the support channels.
- Do not interrupt conversations in non-support channels solely to request that someone look in a support channel and help you.
# No Commercial Services
Discussion of paid installation/upgrade services, modifications, or any other commercial offerings is strictly prohibited unless otherwise noted. This also includes reaching out to individuals via Direct Message and offering your services without provocation.
Check your Username
Advertising commercial services within your username or display name on Discord is forbidden.
Sponsors at the silver tier and higher are exempt from this rule.
# No Mention or Ping Spam
Please, do not direct message any administrative, development, or notable community members without first checking with them. Keep all support queries within the public support channels unless you have been directly asked to move it elsewhere.
But what if I am trying to respond back to someone? That is fine! We only ask that you not mention people directly if they're not already involved in a discussion with you.