Please behave in a polite, considerate and inclusive manner in the channel at all times. People volunteer their time in the channel to help people like you with your Rails problems and some respect (in both directions) will go an extremely long way.
These rules are in place so that you can get the quickest and best support from #rubyonrails.
Rule #0: Show rather than tell. Explaining your problem with code, stacktraces or errors is always preferred to explaining it with just text. Show us what's happening, rather than telling us.
- Do your research before hand. Your question may be answerable with a quick Google search or by simply experimenting. If you're using a method in Rails, look it up in the API Docs or in the Official Guides.
- If you've tried Googling, explain what terms you've tried to use so people can better help you.
- Clearly explain what is happening and create a Gist (http://gist.github.com), (with neat formatting, so that people can read it easily) or Hastebin (http://hastebin.com) of the code that is causing the problem you are encountering, as well as any useful output like stacktraces.
- If you're using an older version of Ruby or Rails, please tell us.
- A "Full Trace" as opposed to the default "Application Trace" is preferred.
- NO FAKE CODE. If you're under an NDA, we cannot help you with your problem. Go hire a consultant.
- Do not use any service that is not Pastie or Gist to post code. Pastebin, for example has a tiny font and it has ads on it which cause the page to load slowly. Other paste services generally look like crap.
- Saying that something "doesn't work" is completely useless to the people who are trying to help you. Please show all available information you have that indicates to you that something doesn't work. This means all the code you can think of being relevant, as well as any logs.
- Remember that using English is preferable, as the majority of people in the channel speak it. Asking in other languages may give you a response, but English is best.
- Anything more than 2 lines goes in a Gist (http://gist.github.com) or a Pastie (http://pastie.org). Spamming the channel with walls of text is not welcome.
- Treat people in a considerate manner, as they are volunteering their time to help you. If you're helping, do so in a kind and considerate manner; you were a newbie once too. If you're being annoying or rude you may be muted by one of the channel ops.
- Do not use excessive punctuation. This includes question marks (?), exclamation marks (!) and ellipsis (...).
- Do not beg / plead with people to help you. This includes asking questions like "Any ideas?" after posting your original question.
- Do not repeat your question every 5 minutes expecting somebody to answer it. If you do not get a reply after the first time perhaps posting your question on StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com) would help you. Linking to the question in the channel after you've posted it is OK.
- Do not PM members of the channel without first asking if that is OK.
- If you're going to tell someone to "Just google it" or "RTFM", tell them what terms to use on Google exactly, or link them to the place in the documentation.
- We're not all guys here - while you probably don't meant to be exclusive, not everybody feels that way. Maybe consider using "folks", "y'all" or "everyone" instead?
- An op will ask you to follow the rules, and link you to the specific rule.
- If you fail to follow the rules, you will be asked again to follow the rules.
- If you still fail to follow the rules, the op will give you another warning.
- After that warning, failure to follow the rules will result in a mute of 15 minutes.
- After that warning, failure to follow the rules will result in a mute of 1 hour.
- After that warning, failure to follow the rules will result in a mute of 1 day.
- After that warning, failure to follow the rules will result in a mute of 1 week.
Great, brilliant!