I’ve just updated the site FAQ Guidelines. In addition to more consistently using the language of Guidelines for the page itself, there are two major changes:
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The first section is re-ordered to more fully anchor to the Julia community standards. Unlike the rest of the guidelines, those are (and have always been) the hard and fast rules of our community. The section now reads:
This is a Respectful Place for Public Discussion
The Julia community is committed to maintaining a welcoming, respectful, and constructive environment. We expect the Julia Community Standards to be observed and upheld by all participants.
The additional guidelines here are not hard and fast rules; they are merely aids to the human judgment of our community.
Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are building a shared community resource together — a place to share skills, knowledge, and interests through ongoing conversation. Use these guidelines to keep this a friendly, well-lighted place for respectful public discourse.
The previous intro section is here, for reference.
Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.
These are not hard and fast rules, merely aids to the human judgment of our community. Use these guidelines to keep this a clean, well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.
As with any part of the Julia Community please adhere to the Julia Community Standards.
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An additional bullet point was added to the “Keep It Tidy” section that provides the explicit guidance:
- Don’t post generative AI outputs (but direct human language translation and minor editing is ok).
This really isn’t a significant new rule change. Posting generative AI output often goes against two existing guidelines, and we’ve been moderating it as such. (1) The community standards has long urged all participants to be concise. It’s important enough to be a top-level heading! Generative AI is typically the exact opposite of concise. (2) The guidelines here have always asked folks — people! — to improve the conversation by adding to the conversation and thinking about it.
And, yes, to be clear, if your usage of the generative tool passes the Turing test and adds to the conversation in a relevant and concise way, that’s just fine! Minor editing and human language translation are good examples of such usages and that’s why they’re explicitly okayed. It’s also important to note that — as is now hopefully more fully emphasized by the first change — this is a rough guidelines and not a hard and fast rule. This also just applies to the text you write on this forum, discourse.julialang.org, and not code or content elsewhere.
To help facilitate this, I’ve updated some of the language around our flags and flag messages. Specifically, verbose and low-value generative AI may now be directly flagged for moderator intervention. The flag reason that was previously named “Spam” is now “Spam or Generative AI.”
Speaking personally, I’d almost always rather read the prompt itself. Anyone who wants generated output can go to their favorite model and ask for it.
This is something I’ve talked with folks about doing for a few weeks now. The goal here is to make the guidelines a bit more clear. Remember, unlike the standards, these are just guidelines, and flagged posts are more of an organizational tool and directed feedback than a reprimand.