Dear Members of the Planet Source Code community,

If you are new to the site, we'd like to personally welcome you. Here you'll find millions of lines of source code - all presented as free - which you can look at, comment on and discuss to your heart's content.

If you�re already a member of the site, you may have notice some changes. Due to inappropriate behavior by a small group of members, we've had to implement active moderation on everything submitted to the site.

What does this mean? Planet Source Code is an open community; people from around the world contribute in order to educate the whole and show off their individual programming skills. Previously, all items submitted - be they comments, new submissions or updates to existing submissions - were automatically scanned and added to the site without human intervention. If a problem arose (e.g. Malicious code or inappropriate feedback was submitted) a complaint had to be made manually and the item in question was then reviewed by a single moderator.

Active moderation is fundamentally different. Now a small group of moderators must manually check every item posted to the site. This means a huge workload, as you can imagine, and this is why we have created this article. We are trying to do the best job that we can, but we've found it necessary to write this to inform you - the users - of the changes and also inform you on what you can do to help us moderate faster and more efficiently.

We moderators are not faceless evil people sitting in a windowless corporate room somewhere in the world. We are unpaid members of the site too - if fact you will see us around quite often. For security and many other reasons, we won't give out our names but you can be sure that we are just as eager as you to make this fantastic resource as good as possible.

First of all, please read the PSC guidelines before posting. Many of the items you DON'T see - the ones we reject - are from users who haven�t read the rules and understood them properly. Obviously, the standard rules applied to most sites apply here too. Just in case, they are listed below:

Planet Source Code users may not:

1. Restrict or inhibit any other user from using the site
2. Post any unlawful, fraudulent, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene or otherwise objectionable content
3. Post or transmit any information or software that contains a virus or other harmful/disruptive component
4. Post or transmit materials in violation of another party's copyright or intellectual property rights

Those should be obvious, and are the "big four". Violate any of those and you can bet that your account will be deleted in no time! These rules apply to COMMENTS too, so watch what you say - inappropriate behavior will not be tolerated. Previously, a simple parsing algorithm would scan comments for inappropriate language before allowing the post. This is now taken over by human checkers, so don't think that adding symbols around and between your profanities will guarantee an accepted post. Also, renaming banned files (e.g., renaming compiled OCX files) will neither fool us or the automated submission scanning program.

Types of submissions that will NOT be accepted:

1. Submissions that install advertising/demonstration programs when run
2. Submissions containing excessive or unrelated advertising
3. Submissions that do not contain code

Comments have been a problem for some users. Since we moderators have taken the position a few weeks ago, we have been amazed at the number of users who apparently mistake the "Report Bad Feedback" box for the comments submission form. Now that we have become aware of this, we have added a small red "X" to highlight what the form does to no avail. Before you post, check!

If you come across a submission or comment that you think we should know about because it violates a PSC rule, let us know with that box. Alternatively, email us at moderator (at) planet-source-code.com. If you come across a broken link to a zip file, please do NOT report that submission via the "Report Bad Feedback" box.  First, try again a little later or on a different computer...often the issue is internet latency or network problems.  If this still doesn't work, then please post a comment to the author asking them to correct the broken submission.  Since only the author has the file and the ability to correct it, reporting it as "bad feedback" to us, doesn't help much with the situation.

The first page of submissions is a highly-prized spot - after all, this is where users will see all the new submissions. Remember that the "first page", and also the PSC "Ticker", space is limited and so please try to consider others. If you have several submissions you wish to upload, upload them a few hours apart to give time and space for other's code. If you have created a new version of an existing submission, please UPDATE the existing submission instead of re-posting. This also goes for those who delete an existing submission and then upload a new version in order to fool us � we moderators can detect this activity and we will take appropriate action where necessary.

Some people are under the impression that it is acceptable to post "questions" in the code area, in the form of an article. This is not acceptable and such submissions will not be approved; please use the dedicated "Ask a Pro" forum for your language-related questions. If you have a moderator or PSC-related question, please email us at our dedicated moderator email account, moderator (at) planet-source-code.com.

Manual posting takes time, so please be patient. We work as fast as we can and if your code is not posted immediately, please don't submit it again! All approved/disapproved submissions and comments will send an email to your email address. If we have disapproved your post, this email will also give an indication as to why. I stress that we are human, and human�s can make mistakes; although we manually check submissions for possible malicious code, sometimes one can be let through accidentally.

We are not here to guarantee you that every piece of code is absolutely free of anything that could damage your computer. We DO check, but please remember to always give new code a once-over yourself before running.

Please make our lives easier and update your PSC-registered email address so our moderator emails can reach you. Other than that, warm regards and happy coding!

Thanks, Planet Source Code Moderators