How to communicate

This is an unofficial specification of the rules, taboos and guide lines when using Minetest.

The Forum
The forum is the central place for "permanent" communication: http://forum.minetest.net

Please use IRC for temporary communication or chatter. Remember, the IRC channel is logged.

Note that most core developers hang out in IRC (in #minetest-dev), so discussing engine features in IRC is good idea (Log of #minetest-dev).

Be nice

 * Manners don't cost anything.
 * Remember that developers (core or modders) are all volunteers, and have no commitments. Don't fret if they take a while producing stuff.
 * Be appropriate. You never know the age of people on the channel.
 * Watch your language.

Chat flooding
Chat flooding is when you post large amounts of text in a little amount of time.


 * Use a pastebin like the Ubuntu pastebin to paste text that is more than a few lines long (error logs, code snippets...).
 * Stay on topic as much as possible.

Do not abuse the bots

 * Do not use the bots for stuff you can do easily yourself (e.g. Google searching), unless it is for collaborative reasons.
 * Do not overuse the bots (chat flooding).

Links

 * Do not post links to innapropriate or malware-distribution sites.
 * Do not post links to gruesome or otherwise disturbing images.

Working together and collaboration
Collaboration is encouraged. To let this happen:
 * Have a non-restrictive license ("no commercial use" or "no derivative work" clauses should be avoided).
 * Use GitHub or a similar site.

"Rip-offs" or identical mods
If you want to make a mod that has already been made (or make a copy of it), then make sure that it:


 * has a new style/method of using.
 * is quicker running, or has better code architecture.
 * is not worth using or extending the old one because it is too slow, jumbled, bad code.

and not:


 * just changes textures (create a texture pack instead)
 * just copies the code and rebrands it.

Contributing to Minetest

 * Use feature branches. Modify history to make things cleaner.
 * Make only a single feature per branch/patch (if you cram many together, you will need to separate them anyway before they can be included).