Well the ground rules for a discussion on the JD should be similar to how one discuss in real life.

To me personally, discussions are a great way to accumulate some knowledge and get some quick information around an idea at the same time see how the topic is being recieved in a public arena with different stakeholders.

It's about brining up a topic/concern then allowing people to put in their point of view on the topic. There are no right answers, this is just an opportunity to explore a topic in a public arena with a lot larger and broader base of people then one would get to do in a face to face.

What we want to avoid is people imposing views on another, that's not really a healthy discussion. It also leads to personal attacks.

The rules should form around this notion. Allowing people to talk freely, bring in their point of view so that all of us can pick up information, ideas, thoughts etc.

First there is our core mission statement we should work on. "Discuss topics/issues that are relevant to our lives. . . " (if you got something better chime in)

We discuss in a respectable manner. (we'll set some basic ground rules to promote respect). You can respect someone and still disagree with them.

We can go into finite details about what can't and what isn't allowed. But that will be tedious and might even be aggrevating. So let's setup some basic ground rules, use them out . . . if they don't work we can tweak them as we grow.

* No thread hijacking (simple read the title and the first post, if your post/reply is not relevant to those two you are getting offtopic and hijacking)
* No racist, precjudice, hateful remarks
* No harassment of other members
* No illegal topics: warez, hacks, serials or cracks, sexual x-rate explicit content, porn

KUB