C Programming Rules

Welcome C programmers. This group exists to provide a knowledgeable and nurturing environment to anyone wanting to learn or improve their proficiency in using the C programming language.

Please follow our group's rules. Users who repeatedly violate these rules may be banned from the group without further warning.

1. No spam or ads:
Do not post spam or ads of any kind or links to other groups on or off Facebook, except that you may share a post from our sister group Advanced C Progamming (Experts Only) to this group provided the post being shared started in our sister group and was not shared from another group or page on or off Facebook. This includes sharing a post you found in another group, other than our sister group, or on a page. Do not post or include in a comment invitations to join another group on or off Facebook, except that you may direct users to our C Programming group on Messenger, to our sister group on Facebook, and to our C Programming group on Discord. Do not ask users to subscribe to a YouTube channel. This group does not exist to help you advertise your business or increase a YouTube channel's ratings. Do not include a job offer in a post or a comment. Plenty of groups exist on Facebook to handle that.

The only exception to this rule is that you may post or comment about a book that is intended to help people learn or improve their proficiency in using the C programming language.

All posts and comments must pertain to C. If your post or comment has nothing to do with C it will not be approved. And that means C, not C++, C#, HTML, Python, Ruby, Java, Javascript, or whatever else, except for the aforementioned sharing of free open source C projects from our sister group to this group. Posts shared from our sister group may contain content in C and other programming and scripting languages. When posting to this group you may include one or more build scripts, such as a Makefile, along with your code when your post or comment contains a link to your code using a pasting service.

The purpose of allowing the sharing of content from our sister group to this group is to allow the sharing of advanced C projects that happen to include zero or more other programming and scripting languages. Such content must be free open source software and must comply with all of this group's rules. Any content shared from our sister group must not contain any ads of any kind, except that it may talk about one or more books intended to help people learn or improve their proficiency in using the C programming language. This sharing of free open source software that uses C and zero or more other programming and scripting languages from our sister group to this group is the only added permission given by this rule, no more and no less. Any other content shared from our sister group to this group must be suitable for posting in this group just as if the post had originated in this group.

This is a nonprofit educational group. For profit advertising of goods and/or services, except for one or more books intended to help people learn or improve their proficiency in using the C programming language, is forbidden.

You may, on a limited basis, discuss the differences between C and other programming languages. You may include one or more links to a web site in your post or comment, as long as it is not a blog, as long as it pertains to C, as long as doing so does not constitute spam or an ad, and the content is in the English language.

The C Programming group may be found at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/cprogramming123

Our sister group may be found at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2108166236124373

Our C Programming group on Messenger may be found at:
https://www.facebook.com/messages/t/1633308783442988

Our C Programming group on Discord may be found at:
https://discord.gg/9Yxu8u6RyS

2. Facebook has rules too:
Do not post or include in a comment anything that violates Facebook's rules. Do not post or request that someone give you a copyrighted work since openly doing this can get the group into trouble with Facebook. DO NOT post or include in a comment any kind of nudity or pornographic content. Yes, people have actually tried to post porn videos. This violates Facebook's rules about nudity. Anyone who does this will be immediately banned from the group.

No hate speech or bullying will be tolerated. We want all of our users to feel welcome. Degrading posts or comments about things like race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religion, culture, political beliefs, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity are strictly forbidden.

We require that all of our users show proper respect for one another. Users are not allowed to stoop to name calling or posting or commenting with defamatory content. Healthy debates are allowed, but insulting or degrading others is not. Use of profane or obscene language is not permitted.

3. Use English:
Since this group is used by people all over the world all posts and comments must be made in the English language including anything that a link points to. Translation software is often freely available to anyone needing help translating their content into English.

Including a link in a post or a comment that points to content that has very poor use of the English language or includes audio that includes speech that uses a heavy accent that makes it difficult to understand is not allowed and will be rejected.

4. No personal details:
Do not write a post or a comment that includes personal details like a phone number or an email address, whether it belongs to you or someone else. If you wish, you may list such information on your profile page and direct users to that.

5. Use a pasting service:
Users are allowed to include up to eight (8) lines of code as text in a post or a comment including pseudocode. A line is a line of text as rendered by Facebook when printed to the user's screen when using a mobile device capable of displaying at least eighty columns per line when used in portrait mode. A line may include multiple code statements. Using an opening or closing curly brace on a line by itself counts as a line of code.

Anyone using more than eight lines of code listed as text must use a pasting service. A list of such services is included below. You may use any pasting service that performs this function, provided the reader is not required to create an account or log in to access the content, even if the service is not included in this list.

Make sure that everyone has read access to the content that your link points to when you use a pasting service. Management must be able to review the content. If they can not do so, your post or comment will be rejected.

6. Do your own homework:
This is not a homework club. You are expected to do your own homework. You may seek advice if you are struggling. Your post must show the effort that you have made thus far. Do not ask for information that is easily found by using a search engine. Do not ask users to write your program for you. It is permissible to ask for help with a particular concept or idea, but you must not request that another user do your homework for you.

Linux man pages are available online. Write man function_name into your web browser's URL box and select the desired option. If you need help with this, such as identifying the name of the desired function then ask. We are here to help you learn. We are not here to do everything for you. Do not post or comment with someone else's code and claim it to be your own work. Be honest about who wrote the code and where you found it.

7. We don't play "guess the output":
Do not post code and then ask users to guess the output. If you want to know what a program does, compile it and run it yourself. If it will not compile then post the compiler's output and ask for help. Do not post a long list of compiler errors. If your compiler produces more than eight (8) lines of output when displaying error messages, copy them into a text file and use a pasting service.

8. Read the group's FAQs:
Do not post something like, "Hi, I'm new here and I want to learn how to use C. Can someone help me?" Also, please refrain from posting something like, "Can anyone recommend a good book that will teach me how to use C?" Or, "Can anyone recommend a good C compiler or IDE?" Please visit our group's GitHub site and read the lists of frequently asked questions (FAQs) here and here. Do not post something like, "Can I ask a question?" Post your actual question.

9. Comments must be relevant to the post:
Do not write a comment about something unrelated to the post that you add it to. Write your own post. Do not attempt to get around the post approval process by writing your post as an unrelated comment made to someone else's post. Pending posts are usually approved or rejected in less than a day. If more than twenty four hours have passed since you submitted your post and you still can't find it listed with the others then your post was probably rejected.

10. Don't hide from management:
Do not block members of this group's management on Facebook to try to hide your posts or comments from them. Management will still be able to see your posts, comments, and replies even if you block them on Facebook. Do not use Facebook's option for anonymous posts or comments. There is nothing personal or sensitive about programming in C. Management needs to know who you are. Management will still be able to remove you from this group when you violate the group's rules even if you try to remain anonymous.

11. No YouTube videos:
Do not include links to a YouTube video in a post or a comment. Videos in YouTube often show a video of someone typing in source code which can be read just as easily from a text file. This group does not exist to help raise the ratings on someone's YouTube channel. Plenty of other resources exist that don't require watching a YouTube video.

12. Include a link to the code when posting a video:
If you write a new post that includes a video of a running program you must also include in your post a link that points to your source code using a pasting service. You are not required to include a link to your source code if you include a video in a comment or a reply to an existing post, but the comment or reply must be relevant to the post to which it is added. The program must be written in C, and only in C, except that posts shared from our sister group may contain C and zero or more other programming and scripting languages. Management needs to be able to verify that your program is written in C. People can not help you when you are having trouble writing your program if they can not see the source code.

13. Do not use a colorful background:
Do not use any of the colorful backgrounds that Facebook offers when writing a new post. Using a colorful background may turn your post into an image which will require more data to send it to the users, and some of our users have a limited supply of data available. We want all of our users to be able to actively participate in the group.

Our group's GitHub site can be found at:
https://github.com/CProgrammingFBGroup/CProgrammingNotes

If you want to you can download your own copy of our group's rules.

This is a list of free pasting services:

http://codepad.org
https://codeshare.io
https://drive.google.com
https://github.com
https://ideone.com
https://pastebin.com
https://www.sololearn.com

Last updated on Tuesday November 29, 2022 at 2:30 AM UTC.