---
title: Community Standards
description: Guidelines and expectations for participating in the Pterodactyl community
---

Pterodactyl has grown from a community of tens in 2015 to a community of thousands in 2020. During that time
there have been countless growing pains and community has changed in an innumerable number of ways. At our heart
however, Pterodactyl continues to exist for one purpose: to be _the_ platform for running your game servers.

In order to keep true to that goal, and continue to foster one of the largest open-source game panel communities
out there, we've adopted a simple set of guidelines for participating in this community. The goal of these guidelines
is to foster an inclusive, welcoming environment for new users, and provide a space for the thousands of existing
users, administrators, network owners, and hosting companies to co-exist.

These rules and guidelines extend to all facets of the Pterodactyl Community, including but not limited to our
Discord Server and all activities within the GitHub Organization.

## Community Guidelines

At the most basic level, these guidelines can be distilled down to:

1. Be a decent human.
2. Patience is a virtue.

### Be Mature

You are expected to be mature and control your behavior in a manner that adheres to basic human decency. If you are
unable to do this you will be removed from the community. Personal attacks, spam (in any form), "doxxing", or otherwise
acting out is not allowed.

This community is fairly lax in regards to moderating language. However, the following are some examples of
behavior that is absolutely _not_ tolerated and for which you will be removed from the community.

* Racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, or otherwise deregatory speech, images, insinuations, or any language whose
  sole purpose is to denigrate any individual, organization, or class of individual.
* Threats of violence against any person, group, or organization including "doxxing" of these entities.
* Pornographic or excessively violent content.

### Limit the Drama

Discussion, including linking to or discussing sites or software, that exists to cast a negative image of other
companies or users is not allowed. This includes calling out hosts using nulled software, attempting to elicit negative
reactions towards services or websites, or otherwise stirring up drama.

<Callout>
Assume someone is acting in good faith when responding to them. You don't have to agree with everyone, and you
don't need to respond to everything.
</Callout>

### Be Patient

This is an open-source project. No members of the development team are paid in an official capacity to write,
maintain, nor support this software. The following actions are discouraged in this community.

* Repeatedly asking identical questions within the same channel (or across channels) within short periods of time.
  * It is expected that some questions will be missed. If it has been a reasonable amount of time and your question
    remains unanswered, you're welcome to re-post it.
* Keep all support questions within the realm of the support channels.
* Do not interrupt conversations in non-support channels solely to request that someone look in a support channel
  and help you.

### No Commercial Services

Discussion of paid installation/upgrade services, modifications, or any other commercial offerings is strictly
prohibited unless otherwise noted. This also includes reaching out to individuals via Direct Message and offering
your services without provocation.

<Callout type="warn" title="Check your Username">
Advertising commercial services within your username or display name on Discord is forbidden.
</Callout>

[Sponsors](/project/about#sponsors) at the silver tier and higher are exempt from this rule.

### No Mention or Ping Spam

Please, do not direct message any administrative, development, or notable community members without first
checking with them. Keep all support queries within the public support channels unless you have been directly
asked to move it elsewhere.

_But what if I am trying to respond back to someone?_ That is fine! We only ask that you not mention people
directly if they're not already involved in a discussion with you.
