Welcome to the Prolific Community Forum!

This is a space designed to allow our researchers to connect with each other about all things research. If you’re a participant, there is a subreddit that has everything you need!

We will moderate this community, however we want this forum to be self-sustaining, allowing our researchers to help each other with both general research questions and those related to Prolific. We encourage your feedback and, when we can, will respond to your comments.

In order to make sure that the forum remains a helpful and friendly place for all researchers we have a few ground rules. By using our forum you agree to comply with these Community Guidelines.

Also, as reminders:

The forum is part of Prolific’s website, and like all services provided by Prolific through its website, is governed by Prolific’s website terms of use.

Any personal data you provide or post in signing up for or using our Community Forum will be used by us in accordance with Prolific’s privacy policy.

Tl;DR

  • We don’t allow defamatory, indecent, offensive, profane, discriminatory, misleading, unlawful or threatening comments. Personal attacks, name-calling, trolling and abuse will not be tolerated and offending users will be removed from the forum.
  • Please try to be respectful and constructive when responding to comments from other members. We welcome and encourage different viewpoints.
  • We reserve the right to delete comments at our discretion and block any repeat offenders. We will remove content that is fraudulent, deceptive or misleading.
  • Don’t post any personal information that you would not be comfortable sharing with another researcher . Please also ensure that any data being shared does not breach ethical guidelines or those imposed by the publication journal.

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules, merely guidelines to aid the human judgment of our community and keep this a clean and well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people . Please avoid:

  • Name-calling
  • Ad hominem attacks
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
  • Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for every new arrival. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

Discourse provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it . If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Rights in Your Content

Nothing in these terms gives us any ownership of the intellectual property rights in your forum posts or their content.

You grant to us a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide licence under those intellectual property rights to the extent necessary to host and publish your posts in the forum, and to re-post any posts or content on our other websites or social media channels (e.g. we might re-post a particularly interest forum exchange on our blog).

Powered by You

This site is operated by your friendly local staff and you , the community. If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us via the staff page.

Content Standards

  • You shall not submit content to the forum that is illegal, offensive, or otherwise harmful to others. This includes content that is harassing, inappropriate, or abusive.
  • You shall not submit content to the forum that violates the law, infringes anyone’s intellectual property rights, violates anyone’s privacy, or breaches agreements you have with others.
  • You shall not submit content to the forum as a mere placeholder, to hold a particular address, user name, or other unique identifier.
  • You shall not use the forum to disclose information that you don’t have the right to disclose, like others’ confidential or personal information.

We may change, redact, and delete content on the forum for any reason. If you believe someone has submitted content to the forum in violation of these terms, contact us immediately.

Other Unacceptable Use

  • You shall not buy, sell, or otherwise trade in user names or other unique identifiers on the forum.
  • You shall not automate access to the forum, or monitor the forum, such as with a web crawler, browser plug-in or add-on, or other computer program that is not a web browser. You may crawl the forum to index it for a publicly available search engine, if you run one.
  • You shall not falsely imply that you’re affiliated with or endorsed by Prolific.
  • You shall not remove any marks showing proprietary ownership from materials you download from the forum.
  • You shall not strain infrastructure of the forum with an unreasonable volume of requests, or requests designed to impose an unreasonable load on information systems underlying the forum.

Suspension and Account Closure

We may restrict, suspend, or close your account on the forum at any time. In particular we might do so in connection with any breach of these Community Guidelines or our other applicable terms. If we suspend, close or restrict your account you shall not make, or attempt to make, any further use of the forum through your previous or any other account.

Competitions Run in This Forum

All competitions run in this forum are subject to the following terms:

Prolific reserves the right to suspend any competition at any time and for any reason
Prolific reserves the right to disregard entries from users engaged in fraudulent activity
Prolific reserves the right to modify the rules of the competition at any time