Code of Conduct

Most people arrive at the Academy knowing less about meteorology than they want to. That is the point, and it only works if asking an obvious question is safe. Everything below follows from that.

Answer the question that was asked. Where somebody has misunderstood something, say what is actually true rather than what is wrong with them.

Show your reasoning. A forecast with the thinking attached teaches somebody; a confident conclusion without it teaches nobody.

Say when you are unsure. Uncertainty is the whole subject. A forum where nobody admits to it is a forum full of people quietly guessing.

Give credit. If you used somebody's analysis, a model output or an image, say whose.

Harassment, of anybody, for any reason, including the kind delivered as a joke.

Prejudice on any grounds: race, religion, sex, gender, sexuality, disability, nationality, age.

Posting somebody's private information, including their location, without their clear permission.

Sexual content, graphic violence, and gratuitous imagery of injury or death. Severe weather does kill people and a photograph may be part of a serious discussion; ask whether it is teaching something before you post it.

Advertising, spam, and recruitment for other services.

Do not post content that encourages dangerous chasing. Driving into a hook, blocking a road, trespassing for a shot, or filming instead of helping at a damage scene are not achievements and will not be treated as such here.

Do not issue warnings. Only your national weather service does that. Discussing what you are seeing is the point of the forum; telling people what to do about it during a live event is not.

Nothing posted here substitutes for an official warning. If you are in the path of something, act on what the weather service says.

Submit your own work. Discuss anything you like; write your own answer.

Do not share assessment questions or answers, during or afterwards.

Where a course permits an AI assistant it says so, and says how. Where it does not, using one is submitting somebody else's work.

Discussion is moderated after posting. What you write appears immediately; it can be hidden or removed afterwards, and you are told when that happens and why.

Hidden and removed posts are kept rather than deleted, because a report needs the thing it was about to still exist.

Consequences run from a note, through a post being hidden, through losing access to the forum, to the account being closed. Which one depends on what happened and whether it has happened before.

If you think a decision was wrong, say so through Contact Us. A person will look at it again.

Every post has a report control. Use it. It reaches the moderation queue directly and it is quicker than writing to us.

If something needs saying privately, or it is about a moderator, use Contact Us.

Reporting somebody in good faith is never held against you, even where we end up disagreeing with you.