Best Practices and Community Standards

Welcome to the official the University of Minnesota Nutrition Coordinating Center (NCC) forum. On the forum, you can ask questions and answer questions to help other current and potential users of Nutrition Data System for Research (NDSR) and the NCC Food and Nutrient Database.  Below are the practices and standards that we ask you to agree to before beginning to use the forum.

 

Best Practices

  • Before posting a question, do a search first to see if your question has already been answered.
  • Focus on Questions and Solutions: Use a clear title for your topic, and keep comments succinct and relevant. If you have another unrelated question, consider starting a new thread. Do not start multiple threads for the same issue.
  • Be mindful of privacy: Public forums are indexed by search engines, so do not share sensitive details related to passwords, payments, study participants, or contact information. Email addresses used to register your account will only be visible to NCC staff. Information posted in our forum will be deleted at NCC staff’s discretion if it is not appropriate or presents a valid security or personal safety concern.
  • Be patient: For faster help, do not reply to yourself or flood a topic with several questions. Be patient and wait for a reply, and we’ll get to you soon.
  • Need NCC staff help?  You can access direct technical support from NCC staff at ndsrhelp@umn.edu

Community Standards


We may temporarily or permanently suspend forum privileges for accounts that do not comply with the following community standards:

  • Be respectful: Be friendly, patient, and encouraging to all members of our forum community. Name-calling, accusations, harassment, and other abuse toward the community or NCC staff will not be tolerated. If you run into abuse or other behavior that undermines our community, please bring it to NCC staff’s attention.
  • No advertising: Do not use the forum to promote sites, products, or services — this includes self-promoting links in replies. Do not ask non-staff community members to contact you privately.
  • Want to help? We encourage community members to respond to questions posted by other users. Make sure the information you provide is clear and accurate.

Please note that this list is not exhaustive, as that is impossible. Every post is judged on its own merits.

Adapted from https://wordpress.com/forums/topic/best-practices-community-standards/ August 28, 2023.