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+====================
+  Mailinglist Rules
+====================
+
+This is the first file you should be reading before doing any posts on PHP
+mailinglists. Not following these rules is considered imparative to the sucess
+of the PHP project. Therefore expect your contributions to be of much less
+positive impact if you do not follow these rules. More importantly you can
+actually assume that not following these rules will hurt the PHP project.
+
+PHP is developed through the efforts of a large number of people.
+Collaboration is a Good Thing(tm), and mailinglists lets us do this. Thus,
+following some basic rules with regards to mailinglist usage will:
+
+   a. Make everybody happier, especially those responsible for developing PHP
+      itself.
+
+   b. Help in making sure we all use our time more efficiently.
+
+   c. Prevent you from making a fool of yourself in public.
+
+   d. Increase the general level of good will on planet Earth.
+
+
+Having said that, here are the organizational rules:
+
+   1. Respect other people working on the project.
+
+   2. Do not post when you are angry. Any post can wait a few hours. Review
+      your post after a good breather or a good nights sleep.
+
+   3. Make sure you pick the right mailinglist for your posting. Please review
+      the descriptions on the mailinglist overview page
+      (http://www.php.net/mailing-lists.php). When in doubt ask a friend or
+      someone you trust on IRC.
+
+   4. Make sure you know what you are talking about. PHP is a very large project
+      that strives to be very open. The flip side is that the core developers
+      are faced with a lot of requests. Make sure that you have done your
+      research before posting to the entire developer community.
+
+   5. Patches have a much greater chance of acceptance than just asking the
+      PHP developers to implement a feature for you. For one it makes the
+      discussion more concrete and it shows that the poster put thought and time
+      into the request.
+
+   6. If you are posting to an existing thread, make sure that you know what
+      previous posters have said. This is even more important the longer the
+      thread is already.
+
+
+The next few rules are more some general hints:
+
+   1. If you notice that your posting ratio is much higher than that of other
+      people, double check the above rules. Try to wait a bit longer before
+      sending your replies to give other people more time to digest your answers
+      and more importantly give you the opportunity to make sure that you
+      aggregate your current position into a single mail instead of multiple
+      ones.
+
+   2. Consider taking a step back from a very active thread now and then. Maybe
+      talking to some friends and fellow developers will help in understanding
+      the other opinions better.
+
+   3. Do not top post. Place your answer underneath anyone you wish to quote
+      and remove any previous comment that is not relevant to your post.
+
+   4. Do not high-jack threads, by bringing up entirely new topics. Please
+      create an entirely new thread copying anything you wish to quote into the
+      new thread.
+
+Happy hacking,
+
+PHP Team