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Microsoft Q&A Code of Conduct

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This Code of Conduct applies to all users and content in Microsoft Q&A. It outlines expectations for participation on this site.

Microsoft Q&A is a global, community-driven platform for timely, high-quality technical answers. Communities thrive through diversity of thought and the safety of their members. Microsoft has a deep-seated commitment to diversity and inclusion. Therefore, we are committed to providing a welcoming and inspiring community for all. People violating this Code of Conduct may be suspended from Microsoft Q&A and get their account removed.

This Code of Conduct is not exhaustive or complete. It serves to capture our common understanding of a productive, collaborative environment. Where any aspect of this Code of Conduct conflicts with the Microsoft Learn Terms of Use, the Microsoft Learn Terms of Use will take precedence.

Member Qualifications

As a participant in this community, you agree that you will uphold this Code of Conduct and be responsible for all activities and content you upload and post. In addition to upholding this Code of Conduct, you're responsible for adhering to all applicable local and national laws.

This is your community. Help us to keep it safe, friendly, fun, and helpful.

When you're using Microsoft Q&A (the "Services") you will follow these rules.

Please do

  • Search before you post. Search to see if a question you’d like answered has already been posted by somebody else. Posting the same question repeatedly and starting multiple threads on the same subject can be confusing. Someone will respond to your issue if they have the answer.

  • Be polite and respectful. We are a worldwide community of professionals with different backgrounds, identities, and levels of expertise. Remember you might not be communicating in someone else's primary spoken language, and others may not have your level of understanding.

  • Respect the site's etiquette. Use normal caps when you type. ALL CAPS typography is considered shouting and aggressive.

  • Learn from others. We all make mistakes, and those should be seen as learning opportunities. If you post something that turns out to be incorrect and someone corrects you, thank the person instead of reacting negatively at the person who corrected you. We are all here to learn and to improve ourselves.

  • Keep conversation threads on track. Stay on the topics of this site: technical questions and conversations on Microsoft technology.

  • Be honest. Cite the source of anything you post or upload, if it isn’t your own original content.

  • Understand disagreements. Disagreements, both social and technical, are useful learning opportunities. Seek to understand other viewpoints and resolve differences constructively.

  • Keep the community healthy. Report any kind of abuse you find in the community. You can find a Report a concern option in every content.

  • Post to the right place. Is your question about Cosmos DB? Use the right tags. Using tags like #Azure Cosmos DB help people understand what you're asking about. Moderators might update your tags or add new tags to better scope your question.

  • Mark correct answer as accepted. This helps ‘close’ the thread. It also helps others know when searching for the right solution that the answer helped solve your problem.

  • Stay up to date. Fine-tune your email notification preferences in your profile settings.

Policies

To ensure the digital safety of how users interact with each other in their content and their conduct, Microsoft Q&A has rules about what types of content and conduct are not allowed. Prohibited content will be removed. Your account may be suspended or deleted from the Services if you post harmful content.

Bullying and harassment

We do not allow content or conduct that targets a person or group with abusive behavior. This includes any action that:

  • Harasses, intimidates, or threatens others.
  • Hurts people by insulting or belittling them.
  • Continues contact or interaction that is unwelcome, especially where contact causes others to fear injury.

Child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA)

We do not allow the exploitation of, harm, or threat of harm to children on our site, CSEA is any content or activity that harms or threatens to harm a child through exploitation, trafficking, extortion, or endangerment. This includes sharing visual media that contain sexual content that involves or sexualizes a child. CSEA also includes grooming, which is the inappropriate interaction with children by contacting, private messaging, or talking with a child to ask for or offer sex or sexual content, sharing content that is sexually suggestive, and planning to meet with a child for sexual encounters. A child is anyone under 18 years old or who has not reached the age of majority under applicable law.

We will automatically delete the Microsoft account of any user posting CSEA.

Coordination of harm

Our site should never be used to hurt people, including by working with others to cause physical harm. Cooperating or making specific plans with others with the shared purpose of harming someone physically is not allowed.

Graphic violence and gore

Real-world violent content can be disturbing, offensive, or even traumatic for users. We also understand some violent or graphic images may be newsworthy or important for educational or research purposes, and we consider these factors when reviewing content and enforcing our policies. We do not permit any visual content that promotes real-world violence or human gore. This may include images or videos that show:

  • Real acts of serious physical harm or death against a person or group.
  • Violent domestic abuse against a real person or people.
  • Severe effects or physical trauma, such as internal organs or tissues, burnt remains of a person, severed limbs, or beheading.

Hate speech and discrimination

We do not allow hateful content that attacks, insults, or degrades someone because of a protected trait, such as their race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability status, or caste. Hate speech includes:

  • Promoting harmful stereotypes about people because of a protected trait.
  • Dehumanizing statements, such as comparing someone to an animal or other non-human, because of a protected trait.
  • Encouraging or supporting violence against someone because of a protected trait.
  • Calling for segregation, exclusion, or intimidation of people because of their protected trait.
  • Symbols, logos, or other images that are recognized as communicating hatred or racial superiority.

Non-consensual intimate imagery & intimate extortion

We do not allow the sharing of sexually intimate images of someone without their permission—also called non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. We do not allow NCII to be distributed on our services, nor do we allow any content that praises, supports, or request NCII. In general, if a video or image has the following traits, we treat it as NCII:

  • It was taken privately, not in a professional setting.
  • It shows sexual activity, nudity, or a sexualized body part.
  • The person shown in the imagery didn’t agree to either the creation or the sharing of the imagery.

Additionally, Microsoft does not allow any threats to share or publish NCII—also called intimate extortion. This includes asking for or threatening a person to get money, images, or other value things in exchange for not making the NCII public.

Sexual solicitation

We do not allow people to use its products and services to ask for or offer sex, sexual services, or sexual content in exchange for money or something else of value.

Suicide and self-injury

We work to remove any content about suicide and self-harm that could be dangerous. We also know that people may use our services to talk about mental health, share their stories, or join groups with others who have been affected by suicide or self-injury.

This includes the following (without limitation):

  • Supporting general ways people can end their lives, such as with a gun, hanging, or drug overdose.
  • Encouraging someone to take their life.
  • Showing images of real or attempted suicide.
  • Praising those who have died by suicide for taking their own life.

Self-injury content demonstrates, praises, or inspires physical harm to oneself, including through cutting, burning, or carving one’s skin. It also includes content that encourages or instructs on eating disorders, or systematic over or under-eating.

Terrorism and violent extremism

We do not allow content that praises or supports terrorists or violent extremists, helps them to recruit, or encourages or enables their activities. We look to the United Nations Security Council’s Consolidated List to identify terrorists or terrorist groups. Violent extremists include people who embrace an ideology of violence or violent hatred towards another group.

We will delete the Microsoft Learn account of any user posting terrorism and violent extremism content.

Trafficking

We do not allow any content that perpetrates human trafficking . Trafficking happens when someone exploits someone else for personal gain by depriving them of their human rights.

Trafficking commonly includes three parts:

  • The act of recurring, moving, relocating, paying for, or abducting people.
  • The use of—or threat of—force, lies, trickery, or coercion to do these activities.
  • The activities are done for money, status, or some other kind of gain.

Trafficking includes forcing people to work, marry, engage in sexual activity, or have medical treatments or operations without their consent and is not limited to any age or background.

Violent threats, incitement, and glorification of violence

We do not permit content that encourages violence against other people through violent threats or incitement.

  • Threats of violence are words that show a specific intention to cause someone serious physical harm.
  • Incitement is material that encourages, urges, or is likely to result in serious physical harm to a person or group. We also do not allow the glorification of violence through content that praises or supports real acts of violence causing serious physical harm to people or groups, including violence that happened in the past.

Adult and sexual

We do not allow the use of the Services to generate or share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, offensive language, graphic violence, self-harm, or criminal activity).

Profanity and vulgarity

We do not allow swearing or any other dismissive language.

Spam

We do not allow spam or any posts that engage in phishing or the generation or distribution of malware.

  • Spam is unwanted or unsolicited bulk email, postings, contact requests, SMS (text messages), instant messages, or similar electronic communications.
  • Phishing is sending emails or other electronic communications to fraudulently or unlawfully induce recipients to reveal personal or sensitive information to gain access to accounts or records, exfiltration of documents or other sensitive information, payment and/or financial benefit.
  • Malware includes any activity designed to cause technical harm, such as delivering malicious executables, organizing denial of service attacks, or managing command and control servers.

Defamation, impersonation, false information

We do not allow any activities that are fraudulent, false, or misleading (e.g., asking for money under false pretenses, impersonating someone else, defamation, manipulating the Services to increase play count, or affect rankings, ratings, or comments).

Off topic or irrelevant content

This site is to get answers to your technical questions on Microsoft technologies. Do not post questions on technologies for other companies or plan to have a conversation with other users.

Personal or sensitive user information

For your own safety, do not post any sensitive information, such as passwords, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, passport numbers, credit card information, or financial information.

Other Terms of Use or Code of Conduct violation

We do not allow the following:

  • Anything illegal
  • Circumvent any restrictions on access to or availability of the Services.
  • Infringe upon the rights of others (e.g., unauthorized sharing of copyrighted music or other copyrighted material, resale or other distribution of Bing maps, or photographs).
  • Activities that violate the privacy of others.
  • Activities that help others break these rules.
  • 3rd party paid promotions, including commercial software, freeware, freemium, except for non-commercial open source.
  • Links to websites that require payment to access information.

Non-authentic use of the Services

Don't engage in activities to circumvent any restrictions on access, availability to the Services, or misuse of the Services features including but not limited to:

  • Use of fake accounts to vote, post questions and accept answers from members of the community to artificially earn reputation points.
  • Creating alternative accounts when a primary account has been suspended from the Services to circumvent that suspension.
  • Using features of the site, such as voting options, to penalize other users in retaliation for their actions on the Services.

Create community accounts. All accounts are for the sole use of one individual. Plagiarize the answers submitted previously by others and content from other websites as your own. Give proper sourcing and credit along with links to the original content source in your answers at all times. This includes adherence to the Microsoft Q&A AI usage policy.

How we enforce these policies

We use a combination of automated technology and trained human reviewers to find and take action against any content or conduct that violates our terms and policies. We have systems and processes in place to make sure we are fair and consistent when enforcing these terms and policies. This helps us protect our users while also respecting their rights.

If you violate this Code of Conduct, we may stop providing Services to you or we may close your Microsoft account. We may also block delivery of communication (like email, file sharing or instant message) to or from the Services in an effort to enforce this Code of Conduct or we may remove or refuse to publish Your Content for any reason. When investigating alleged violations of this Code of Conduct, Microsoft reserves the right to review Your Content to resolve the issue. However, we cannot monitor the entire Service and make no attempt to do so.

User cautions

  • Do not post sensitive data from your computer including memory dumps and/or configuration files. If you feel you need that to solve your problem, a Microsoft employee can start a private conversation with you to help you protect your data.
  • Be very cautious about accepting direct help from another user. If that user suggests using Remote Assistance to help you, be aware that they will have access to your computer, and that your computer could be hacked.
  • If you volunteer to help another user through Remote Access, be very careful not to harm their computer in any way, or to access information that is not openly made available to you. Abuse of Remote Access will not be tolerated and will result in a permanent ban from the Services.
  • Please be careful with your personal information. If you post your email address in a thread, it may be used for any purpose by the general public, as this is a public community.
  • Do not post information that could be used by others to steal your identity, like your street address, your phone number, your social security number, or your credit card number.

Termination and cancellation

Microsoft reserves the right, at its sole discretion, and without any obligation to do so, to review and remove user-created services and content at will and without notice and delete content and accounts. Microsoft reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to permanently ban participants or terminate access to the community.

Rights and Responsibilities

  • We encourage you not to share information that others could use to harm you.
  • Microsoft is not responsible for the content of any user-created posting, listing or message. The decision to view content or engage with others is yours. We advise you to use your best judgment.
  • You are responsible for protecting your computer against interference, spyware or viruses that may be encountered. We recommend you install a virus protection program on your computer and keep it up to date.
  • You may use the Report option in each thread to report violations of this Code of Conduct.
  • Microsoft reserves the right to amend or change the Code of Conduct or any service at any time without notice. We encourage you to Follow this thread or periodically review these guidelines to ensure you're complying.
  • Some information you provide or upload to the service may be stored outside of the country/region in which you reside.
  • All activity on the service is also governed by the Microsoft Learn Terms of Use and the Microsoft Privacy Policy.
  • You acknowledge that you're a volunteer participant in The Services and that you may discontinue your participation at any time. Nothing related to your participation will be construed as creating an employer-employee relationship, a partnership, joint venture, association, or agency relationship, or as a limitation upon Microsoft’s right to terminate your access as foreseen above, or upon Microsoft’s discretion, to terminate your access as provided herein. You assume all risk for your use.
  • You understand that posting content or submitting material is voluntary, and you're under no obligation whatsoever to provide any submissions or contributions. You are solely responsible for your dealings with any third party that relates to your use of the community, or any information or materials you obtain from a third party.
  • Microsoft shall not be obligated to provide, and you have no expectation of receiving, any compensation in any form for your voluntary participation in the community, or for your submissions or contributions.