Here are the unedited current content posting guidelines for the Joomla! Community site (some of these points apply more to blog comments than to magazine authors). These guidelines were developed by Airton Torres.

• All posts must be in English unless posted in a specific international area. If posting in an international area, please use the language of that area, and not English. Do not discuss illegal activities. Our server is hosted in the USA and so is subject to US law. Please do not expose us to any unnecessary legal liability.
• Use your own words. If you wish to use the words of somebody else, quote them, citing the source. Plagiarism is unethical and is illegal in many countries.
• Do not use any copyrighted material unless it's released under a free use license such as Creative Commons or compatible. If such copyrighted material is used, proper credit/attribution must be given.
• In case you use copyrighted material that demands authorization from the author, make sure you have that authorization before you post.
• Do not link to any site that contains adult content, sexually oriented material or might otherwise be considered offensive. Any post containing an inappropriate link will be deleted and the poster will receive a warning.
• Do not propose/link to any site that contains warez/copyrighted software/materials that can be downloaded illegally.
• No commercial advertising is permitted. This includes advertising of any services and/or products not fully compliant with the GPL license.
• Any posts deemed to be self promotion, advertising, or spam can and will be removed. NO SPAM - NO ADVERTISING eg. Posting and making excessive, inappropriate and unnecessary references to your products and websites is self promotion.
• This site is centered on Joomla!, Open Source software and other Internet and computer matters. It is not a place to promote ideological, religious, or political matters. All such discussions will be deleted.

Disclosure of Compensated Relationships

The US Government Federal Trade Commission has rules requiring the disclosure of any compensated relationship (employment, for pay, or in return for free/discounted products and/or services) that an author has when they review/evaluate/recommend a product or service.

OSM has made it clear that the Joomla! websites fall under these new FTC rules, and OSM is working with us to develop a Terms of Service statement that will support these new rules. Ken Crowder and Peter Martin recently drafted the following compliance statement for the Joomla! Forum website. It is again presented here unedited, but I think it's a good basis that can be generalized to apply to our magazine content:

"When recommending an extension or other product to help a user solve their issue, you must disclose any affiliations you may have with the company or group that authors that particular product. This includes, but is not limited to: any paid or non-paid relationships past or present, receiving any promotional products or services, or any other similar information."

Joomla! Leadership / OSM oversight / Copyright

The Joomla! Project and OSM reserve the right to remove any content at any time without notice. The magazine's content falls under the direct oversight of the Outreach Department. As a manner of general practice, OSM does not get involved in content except worrying about things like the FTC issue. libel and the copyright. The OSM site has a copyright policy for all "other" content (not on specific sites that have other rules). Magazine authors keep their copyright but the Joomla! Project and OSM also have the right to reuse the work. If someone does not want to give the Joomla! Project and OSM that right, it should be discussed with OSM.