Hi everyone! I know some of you are concerned about posting the WRONG THING to the forums. No one wants to get in trouble for posting sensitive information or doing things incorrectly. I've listed some general guidelines that will keep you out of trouble. After reading this list, if you are still concerned about your post, please contact the Forum Admins (DL-Eng-ForumAdmin). We'll let you know if it's appropriate:
1) Be Kind.
Some customers are ANGRY at Symantec, and they want to let us know how angry they are. Some will not listen to advice, and will be obstinate. Some others will be rude. And that's ok. As a Symantec Employee, you are expected to be kind to customers. If someone is being rude, you can contact the Admins to evaluate his activity. But we expect you to treat all forum customers with respect, to ignore the "attitude" and focus on the "issue".
2) Don't Post Schedules.
Don't post release dates, milestones, timeframes, or anything else that could possibly be interpreted as a release date. Even "...in the next few months" is too specific. We all know project schedules can shift, and publicly committing to a date can be disastrous.
3) Don't Post Trade Secrets.
Aside from posting how a feature generally functions, we don't want to give away how we make our product. This applies to a much smaller number of you, but I would err on the side of caution when posting any information about the internals of how the products work. If you're concerned about sharing too much information, consult with a Forum Admin or your Manager.
4) Keep Things Public.
Solutions that you give to customers don't just fix the issue for them, but also for all the customers who search for that issue. Communicating via email or Private Message should only be used to obtain sensitive information from the customer, like contact information or logs. Otherwise, the conversation should exist publicly on the forum.
5) Don't Mention Competitors/Other Companies by Name.
These forums are for NORTON products, and we'd like to keep the focus on NORTON. If there's an occasion where you feel you NEED to post about a competitor or another company, please contact the Admins for review. For example, we've had some incidents with Blizzard not signing their download managers for WoW, and our products quarantine it. While it's tempting to post that "Blizzard screwed up" to the forums, that can cause some legal and PR problems. It's better to post about what is happening with the file and what we're doing to resolve the problem, leaving customers to infer which company is to blame.