For those of you who have been around awhile, you'll be very familiar with these. 99% of it is taken from the old Community Guidelines thread. Generally speaking, it just goes into further detail / explains what we expect from those within the Clan Community.
Don't be intentionally annoying!
Common sense prevails - if you are intentionally or continually making this community less enjoyable for others, you're going to be removed from it. It's that simple.
If you understand this one prevailing rule you can probably stop reading now, or just give everything a glance-over. If you're not sure what 'common sense prevails' means, read on for the boring details. If you don't agree with this, sayonara.
Common Sense
OK, since you're still reading it can't hurt to start with the absolute basics. The Forums, War Priv's, Events etcetera are all privileges of being a Conquer Club community member. They are not inalienable rights. Don't wait for someone to tell you to stop if you know you are violating the Guidelines. If you hang around long enough, you'll know when you are going overboard---so lets police ourselves, for everyone's sake. So if you find yourself acting a little Martian, Venusian or otherwise "un-CC" as you might say, you will find that those privileges mentioned above will be affected.
Our Relaxed Approach
Conquer Club takes a fairly relaxed/liberal approach to what is said on Conquer Club---in our Public Forums, Game Chats, and other areas where users can post their comments and thoughts. Coarse language is generally allowed, so if you find something disagreeable we encourage you to use your Foes List. Though we take a relaxed approach to what is said on Conquer Club, that doesn't mean that we don't have any rules about what can't be said. Ultimately, if a Team Member requests you do something, follow their direction. If you encounter any violations, please let a Team Member know (or use the triangle ! Report a post feature).
Forum Guidelines
Posting in the forum is a privilege, not a right. If you want to continue to keep this privilege, play by the rules.
The following list is a set of guidelines to avoid being annoying. It is not 100% comprehensive, but please read this carefully to ensure you don't accidentally breach the guidelines:
Trolling is the intentional attempt to cause chaos.
[spoiler=Trolling Specifics]
- Posting controversial or irrelevant messages or topics with the intent to provoke someone else into a contest of over-manly confrontation, emotional response, flame fest or to generally disrupt the discussion, community or user is not cool. Prompting or provoking others (Baiting) to do that is just as bad.
- Don't Bait or provoke others. Just because you didn't directly attack another user does not make your post a meaningful contribution. If your post's intent was to provoke another user into an emotional response, to get under their skin or to otherwise piss them off, you're baiting them. Hopefully the user doesn't take the bait, but you'll probably receive a disciplinary action from a mod.
- Don't ever post personal information of other users. Anywhere. Ever. Even if they already posted it somewhere else. This includes posting personal information about a CC user on another site, you will be held accountable here.
- Don't de-rail topics, don't spam them, don't flame them, don't bait them, don't drive a topic into a negative spiral.
- Don't flog a dead horse. If a discussion is over, it's over. Screaming louder, more or in a different place is not going to change the answer already given. If you think the answer was wrong, PM an Admin. If you think the admin is wrong, then this probably isn't the right community for you.
- If someone is trolling or baiting, don't fall for it. The best way to irritate trolls and ultimately drive them away is to ignore them. These people crave attention in any form, be it praise or condemnation, and will stay in an argument for the thrill of the battle. Ignore them and it will hurt more than any "zing" or insult you might come back with.
There is little that is more annoying than a troll. This will get you removed from the CC community quicker than almost anything else.[/spoiler]
Flames are posts or parts of posts which, directly or indirectly, insult, belittle, bully, name-call, or otherwise attack another user, and are not allowed.
[spoiler=Flaming Specifics]
- It doesn't matter if another user rubs you the wrong way, that's not an excuse to flame or personally attack them.
- Attacking a person instead of the user is NOT ok - it's all fun and games until it becomes personal.
- Using a person's real information, picture, address, blog or anything else "personal" is NOT ok, and is Personal Information Abuse.
- Yes, we are liberal on coarse language, but this does not mean cyber-bullying or abusive bigotry is acceptable anywhere. You will be removed from the community for cyber-bullying or abusive bigotry.
Flaming will get your post edited/deleted and you will receive a disciplinary action from a mod. Cyber-bullying or harassment will similarly result in a disciplinary action, and a ton of bricks.[/spoiler]
Bigoted comments will not be tolerated---lets all tolerate and live peacefully with one another.
[spoiler=Bigotry Specifics]
- Bigotry includes racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia/sexual orientation bashing, religion bashing, lack of religion bashing, or wishing violence on any group of people, etc.
- Bigotry takes into account historic events, emotional baggage and generally accepted associations with a term, phrase or intent - posting "White Power" in a topic has a history and is bigoted, posting "Green Power" makes you an environmentalist.
Bigotry will get your post edited/deleted and you will receive a disciplinary action from a mod. Bigotry, just avoid it. Just do it.[/spoiler]
Spam is posting for the sole intention of being annoying.
There are a million ways you shouldn't be annoying, but ones worth mentioning:
[spoiler=Spamming Specifics]
- Double/triple/multiple posting.
- Quoting just for the sake of quoting.
- "QFE", "QFT" etc. do not qualify as "a meaningful post", add why you agree with the quote.
- Posting only, or lots of, smilies.
- Posting about yourself in a forum topic that is not specifically about you.
- Posts that add nothing to the current topic.
- Posting rapidly in a short time.
- Posting the same thing over and over in the same or other forum topics.
- Posting "parody" forum topics that aren't meant for an actual discussion.
- Necrobumping (bringing dead forum topics back to life) if no new meaningful content is being added.
Off topic posts are posts which de-rail a topic either directly or indirectly, at any point.
[spoiler=Off Topic Specifics]
- If the post is not about you, don't try to make it about you.
- If the main point of your post is about something other than what the OP intended, it's not on topic, even if you did post about how you agree with the OP.
- Yes, you can joke around in a forum topic, but keep it on the topic originally intended by the OP
- Whether or not your post is the first to take a forum topic off topic is irrelevant: Off topic is off topic.
- Just because everyone in the forum topic doesn't mind it going off topic does not mean that it's okey doky.
Nudity and Pornography are not allowed.
[spoiler=Nudity and Pornography Specifics]
- Any images of pornographic activity or nudity - nipples, areola, genitals, anuses etc - whether intended as artistic, erotic, pornographic or otherwise are not allowed.
- This includes content posted here and links to other sites. Posting NSFW - "Not Suitable For Work" - does not make it ok for posting.
- If it is ambiguous, we'll ask you to remove it anyway, so "It's a guy's nipple" isn't going to fly. You're just trying to be annoying at that point.
- Posting a painting from the 13th century with exposed nipples to claim that we're evil dictators when we ask you to remove it is also just being annoying, and you're probably just being a troll at that point.
[/list][/spoiler]
Posting Etiquette
To avoid annoying the rest of the community, follow these 3 basic steps:
- Ask yourself if your post is actually contributing to the topic, or is it off topic or just plain spam? If it's not contributing, find somewhere else to post.
- Ask yourself if you are flaming, baiting, feeding a troll or taking the bait. If you are, then don't.
- Re-ask the above two questions
There are also some CC specific issues that you need to keep in mind for proper posting.
Un-noted Automatic Join Game Links
- If you post an Automatic Join Game Link, you must note that it is so to warn other users who may click on the link before the game is filled.
Foreign Language Forums are for language groups to discuss CC in their native language.
- Language forums are not places to practice your skills with Google translate nor are they for national groups, they are for language groups. If you have problems in them, PM a Community Mod.
Posts that nobody can read are annoying.
- |337 5p33k (0r d00d 5p34k) 15 h4rd 70 r34d 4nd m4k35 y0u |00k |1k3 4 ch1|d 57uck 1n 7h3 80'5 4nd n07 47 4|| |337.
Translation: Leet-speak just sucks, and we all know it, and you don't want to suck too, now do you? - TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS JUST OBNOXIOUS AND DOES NOT MAKE YOU LOOK COOLER OR SMARTER AND PEOPLE WON'T READ YOUR POST MORE BECAUSE IT'S IN CAPS. PLEASE USE CAPS ONLY AT THE BEGINNING OF SENTENCES AND FOR SINGLE WORD EMPHASIS WHEN REALLY NEEDED.
- The only thing more stupid than TYPING IN ALL CAPS is
TYPING IN ALL CAPS IN A LARGER FONT AND ANNOYING COLOUR
Rules, precedents and customs from other communities don't apply.
- Neither do the By-Laws from the Podunk 3rd district. Believe it or not, Conquer Club is a private business. Just because something works one way in another community does not mean that is how it will work here. We're usually less strict and you can get away with a lot, but that doesn't mean that you can pull the "This is how it works everywhere else" card and expect to get away with it. Really. This is not "everywhere else."
- In the same vein, just because you are here, does not mean you MUST be here. This is a business and CC does reserve the right to promote or discourage any kind of behavior it sees fit. Claiming your first amendment right to free speech to post about the colour of your poop last night will not fly. If a mod or admin specifically say you shouldn't be doing something, regardless of if it's specifically spelled out in the rules, or if you think that they are stupid, it still means don't do it. If you don't like the rules here, google.com will help you find somewhere more appropriate.
Be nice or leave
It's fine if you don't like this site, the clan area or the way it is run...there are plenty of other areas (Tournaments, Standard / Pick up games, etc) or you can find another one with better rules, start another one and make your own rules, abuse another one and try to get them to change their rules, but don't complain about the rules here.
Forum & General Rule Enforcement
For users who break the above Guidelines, as they say, "there will be consequences and repercussions." The Mods and Admins will always take into account when past infractions occurred, and the severity of the current infraction and any past infractions, in addition to the intent of the infractions.
In order to curb some poor behaviour in the clan forum threads, players may be denied or have medals removed if their behaviour is deemed to be disruptive or inappropriate, even if it does not meet the site wide policy for a forum infraction. In the past, we’ve locked war threads due to the behaviour of a single individual, thus inherently punishing both clans. In order to be consistent, this will only be applied by the Clan Dept Head (most often these issues are raised by the CD team). See below for more details.
Methods of Forum Rule Enforcement
[spoiler=Methods of Forum Rule Enforcement]
- Moderator Post
- A moderator may drop in on a thread and provide a friendly reminder to all readers and posters. These reminders need to be considered otherwise other actions may be taken.
- Mods are members too, so they are free to express their opinions in their posts. They will make it clear when they are warning the other users rather than just expressing their personal comments and opinions.
- Topic Split
- A topic may have off topic posts split into a new topic from the original topic, so as not to mix and mingle too many discussions in a single topic.
- Topic Merge
- A topic may be merged with another topic if the discussion exists in an older and previous topic.
- Topic Time Out
- A topic may be locked for a short period of time (up to 24 hours) if the discussion turned into insults, name calling, flaming, etc. After the designated period of time, the topic will be reopened for discussion, and will stay open, provided that discussion continues in a civilized and respectful manner.
- Indefinite Topic Lock
- A topic may be locked indefinitely if the discussion has derailed from its original and intended purpose, or it has become unruly and no longer heeding the Forum Guidelines.
- Warning
- A user will almost always first receive a Warning from a Moderator or Admin for their first offense.
- There are two levels of warning, friendly and formal.
- Friendly warnings are considered a reminder that you are near or just over the line of what is allowed and gives you the opportunity to make any necessary adjustments, and are not a part of your Personal Disciplinary History record. Think of them as a 'Heads up, you're going down the wrong path, let me steer you back so we don't get to a point we both regret getting to.'
- Formal warnings are those that are a part of your Personal Disciplinary History record, and should definitely be heeded. These are sent via PM with the title "Disciplinary Measures".
- If you do get a warning from a mod, remember that "But this person broke the rule too" is not an excuse. Sure, lots of people are annoying, but that doesn't mean you're not. Don't try to deflect your guilt onto someone else. You broke a rule, own up to it and don't do it again. If someone else did break the rule, then report it using the "report post" button in the forum or PM a mod directly. They may have already been warned even if it wasn't posted publicly.
- Forum Vacation Flavors
During a Forum Vacation a user cannot post in the Forums and cannot access their Inbox, but they can still play games. Forum Vacations will be used when Warnings are not heeded. The range of Forum Vacations you may receive depends on if your infraction was a Minor or a Major/Severe offense. Flavors of Vacation you may receive:- 24 Hour
- For users who have yet to learn. Calm down, cool it, regroup, be happy.
- 72 Hours & 1 Week
- For users who have yet to learn. Time away does the mind and heart some good.
- 1 Month
- For users who have yet to learn. More time for reflection. This will only be applied by the Admin. Dont go there.
- 3 Month Forum Vacation
- For users who never learned from their previous offense actions. The ultimate zen. To be repeated for each forum Infraction after release from this level. This will also only be applied by the Admin.
- 24 Hour
- Permanent Website Ban
- Bans are the most severe of the Rule Enforcement methods. These are not vacations you come back from: No forums, no games, no Conquer Club.
- Used with Admin discretion, based on the severity of the offense and past Personal Disciplinary History.
Remember: Common sense prevails - if you are intentionally or continually making this community less enjoyable, you're going to be removed from it. It's that simple.
Informal / Friendly Warnings: A friendly warning is given when a user fails to follow one of the rules. The user is simply being reminded or educated about what is expected of them, or to take more time to consider what they are doing. This is not a formal warning, nor does it end up on ones disciplinary record.
Warnings: A mod may give a warning for violating any of the rules. When a warning is given, all the members in the room are required to heed the warning. Violation of the warning may result in consequences and notes being left on a users permanent record.
Vacations: Repeatedly ignoring warnings and kicks will earn a user a vacation. Vacations start at 24 hours and can quickly increase after that. Don't press your luck any further.
Permaban from Clans If a user continues to abuse their time in Clans, their privilege to use the features we all enjoy will be removed. There's no coming back from a permaban from Clans. Only will be applied by the Dept Head.
