#1
Draku
Welcome to Minus World! We hope you have a good time here, and we're glad to have you. It's best to read these rules first though!

Before we start...
The report system is important. If you find a post that you view as having broken the rules, report it. Many of the rules are in place for the sake of the members, not for the sake of punishing people. While obvious and clear rulebreaks will be acted upon swiftly (such as spamming shock images), if a rulebreak is more subjective or concerns another member (such as an commentary directed at a particular person that could be interpreted multiple ways) it will need members pointing it out for action to be taken. More or less, if you see something you think shouldn't be done on the forum, press that button. The staff will review the case as impartially as we can.

Rules have been a bit of a strange spot in Minus World's past, and it's important to follow them. Remember that getting contacted for having broken a rule is not a punishment -- there's no need to view it in a negative light. It's only upon repeated rulebreaks that action such as a ban may be taken, unless otherwise stated.

If you have an issue with a member who is breaking a rule or causing a disturbance, please contact a staff member. We act best when we know someone wants action to be taken.
(@Yrrzy and @Fun With Despair are the main Discord moderators and most familiar with the environment, whereas @Draku and @Elyk are the administrators. If you do not like the action one of our moderators has taken, please contact an administrator to have the action reviewed.)

Content
This section is to do with the content of your posts.

Host Terms of Service
No content that violates the Linode Terms of Service. This includes stuff detailed below, but redundancy never hurt anyone.

Content Warnings
Certain content should be marked with a spoiler tag obscuring it with a clear descriptor of what's contained within. This includes gore, nudity, sexual imagery, and things that could negatively affect certain posters such as epileptic flashing. We may be an 18+ community but that also means members have jobs. Don't make anyone get a promotion, okay? In addition, if such content contains characters who are minors, even if avoids showing anything super explicit directly yet still implies sexual acts, it will be immediately deleted. Memes containing censored versions of minors engaging in sexual acts will not be tolerated either. I admittedly hope that this doesn't have to get invoked very often.

Sexually Explicit Content
Can be posted with the above warning tag, but don't go around making threads like "lol watd u fap 2 tonite". It'd best be posted humorously or extremely rarely. You can post it a little more freely if it's your own art you're sharing on the Arts board. Sexually-oriented autoplays are also forbidden.

Discord Exclusive Wrote:NSFW Channels
#content, #venting, and #arts-and-crafts are NSFW-locked. These are the only places you may post NSFW related imagery on the Discord, to protect members who have jobs or are viewing the channel in public. Being that we're 18+, the Discord in general is also barred to 18+ entry. Due to Discord's NSFW warning being extremely inconsistent and the channel tag being tiny and easily forgettable, you should still very much spoiler tag such images despite the channel itself being marked as NSFW. The One Piece may be real, but unfortunately not everyone on your local train wants to get THAT much higher.

Illegal Content
Anything that is illegal - in the United States - for a website to host, display, or otherwise be involved in, is banned here. (This includes viruses, CP, warez, ROMs, etc.) If you post anything that fits this description, your post will be removed and you could be banned, depending on the content of your post.

In light of recent events, it would probably be for the best to not encourage promotion of violence against any real physical people, whether one views it as "justified" or not. This is not an attempt at censorship or representative of the political views of any user, but rather to not cause MW itself or any users potential trouble with the law or services. No, saying you want it to happen in Minecraft is not a valid way to get this sort of thing past.

Spam
Defining spam is tricky and we used to be pretty strict about it. Nowadays, having a post outright defined as spam is rather hard or situational. In the PPP, Life Chat, and Arts & Crafts boards, a topic creator may report a post as spam if it is contextless or derails their thread, and it will be dealt with one way or another if the staff agrees upon review. This may include a thread split. If a post is objectively pointless or obviously making a thread hard to read on purpose, it will be regarded as spam.

Attitude
This section deals with how you interact with other people here.

Etiquette
If you’re constantly getting into arguments with people, or insulting them, their posts, or anything else about them, you’re doing something wrong. This is a community forum, so getting along with the community in some capacity should probably be important to you. We may all have our beefs, but sometimes things can go too far. Thus, if you make a post that is meant to provoke or insult someone (This includes stating that they are present on your Ignore List) it will be dealt with if they report it.

Be civil. If you can’t say something without being passive aggressive, insulting, sarcastic or just plain rude, you might want to consider not saying anything at all instead. After all, we may be the Minus World, but nothing but negativity in one's attitude is gonna grate on people eventually.

On "firing back"
It may be tempting to give someone who has wronged you or others their just desserts by insulting them and/or telling them to leave. However, this helps no one and only further makes the person in question more agitated at you or the general userbase, and while it may not incur the same penalty as an unsolicited flame, it will most certainly make for penalties if you continuously do it or pile onto an existing fire. This rule does not ban standard discussion of banned members or wrongs they have committed recently, but rather simply bans posts like "No one likes you, leave." and incurring digging up things a user has done in the distant past to directly insult them. If someone is egging you on to incite an aggravated response, contact staff and disengage.

Discord Exclusive Wrote:Drawn-out Arguments
It's become apparent that there needs to be some form of measure to control arguments from going on for far too long. If an argument starts consuming a channel to the point where even members not involved are or will likely become negatively impacted, it will be immediately curbed on the spot by moderator intervention. If it continues past that point, including trying to get "the last word", the members who did so will be muted for a short duration (an hour to a day, depending on necessity) to have a cool-off period. Muted members cannot post in any channel, except for image uploads in #to-love-ru-reviews. Yes, really.

Backseat Modding
If you see people being argumentative and disruptive taking over a channel, it may be tempting to try to take control of the situation yourself and tell them to get out or "shut up". Instead, be the better member and simply notify staff, preferably with a DM rather than a public ping.

Reporting Serious Accusations
In the event that an accusation against a member holds immense weight, such as that of reporting worries of potential grooming, sending lewd photographs unsolicited, and other such similar matters, PLEASE do not fire such things off publicly without proof. Report it to the staff in any way possible and it will be taken extremely seriously, looked into, and considered ASAP. See this thread for more information.

Discrimination
Racism and discrimination against any group based on their race, sexuality, gender, etc. is prohibited. This includes such things as insults or offensive generalizations based on such factors. This rule does not cover hobbies or interests. We try to be a fair community, and everybody should be welcome here regardless of who they are, so discrimination is something that we're strongly against. This is an encompassing rule, so it's not exclusive to minorities.

As far as slurs go, it's best not to use them. If someone becomes offended by your use of one, it will be dealt with and future offenses will be taken care of in shorter order as well as with less leniency. If an image has slurs, you'll want to mark it as such underneath a spoiler tag. Obviously, usage in an explanatory way (Such as in a discussion about slurs themselves) is okay in all circumstances, so long as you're not clearly trying to bypass this rule to upset someone else in the process.

Special Cases
In the event that someone is constantly skirting the rules and actively bothering enough members that it becomes something the staff is repeatedly contacted about, action may be taken on a case by case basis. No one really wants to do this, but it can be necessary in some situations. In addition, if a new member joins while having a known past of being troublesome in some manner, be it a history of harassment or warning signs of other potential issues, they will have a parole period of sorts to start out in which their behavior will be closely monitored. One strike and they're out, so to say. This doesn't apply to reasonable or completely normal rulebreaks that could happen to any member, especially a newer one, but to blatant signs of (potentially previously known) attitude that show that they simply won't be a good fit for the website. I personally don't want to slam the door on anyone without reason, but should one arise, well, no helping that.

Direct Messages
Are for your eyes and your eyes only. This includes Conversations, Discord, and other messaging programs. You may still send them to staff in private reports if they are relevant to a rule offense that relates to interactions on the site or our Discord server directly, but staff members should not post the DMs they receive as part of these reports publicly either. Posting cross-server conversations unless they're completely harmless is not good either.

Technicalities
Some little extra things that are sometimes quite important.

On Dupe use - If you break a rule with a Dupe, your parent account will receive the punishment. This should be obvious, but it's worth stating.
18+ - A lot of content posted on Minus World could be considered adult (the numerical definition of which varies worldwide), be it a sexually charged joke or an outright NSFW image. While we can't enforce a strict age-related rule simply due to the possibility of lying, use your own discretion. If that sort of thing doesn't float your boat or makes you uncomfortable, you may not want to hang around here too long. Despite this, if someone directly admits to being under the age of 18 in some fashion be it off-site or not, the determining legal line becomes thinner and we will probably be forced to ban the given user until they are of age.
Don't share accounts - this is sort of the opposite of the previous note, but it's worth pointing out. An account represents an individual, don't share accounts.
Let us know if you're going to be sharing an IP address with somebody else - otherwise we'll think you're duping.
No proxies - spammers and dupers use proxies, so we ban them on sight. If you need to use a proxy (hello China) then let us know beforehand, we might be okay with it, we might not.
You're responsible for your own account - if your little sister gets on your account and comes on and starts spamming the forum, we'll warn/ban your account. No matter how anime she is.
Mass Embeds - Please try to avoid filling topics with a large number of embeds (such as YouTube videos). If you notice a large amount of embeds already in the topic you should make your post be a link to the content instead. You won't get banned for continuing to embed but your post may be edited. Multiple embeds on one page can really drag performance down, so this is all about making browsing better for everyone.
Imgur - Do not use imgur for your avatar/signature hosting, as stated by their ToS.
Pomf - Do not use Pomf for your avatar/signature hosting either, because antivirus companies are dumb as hell.
Jokes - If you say something that offends another member as a joke or claim it is a joke, action still may be taken depending on the case and what that member thinks.
Don't Use Minus World At Work - Well, at least not without knowing what you're in for. Considering the sort of content that gets posted around here, the nature of Good Sh*t, and the possibility of videos containing vocal swears and whatnot, it's best if you just didn't browse in such an environment. If you are doing so it's likely you're prepared anyways. NSFW protections may save you, but who knows. Hope your boss enjoys that autoplay.
On fake Minus Balls - It's pretty clever and funny to trick people by using a Minus Ball rehost or editing it into your avatar or something, but please don't directly link the actual file for it from the server so that no one can potentially block it. Item drops are meant to be a fun experience and while people can get a kick out of being messed with once or twice, being unable to do anything about it and constantly second guessing if a drop is actually real or not would just ruin the potential excitement very quickly. If someone were to block the real deal due to it being used as a prank and not realize it they would also be screwed out of ever getting item drops again, and that's outright unacceptable.
Post deletion discretion - Post deletion is an option available to users for a purpose -- getting rid of a post they regretted making for one reason or another. Don't use it for editing posts, we already have a function for that.
Don't make obscenely loud Autoplay Spellcasts - This should be obvious honestly but people abuse it anyways. If your Autoplay gets reported for being too loud, it will be removed and you will receive a warn. The warning part will not be retroactive but the removal will.

The point of these forums is enjoyment for everyone involved, so it's best to avoid drama and other things that'll just bring others down. Have fun, and post some good shit!

This
space
for                       P.S. Vertette is not allowed to post Robert Downey Jr. under any circumstances.
those                      failure to heed this warning is punishable by death by anime music.
with
low
resolutions
#2
Draku
Minor revision: "Don't act like a jerk" has been rebranded as "Etiquette". The old name was not very good at getting the point across, came off as minorly insulting, and distracted users from the actual rule text itself.
#3
Draku
Revision: "This includes such things as insults or offensive generalizations based on such factors." has been added to the Discrimination rule for clarity. This does not change the rule in any way, only makes the intent clearer.
#4
Draku
Added a little note on Minus Ball trickery. Do note that, again, messing with people about it isn't against the rules and is indeed pretty funny. It's just using the actual file that goes against the new rule.
#5
Draku
Due to it becoming an issue, a note about post deletions has been added.
#6
Draku
Updated some phrasings as well as presented the slur rule more accurately to how we actually deal with them nowadays.
#7
Draku
Dupe rule removed because yeah. However, you may not subvert bans with "true" dupes.
#8
Draku
Added another note about dupes which I didn't think to include before since it goes a little without saying, which is that if a dupe breaks a rule the parent account is held responsible.
#9
Draku
New rule on Autoplay casts. No more stupidly loud volume, please. Reports on this issue will result in removal, even retroactively.
#10
Draku
Another new rule for Autoplay, sexually explicit casts of it are no longer allowed as they cannot be tagged nearly as easily.
#11
Draku
Added a rule about Pomf -- don't use it for uploads. I shouldn't have to make a rule about this but unfortunately antivirus companies aren't going to get smarter anytime soon and I don't want people to be scared off MW because of alerts.
#12
Draku
A new rule has been added in light of recent events with a few users. Just because someone is an ass doesn't mean you get a free pass to fire back at them or antagonize them further.
#13
Draku
There's been some Discord-exclusive rule-laying recently, including a note on Backseat Modding and newly christened NSFW channels. They are listed on this Rule list within Quote brackets to differentiate them from rules that affect both the Forums and Discord. If you use the Discord be sure to check up on those, though you've likely already seen the updates via the Rules channel there.

Other new additions that affect the forum directly include a rule against promotion of real-life violence against physical people as well as an update to the "Firing Back" rule's wording. Always remember, "If someone is egging you on to incite an aggravated response, contact staff and disengage."
#14
Draku
By popular demand:
18+ is back. Applies immediately to the Discord as well.

Any members who joined during the 16+ era will be grandfathered in. You know what you're in for here.
#15
Draku
New rule added.

Direct Messages
Are for your eyes and your eyes only. This includes Conversations, Discord, and other messaging programs. You may still send them to staff in private reports if they are relevant to a rule offense that relates to interactions on the site or our Discord server directly, but staff members should not post the DMs they receive as part of these reports publicly either. Posting cross-server conversations unless they're completely harmless is not good either.
#16
Draku
The Special Cases rule has been appended in light of recent events and suggestions.
[Image: s2n7oi.png]

Users browsing this thread:

Forum Jump:

";