DuelistGroundz Rules and Regulations

[+ACP+]

Rules

The Captains Rule: Our site, our rules. You don't have to like it; you do have to accept it. These rules apply to all of our forums and also to PMs and our discord channel.

1. No porn or shock sites anywhere on the site. This includes fully exposed female nipple, balls, rectum, vagina, or penis. Since there's no way to disable them, avatars must be unambiguously work safe: no girls bouncing on cocks, no you-getting-laid, and no chicks nearly naked.
2. No multiaccounting (this includes letting a banned friend of yours access your account). Also, no proxy IP addresses. We'll just assume that you're trying to evade a ban and ban you. If for some reason you have special circumstances, we may make some limited exceptions on the no proxy rule. PM an admin first though.
3. Do not post personal identifying information of yourself or anyone else. Full name and the city that you live in is fine. Avoid anything more detailed than that. Also, never share your account password with anyone.
4. Post your threads in the right forum, please. This especially goes for Yugioh and Politics.
5. No autoplaying movies, audio, etc. in sigs or posts. There are some limited exceptions for Crazy Spam Kingdom, but even here, don't go overboard.
6. Don't complain about receiving neg rep. Rep is just a number. Also, don't go through someone's post history and neg all of their posts because they pissed you off.
7. No personal threats (or threats toward the site itself), whether it is to physically harm someone, hack them, etc. Also, do not use the personal message feature of DGZ or discord to harass people. If someone tells you to stop PMing them, you must stop.
8. This goes for newer members: We expect you to be your own person, but we also expect you to make an effort to understand DGz's culture and customs on a basic level in order to maintain a healthy community. If you continually fail to do so by instigating fights, bashing the site/mods, or ignoring advice from staff on how to not cause trouble within the community, you can be forced into a mandatory lurking period to observe the correct way to do things.
9. Keep sigs reasonable in size. No more than two images, and no ridiculous image sizes.
10. No advertising your website or fishing for social media follows. It's fine to talk about upcoming tournaments or link to articles. But no, "Hey guys check out my website," or, "Subscribe to me on youtube." You may place one text link to a non-monetized social media account of yours in your signature if you would like, but that is the only exception to this rule.

11. Along the same lines as rule #10, no encouraging people to leave the site or not participate in discussion, even if you are not necessarily advertising another site. Examples (not intended as an exhaustive list) include statements such as: "stop posting and leave", "this site isn't for you, try pojo", "DGZ is dead", "[insert other Yugioh site/group here] is better than DGZ", "DGZ's yugioh forums are terrible, don't post there", "mafia universe is a better place to play mafia", etc. However, constructive criticism is fine such as statements like "DGZ would be better if..."

12. Do not attempt to use DGZ to scam or defraud its members. This includes both making trades with no intent of upholding your end as well as selling/trading fake cards or products. Also, don't gamble here with other members.

 

Punishments

Note: In the language below, a "ban" refers to the inability to access the site, whereas a "suspension" refers to the inability to make posts yourself but the ability to read posts of others.

 

Rule 1: IP ban for actual porn/shock sites. For avatars that aren't porn but are possibly not safe for work, we'll give you a warning and tell you to change it.
Rule 2: For multiaccounting to evade a ban or to cheat in mafia/warring/tournaments, we'll ban your new account and IP ban you. For multiaccounting not to evade a ban, we'll ban your new account, and ban the old account for a week (unless you're an old member who made a new account because you forgot your password). For proxy, we'll give you a warning and remind you not to use a proxy. If you refuse, we'll IP ban you.
Rule 3: If it's of yourself, we'll just give you a warning and remind you of the rule. If it's of someone else, it'll be a 1-week ban for the first offense, with length possibly increasing for additional offenses.
Rule 4: Warning on first offense, 1-day suspension for second offense, suspension length doubles for each additional offense.
Rule 5: Warning on first offense, 1-day suspension for second offense, suspension length doubles for each additional offense.
Rule 6: Warning on first offense, 1-day suspension for second offense, suspension length doubles for each additional offense.
Rule 7: 1-week ban all the way up to IP ban, depending on the severity and credibility of the threat/harassment.
Rule 8: Warning on first offense, and you will be directed to http://duelistgroundz.com/index.php?/topic/168861-i-dont-understand-dgz-and-no-one-likes-me/ to learn from your mistakes. After that, it will be a week-long suspension for any additional offenses.
Rule 9: We'll give you a warning and tell you to change it.
Rule 10: We'll remove your advertisement + warning on first offense, 1-day suspension for second offense, suspension length doubles for each additional offense. 

Rule 11: Warning on first offense, 1-day suspension for second offense, suspension length doubles for each additional offense. 

Rule 12: Permanent ban until the amount scammed for is repaid in full to the victim.

 

Other: If at any point, you accumulate 3 warnings through some combination of rule violations within 2 months, we may suspend you for a short period (1-7 days).

[+ACP+]

Note: These rules are virtually identical to our old ones. My main priorities here were to make things more clear to our users and also to add some uniformity to punishments (it used to be the case that two users could break the same rule and receive completely different punishments depending on the mood of staff at the time).

 

 

[+Satchmo+]

Wanna clarify 2 things for our users:

Advertising in signatures

And the user's own personal phone number

I don't personally see any issue with these 2 things, but clarifying for people would definitely be for the best.

[+ACP+]

Please don't post your phone number on the site. If you want to PM another member your phone number that's fine (say you're both going to a YCS coming up and want to have a way to contact each other). But if you post your number on a public forum, things could definitely go bad for you, and I don't want people to start sending you dick pics or something.

 

In regards to advertising in sigs, I would avoid for now to be on the safe side, but I'll ask rei what our prior policy was.

[little bug 2005]

3. Do not post personal information of yourself or anyone else. Full name and the city that you live in is fine. Avoid anything more detailed than that. Also, never share your account password with anyone.

 

whats the issue with posting personal information? and define personal information more clearly.

 

i feel like in forums like csk or social interaction might call for getting together or maybe discussing ones own life and i dont think that should be at all restricted. if i feel like saying something about myself is my decision and i should be able to let people know if i want to. 

[+ACP+]

When I say personal information, I don't mean what your favorite color is. I'm talking about your full address, your phone number, your IP address, your driver's license number, etc. This was part of our old rules as well, and it should be common sense as to why you should not post identifying information.

 

Going to update the rules tonight for some more clarity on the advertising rule and the trolling rule.

[+ACP+]

Note the changes to rule #8 and rule #10. If you have any questions about these changes, please ask.

[+ACP+]

@TheGoldenTyranno: As you're coming back from your ban, please make sure you read rule #8 very carefully. Meditate on it if you have to.

[+mark]

What is the role of the 'point system' with regards to giving warnings? As I didn't see it mentioned in the OP. 

[+ACP+]

1 hour ago, mark said:

What is the role of the 'point system' with regards to giving warnings? As I didn't see it mentioned in the OP. 

 

On 12/3/2016 at 3:55 PM, ACP said:

Other: If at any point, you accumulate 3 warnings through some combination of rule violations within 2 months, we may suspend you for a short period (1-7 days).

The "points" don't really matter, but rapidly accumulating different warnings does.

[+ACP+]

On 12/3/2016 at 3:55 PM, ACP said:

7. No personal threats (or threats toward the site itself), whether it is to physically harm someone, hack them, etc. Also, do not use the personal message feature of DGZ or discord to harass people. If someone tells you to stop PMing them, you must stop.

Rule #7 has been clarified. See bolded additions.

[+ACP+]

We've been having some problems recently with people making threats. I know that you're all going to say that "I was joking", but our mods can't be psychic and who's joking and who isn't. Better to be safe than sorry. Please refrain from making any posts that imply that you are going to physically assault someone. I don't like having to ban people for this.

[+ACP+]

Rule #10 has been expanded upon a bit with rule #11.

On 12/3/2016 at 3:55 PM, ACP said:

11. Along the same lines as rule #10, no encouraging people to leave the site or not participate in discussion, even if you are not necessarily advertising another site. Examples (not intended as an exhaustive list) include statements such as: "stop posting and leave", "this site isn't for you, try pojo", "DGZ is dead", "[insert other Yugioh site/group here] is better than DGZ", "DGZ's yugioh forums are terrible, don't post there", "mafia universe is a better place to play mafia", etc. However, constructive criticism is fine. Statements like "DGZ would be better if..." are fine.

It's worth noting that I would like to continue to receive suggestions as far as ways to improve the site, but a few particular members need to find better ways to express themselves. Empty "DGZ sucks" type of statements serve no purpose other than to encourage members to leave.

[»TRUMPOLOGIST]

Here's a suggestion: when you get paid by the game academy to maintain an online forum for yugioh discussion, consider starting a thread to discuss the world championship of yugioh. 

[+mmf+]

Just now, TRUMPOLOGIST said:

Here's a suggestion: when you get paid by the game academy to maintain an online forum for yugioh discussion, consider starting a thread to discuss the world championship of yugioh. 

yeah, you're right, allen hasn't been doing any hard work to earn his game academy checks lately. they should definitely be going to you instead, you're clearly the real hero here!

[+ACP+]

37 minutes ago, TRUMPOLOGIST said:

Here's a suggestion: when you get paid by the game academy to maintain an online forum for yugioh discussion, consider starting a thread to discuss the world championship of yugioh. 

Perhaps you were previously unaware, by the privilege of being able to start a new thread is not just limited to administrators; it is available to all members. If you really thought that not having a worlds thread was such a sin, why didn't you just start one yourself? Do you think that the most efficient use of an admin's time is to figure out what threads need to be discussed and just add create them all myself? Anyone can start a new thread, but not anyone can hire new staff, install board updates, add new skins, code discord bots, maintain lackey, and do other backend updates which are all things that I spend a minimum of 10 hours a week doing. It makes a lot more sense for me to spending time by doing things that only myself (and perhaps a few other other admins) can do. If I tried to do all of that shit and make sure that all forum discussion was in tip-top shape, it would literally be close to a full-time job. So if for some reason you feel like DGZ is missing a desperately needed thread can you for some reason would prefer not to start yourself, just nicely PM one of the Yugioh-oriented mods instead of being a smartass.

[»TRUMPOLOGIST]

I think the admin of a forum for yugioh discussion should be concerned when yugioh discussion, especially that of the ultimate yugioh tournament of the season, is not taking place.

 

I think the admin of a forum for yugioh discussion should monitor, or instruct his staff to monitor, for declines in yugioh discussion. I think the admin of a forum for yugioh discussion should determine ways to foster discussion where it is lacking, instead of hoping that regular users will do it for them. 

 

I think the admin of a forum for yugioh discussion should also consider advising his staff to help fill in the gaps where threads that should be created, aren't being created.

 

I also think that users who point out shortcomings of the site shouldn't be banned. 

 

But I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. 

 

[+ACP+]

Well like I said, if you wanted to you could've easily started the thread yourself or PMed one of the ancient mods about it as worlds was going on. But rather than doing it, you're just here complaining about it after the fact, which serves to make it look you're just trying to talk shit about the Yugioh boards instead of legitimately trying to help.

 

It sounds like you want me to make people magically give a shit about worlds. No one wanted to discuss worlds, so it didn't get discussed. At the end of the day, there is not a lot that I personally can do about that. If there are people who believe that they can better simulate activity in the Yugioh sections, they are welcome to apply for staff. People who take initiative and lead discussion in the Yugioh boards are highly likely to be considered for these types of roles. I do not play Yugioh in serious capacity and simply do not have time to create/participate in all of Yugioh discussions. If I did, I would be way to busy to do the things that I actually do for DGZ (ie, technical stuff). And with rei gone from the site at this point, if I don't do the technical stuff, it just never gets done.

 

In the future, if you have a criticism or suggestion, this thread is not the best place to do that. Either PM me or start a thread in the loyalist forum. I'd prefer to keep this thread relatively clean, where new users can simply see a list of rule updates and questions about said rules (rather than some petty argument about a worlds thread).

[+Paraliel+]

Since some people apparentally need clarification on this one.

 

Under no circumstances is anything political allowed outside of the Political subforums. This includes signatures.

[+ACP+]

On 12/3/2016 at 3:55 PM, ACP said:

12. Do not attempt to use DGZ to scam or defraud its members. This includes both making trades or wagering contracts with no intent of upholding your end as well as selling/trading fake cards or products.

New rule, but it should be common sense.

[slade4000 17]

lul

[+mark]

8 hours ago, slade4000 said:

lul

Read the link on rule 8 please