COMMUNITY RULES & GUIDELINES--PLEASE READ

Jenn Mason wrote

on 28 Jan 2010 12:27 PM

All of us here at Cloth Paper Scissors are excited to meet you and want to welcome you to the site! We want this to be a positive, encouraging, fun place where you feel welcome and safe and above all else, we want to help build a community based on a shared passion.

We want this to be a very open community and will only intervene if absolutely necessary. However, in order to maintain a positive and safe environment for everyone, there are some simple rules listed here that we all need to follow. So here they are...

"Da Rules"

Personal Conduct and Posting Etiquette – “Don’t be a jerk”

• Debating, discussion, and even passionate disagreement are fine, but we cannot tolerate rudeness, insulting posts, or personal attacks. Posts of this kind will be edited or deleted.
• Profanity, racism, or other offensive discussions will not be tolerated. Posts of this kind will be edited or deleted. We have the final say as to what does and does not violate community standards.
• We encourage you to upload your own custom avatar to help showcase your own personality. But do not upload an animated avatar, an avatar that contains nudity, or is otherwise offensive. Avatars that may be confused with staff or moderator avatars are also not allowed.
• Be tolerant of “newbie” type questions and help them out. We all were new at this one time or another and we want to encourage more people to get involved with art. There are no stupid questions!
• Post your messages and images in the appropriate area. Moderators may move your content if they feel it’s better suited to another area.
• Do not post your messages and images in multiple forums or galleries. Duplicate posts may be deleted.

 Protecting Rights – “Don’t upload stuff you don’t own”

• Discussion of any content – whether yours or someone else’s – is encouraged!
• Feel free to link to any content on other sites as long as it's appropriate for this community.
• Feel free to embed any content on other sites (RSS feeds, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) as long as it was meant by the owner to be embedded. 
• Feel free to upload content of your own as long as you are the creator of the content.
• If we discover that content has been uploaded or embedded without the permission or intent of the content creator, we will need to remove it.
• IMPORTANT NOTE: By posting content on our site, you are NOT giving us permission to use it for whatever we want to. If we want to use it for another purpose, we will ask your permission first. We may provide RSS feeds or widgets for some of this content, however, but only summaries or thumbnails, never the full content.

 Advertising and Solicitation – “Advertise where you’re supposed to”

• Promoters, retailers, manufacturers, etc., may not advertise in the blogs, forums, galleries, or public groups. Posts of this kind will be deleted.
• You may include your group, association, or company name and a link to your web site in your personal signature block.
• Use of the private messaging system for advertising of any kind is prohibited.
• We encourage businesses to contact us about advertising opportunities.

 Children – “Sorry, no kids under 13 allowed”

• We comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which applies to children under the age of 13.
• Our sites are not directed at children under the age of 13 and we do not solicit nor desire to collect any personally identifiable information from such individuals. If we become aware that a person under the age of 13 is attempting to or has submitted information via this site, we will notify the person and remove any personally identifiable information.

 Miscellaneous – “Stuff that just has to be said”

• Registering with multiple accounts is not allowed. Multiple accounts undermine trust that there are real, honest people behind each account. Moderators may remove accounts that are found to be duplicates.
• The decision to edit, move, or delete a post, or to ban a user, is at our sole discretion without prior notification or explanation to the member.
• Members who willfully or repeatedly violate the forum rules may be banned from the site. This is something we only want to do as a last resort.
• While these rules cover most common situations, we cannot anticipate everything. Consequently, we reserve the right to take actions we deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not abused and stay a positive, fun, and safe place for everyone.

If you see someone abusing the site, please click the Report Abuse link located in every Forum post under "More." This sends a message to a private forum for our moderators to review. The moderators may not be able to respond to you personally and you may not see immediate action, but please know that your message has been received and taken into consideration.