Community Guidelines
Introduction
Wintreath prides itself on being an especially open, warm, and inclusive community of friends, and we are committed to maintaining our community as a place where our friends can feel safe and comfortable being their full selves. To that end, we have established these rules for that purpose, as well as to comply with platform Terms of Service or real-life laws. If you have any questions on any of these rules, feel free to reach out to an op/moderator and we'll be happy to help.
1. Account Guidelines
You must be 13 years or older to be on any official Wintreath property except for NationStates. Your username must consist only of characters on the QWERTY keyboard so that you can be easily mentioned.
2. Behaviour Guidelines
We expect our members to treat each other with respect and civility, and to display the measured, considerate, and responsible behaviour that's required for a community of friends to function. Do not engage in any of the following behaviours:
- Advertising: Advertising sites or servers that are unrelated to Wintreath without permission from the Regional Stability Squad. Ambassadors are exempt from this rule specifically for posts about the region they are representing.
- Advocating/Threatening Violence: Advocating for or threatening violence against any group or individual.
- Blackmail: Threats against another member to compel them to do something.
- Discrimination: Any content that is discriminatory toward a group of people. See section 4 for more details.
- Doxxing: Revealing information about another member that identifies them offline without their consent, such as their name, photos, or contact information.
- Flamebaiting: Attempts to upset, provoke, or annoy members on purpose.
- Flaming: Swears, personal insults, and vulgarity directed at other members.
- Hacking: Attempts to phish other members, hack or DDoS them in any way, or send them viruses or malware.
- Harassment: Repeated or continuous negative actions against other members that are unwelcome.
- Impersonation: Attempts to appear as somebody else, for example by adopting a similar username to theirs or claiming that you are them.
- Spamming: Repeated messages or messages that are not part of a conversation outside of specific designated spam areas.
Additionally, moderation may reach out to you if your behaviour is unnecessarily rude or antagonistic to other members or if your behaviour is against the spirit of the rules for the purpose of letting you know and working with you. However, be aware that consistently rude and antagonistic behaviour over a period of time may also be actionable.
3. Content Guidelines
Wintreath is a PG-13 community, meaning that content on our platforms should be both legal and appropriate for teenagers to see. This includes your posts, links, profiles, avatars and profile pictures, and any other content associated with your account. Do not post content that falls under any of the following categories:
- Copyright Evasion: Content that promotes or distributes pirated media or software or allows members to crack or enable software in any way other than as intended by its intellectual rights holder.
- Glorifying Self-Harm: Content that glorifies or encourages self-harm, suicide, or eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia.
- Gore: Content that is gory or otherwise disturbing, including images or explicit descriptions of animal cruelty, injuries, people being killed, or dead bodies.
- Sexual Content: Content that is sexually explicit or is pornographic, including pictures that display commonly-considered erotic areas of the body such as genitals, explicit references to specific sex acts, or explicit references to media that is sexually explicit or pornographic.
Additionally, please make an effort to post content in the appropriate areas (e.g, Minecraft stuff on Discord should go in #minecraft). In most cases, it's alright for a conversation that started out on one topic to flow to another without moving the conversation to another area, as long as it’s not interfering with another on-topic conversation in the same area. However, when conversation shifts toward topics that are contentious, divisive, or emotionally charged in nature on Discord it MUST be moved to the #content-warning-general channel, which is only accessible to members who have opted into seeing these topics through the #roles channel.
4. Discrimination and Hate Speech
Wintreath is a diverse community that's an online home for many different people, and we are committed to ensuring that all our members can feel safe and comfortable being their full selves here.
Discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated. This includes discrimination based on a person's race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, religion, or disability. It also includes content that promotes prejudice against any group of people, including content that denies a person's right to exist as who they are. This includes casual slurs, memes, stereotyping, and derogatory terms. It also includes intentionally misgendering or deadnaming anybody.
Roleplay Policy
These rules apply to in-character actions in roleplays within Wintreath. We understand that discriminatory actions by characters in a roleplay do not necessarily reflect intent on the people behind the characters. However, we believe that narratives promoting hate speech, discrimination, and prejudice are inappropriate in a community that aims to foster sensitivity to everyone's experiences and promote belonging for all.
For roleplays outside of Wintreath, see the section below.
Content Outside of Wintreath
This can also apply to content posted by members outside of Wintreath, if the content in question can be proven to have been posted by a specific member. In these cases, moderation will consider the severity of their actions, whether their subsequent behaviour demonstrates a sincere commitment to change, and the level of risk of allowing them in the community as a result of these factors.
In these cases moderation will discuss the situation with the member before coming to a conclusion in order to ensure that all sides have been heard and all evidence has been provided.
For roleplays outside Wintreath, each case will be considered on its individual merits based on an assessment of whether in-character actions appear to have been made with the out-of-character intent to promote or glorify prejudice, discrimination, or hate speech. Out-of-character intent refers to situations where the line between a character and the person behind it become blurred, with the person using their character as a vehicle to promote or glorify out-of-character prejudice, discrimination, and hate speech.
5. Platform Terms of Service
In addition to these rules, you are also responsible for following the rules and terms of service of the platform which you're on, which you can find below:
You should be aware that moderators on each platform are empowered to report violations of platform rules and guidelines, which may result in further action against you from them.
