Legal | Rules of Conduct

Last Update: May 6th, 2010

The Rules of Conduct are guidelines to the user on expected conduct and behavior upon the Movie Battles website. These guidelines can change at the sole discretion of the Team as necessary to best benefit the forums Community and cultivate an atmosphere appropriate to a gaming forum. Despite our best efforts to detail the different sections with specific examples, there will always be areas that will be ultimately handled on a per incident basis by the Team. Even when not specified, the Team has the sole right and final judgment of how to interpret and apply these rules and guidelines to any specific circumstance and situation, including proper punishment or exception. All capitalized terms used in these Rules of Conduct are defined in the Movie Battles Terms of Service.

It violates our Terms of Service if you (or others using your Account) engage in any of the following behavior:

• Post, transmit, promote, or distribute content that is illegal.


• Harass, threaten, embarrass, or do anything else to another Member that is unwanted. This includes: insulting Members, repeatedly sending them unwanted messages, attacking their race, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, etc. Remember: if you disagree with someone, keep your response targeted at the subject, not the person.


• Transmit or facilitate distribution of content that is harmful, abusive, racially or ethnically offensive, vulgar, sexually explicit, defamatory, infringing, invasive of personal privacy or publicity rights, or in a reasonable person's view, objectionable. Hate speech is not tolerated.


• Disrupt the flow of conversation in chat rooms or forums with vulgar language, abusiveness, use of excessive shouting [all caps] in an attempt to disturb other users, spamming or flooding [posting repetitive text].


• Trolling, which we define as posts or threads, which knowingly lead to overly strong negative and emotional responses for mere shock value, are not allowed on the forums. Accounts made with the sole intent to “troll” will be immediately and permanently suspended. Constant personal attacks are also considered trolling.


• Be sure to post topics in the appropriate forum. Posts deemed inappropriate to a particular forum will be moved to a more appropriate forum or even removed completely depending on the nature of the post. Examples of such posts would be off-topic posts posted in a feedback forum or a technical help question posted in off-topic. This is done to facilitate proper communication on the forums and allow for the flow of conversation. Posts that have been removed are not to be reposted. Reposting removed posts or making posts questioning said removal, will be cause for an infraction and/or account suspension.
  
• Impersonate another person (including celebrities), indicate falsely that you are a member of the Movie Battles Beta Team, or attempt to mislead users by indicating that you represent the Movie Battles Team or any of Movie Battles' partners or affiliates.


• Attempt to get a password, other account information, or other private information from a Member or any other user on Movie Battles. Remember: Movie Battles Team Members will NEVER ask for your password. Do not give your password, reminder words, or billing information out to anyone.


• Upload any software or content that you do not own or have permission to freely distribute.


• Buy, sell, or auction (or host or facilitate the ability to allow others to buy, sell or auction) copyrighted material or any other intellectual property owned or controlled by Movie Battles or our contributors without first obtaining our express written permission.


• Promote or encourage any illegal activity including hacking, cracking or distribution of counterfeit software.


• Upload files that contain a virus or corrupted data.


• Post messages for any purpose other than personal communication, including without limitation advertising or promotional messaging, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or other commercial activities.


• Improperly use the Report button to make false reports to Movie Battles Team members.


• Post or communicate any player’s real-world personal information within the game or through the forums.


• Attempt to interfere with, hack into or decipher any transmissions to or from the servers running the game or hosting the website.


• Exploit any bug in the game or in the mod to gain unfair advantage in the game.


• You may not give false information or intentionally hide any information when registering for your Movie Battles forum account. Posting profanity or otherwise objectionable content in your profile is also prohibited. You are responsible to make sure your account information, especially your email address, is up-to-date.


• You will not upload or transmit in Movie Battles or on the official Forums, any copyrighted content that you do not own all rights to, unless you have the express written permission of the author or copyright holder. Failure to abide by this rule is grounds for immediate and permanent account closure and legal action.


• Forum accounts are non-transferable. Registered users are responsible for any actions that take place on their accounts or private messaging systems.


• Do not repost copyright and/or press material in its entirety from other sources. Quotations from things such as news articles are fine, provided it is cited and (if possible) linked to. We ask others to respect our content and ask our readers do the same for other people's content.


• If you are suspended, it is not proper to get back to the forums on an alternate account. If your account is suspended, and you use an alternate account to post, the alternate account will be permanently suspended, and not only will you receive another official warning, but your suspension will be lengthened. Usually, suspensions will step from 24 hours, to 7 days and then Permanent. All suspensions are documented by the Movie Battles Team. You do not need to contact us to review a suspension, as they are all reviewed by the rest of the Team. If we feel there is an issue with your suspension, we will gladly reverse it, or shorten its length and you will be notified with a Private Message.

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• All terms outlined in the Rules of Conduct apply to Member signatures and avatars aswell.


• Additionally, signatures may not exceed a height of 100 pixels (which equals 6 lines of normal-sized text) of and a width of 560 pixels (which is the standard width of the post column) on topic view.


• Signatures which violate any of these rules may be edited/deleted with or without prior warning at the staff's discretion.

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The following guidelines will help promote a user-friendly environment:

• Do not post in all capital letters, use excessive punctuation, etc. This practice is used to draw attention to ones post. While everyone wants their posts read, we ask that you refrain from using sensational tactics in order to bring more people to your thread. Let your post stand on its own merit.


• Posting IBL, IBTL, or variants of “In Before The Lock” constitutes spamming. We appreciate that our posters understand the Rules of Conduct to the point where they can call whether or not a thread is in violation; however, saying in before the lock does not contribute to a constructive community and it does fall under spamming. If you wish to acknowledge a post that violates policy, please report it instead.


• Do not hijack topics. Posting comments within a thread which severely disrupts the original conversation is prohibited.


• Do not revive or bump old or dead threads unless you have substantially new content to add. If the last post in a thread was made more than 3 weeks ago, the thread is to be considered "old".


• When discussing movies, books, or TV shows, give a spoiler warning if your post will disclose any information that could spoil the story. You wouldn't want to have the story spoiled if you didn't already have the information you have, so give them the same consideration.


• When deciding to post a thread, make sure there isn't already one on the same subject. Also, when asking for help on something, first search for an answer on google, and/or check the forums using the Search tool to see if the question has already been answered.


• Be specific in the naming of your topic. This will aid in thread searches and help prevent other members from posting something that's already been discussed.


• Do not make threads or posts that boast your alleged skills, such as, for instance, posting a picture of you with a good score and the purpose of this post only being to boast your own talents. This constitutes spamming.


• Do not make threads or posts requesting someone to do a job for you, such as make you a skin, an avatar, a sig, a replacement mod, etc. Deal with this sort of thing via Private Message.


• When debating a topic, do not simply repeat the same exact argument and ignore all thoughts/ideas that are presented by other members. This causes discussions to turn into mindless spamfests where people are simply repeating themselves over and over, and leave the thread as a waste of space.


• Do not make threads/posts about so-called unbalance simply because you lost to something in-game due to your own mistakes. Get some time to know the game first and collect other people's opinions on something you believe may in-fact be unbalanced based on your experience when using and being defeated by the specific feature you are trying to discuss. Always give proper information to back your complaint up.


• Do not post about locked or deleted threads. Posts that are moderated have a reason behind the moderation. We lock before we post on a locked thread to stop the violation in question as soon as possible, so if you have yet to see a comment by a member of the moderator team on a locked thread, please wait for it and do not post on the subject. If you have questions regarding forum moderation, please send Private Message to one of the moderators.


• If you have a post to report, use the Report button located on the post in question. Please, do not post linking to threads you feel should be moderated.


• Give proper respect to everyone, especially the Movie Battles Team. Remember that we are not being paid to do all this work and are spending countless days for YOU.

Lastly, please have fun. Although it looks like there are a lot of procedures and rules in place, most of these are common sense and are meant as a safeguard to keep these forums active and relevant for the community of a game we all love. Abusing these forums affects everyone who enjoys this game, so we ask for your cooperation and your support in achieving and maintaining this goal. Suggestions to make this an even better place for our community are always welcome! You can PM any of the Movie Battles Team members with your input and we will gladly review it for implementation.

Thank you for being part of this community!

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