Forum, Site and T&C Rules Explained / FAQ — REVISED 24 OCTOBER 2011

By registering on SuperCheats.com, you are obligated to abide by the forum rules and acknowledge that you fulfil the requirements and responsibilities thereof. Such prerequisites may be set forth or changed without prior notice. To submit to SuperCheats.com and participate in discussion on its forums, you must be at least thirteen years old; we reserve the right to remove your account if it is discovered that you are underage. Pursuant to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1999 (COPPA), we are required to prevent the display and storage of any and all contact information tied to people under the age of thirteen and must remove such information at once should it be exposed that you are under the age of thirteen.

There is a filtering system in place that is supposed to prevent offensive language from being displayed in posts on the forum. Attempting to bypass this filter is punishable by an immediate ban from the system. Please keep in mind that a filter built into the site provides no substitute for parental supervision whilst viewing the site and that the system is liable to block information that is not offensive after all.

While on the site, you must keep in mind these rules. If you are deemed detrimental to the atmosphere of the site, we reserve the right to take appropriate action up to and including your ISP or local government being contacted. These rules are subject to revision without notice.

Submissions on the main site

The highlight of Super Cheats is its innovative submission system. This system allows the public to register and submit tips, cheat codes, questions they may have about a game, and answers to those questions. Submissions are what you should do before you go off to post in our forums: until you have submitted at least 50 times, there will be a quota imposed to prevent forum flooding.

Before making a submission, especially a massive one, you should revise and edit your work to make sure that there exists no ambiguity that may arouse further questions. We discourage the use of 'txt spk' (da, 2, thru, etc.), as it renders the submission practically illegible, and we ask that you use clear spelling and grammar. You should also make sure that what you're about to submit has not been sent in before. You are NOT allowed to submit any work that has been published before and copyrighted, unless you hold copyright to the work; doing so will result in a ban and notification of the copyright holder. If you submit a walkthrough that is copyrighted by someone else, we will endeavour to locate the person that holds copyright to that work and ask for his or her permission to host it on our site.

Other members may rate submissions by a scale from zero to ten and some may even put their verification stamp on it. However, if the submission is ambiguous, inaccurate, or false, they can put a bogus alert on it. Two bogus alerts cause the submission to be reviewed and possibly corrected if information to contradict it is at hand, or removed entirely. A bogus alert by a moderator automatically results in a review. Chronic reviews of your submissions may get you banned from the site. High ratings and verifications will cause your Kudos level, which starts at zero when you register, to rise, whereas low ratings and bogus alerts will cause it to fall.

When submitting a question, you should explain yourself very clearly as to allow other members to answer. It does not do us good service to request an answer only from a certain person. There are several members on the site that are bound to know what you're talking about, so don't hesitate to just ask!

Then we have game reviews. You have the option of doing a short review or a detailed one with percentages and details. Sections of the Full Review must have 500 characters or more, so you are encouraged to provide lots of details in the review.

Submissions are compiled to give each member an amount of points depending on the length of submissions. Here is how the formulae are configured as of 13 January 2007:



About moderation

Because the Super Cheats Forums are large, there inherently is a need for moderators that have knowledge of the game covered by that forum. To date, we have more than 100 forums in all, each typically able to be moderated by up to five people.

Moderators are members who are able to monitor discussions and have the power to close, move, delete, or pin topics in the forum(s) they are assigned to. To an extent, moderators have the say on what is acceptable discussion or behaviour on their forum and should always be obeyed. The names of the moderators of the forum can be found under the forum directory on the roster, so you should know who they are so that you don't run afoul of them.

Moderators may be selected for an individual forum if the staff at large decides that the forum in question requires a moderator, either by an increase in activity or rule-breaking, or the removal of an existing moderator. A moderator or admin on staff at the time may recommend that a member on that forum be promoted to serve as a moderator for that forum, and the rest of the staff will put the promotion to a vote. If the vote passes, a current moderator will ask the member whether they would like to accept the position.

Beyond the 'moderator' rank, the forum hub moderators monitor all forums within that hub, and the super moderators monitor all of the forums. Even forum moderators will answer to them, so you should talk to them if you're at odds with a moderator and wish to resolve it. Super moderators not only are allowed to call the shots in every forum on the site, they are also the first reference when a bad member is reviewed and their bogus alert on a submission results in immediate review of that submission. They can ban, but only for a limited time as a precaution when a member causes a particular amount of trouble. To become a super moderator, you must be at moderator rank and you have to be recommended by a super moderator that already is in place, and the admin will decide whether you will receive the position.

The administrators control everything. The current administrators are Will (Cross Stinger), nikki (balthiersbit), Volke, Mark (testuser), and Dennis and Rich (Sanzano and Team SuperCheats). All five of them override any decisions made by the moderators or super moderators and are able to ban individual members. The latter three are root administrators; Cross Stinger, balthiersbit, and Volke report to them, and they process submissions, create new forums, manage the main site, and lift bans.

Forum and Teams posting rules

1) No spamming. Spamming is posting irrelevant or superfluous information and can take the form of, but is not limited to, posting multiple consecutive times (double-posting, triple-posting, and more), creating threads that have no perceptible purpose, posting off the topic of the thread, or creating a thread out of the scope of the forum. While most spam cases can be rectified by deletion of posts or topics, excessive amounts of spam can lead to bans ranging up to indefinite. We also recommend (although this is left to the judgment of the moderators) putting at least four words in a post or, at the very least, making your point clear and concise.
2) Post in the right forum. Before you post anywhere, be sure to have a look at all of the General Boards and the Video Game Boards and decide which one is right for you. Any discussion that does not belong in the forum it is in but belongs in another forum will be moved, or closed if a substantially similar discussion exists in the forum where it would normally belong.
3) No advertising. Advertising is also considered a form of spamming. By this we mean posting links to other threads out of the blue; or to a website with which the person is involved if the material therein is irrelevant to the discussion or is something substantially offered by SuperCheats.com, or that receives any monetary or material benefit as a result. You may link to a personal site in your signature as long as you do not receive any monetary or material benefit as a result of hits or business conducted by the site linked to. For example, you may link to a Proboards, Forumsvibe, or Invisionfree forum as well as a site hosted by a free service or on a rented server, but you may not encourage others to click on ads or link to paid services such as news subscription or web hosting. You may not use the forums or your signature to 'invite' people in order to get a free gift (referring people to get an iPod or whatever), nor may you cause a member to automatically join your Super Cheats team by clicking a link in your signature. You may, however, use your signature to refer members to social networking sites (such as Bebo or Facebook) or non-profit operations, but you may not encourage them to donate unless it is for a disaster, poverty, or medical fund. (If you are unsure as to whether your charity is acceptable, contact any of the admins before linking.)
4) Be judicious about posting. Aside from spamming, it is suggested that you do not post unless you have gathered enough material to post and back up your post when questions are raised. You should also refrain from posting in any thread in which the last reply was made more than thirty (30) days before unless the topic still has relevance.
5) No flaming. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on these forums and should not have to suffer for it. While we encourage members to debate in our forums, you must do so in a civil manner and with respect to the beliefs of others posting along with you. Simply put, treat others the way you would like to be treated. The varieties of flaming are described in the Consequences section of this post.
6) No swearing. While we prohibit children under 13 from registering, as explained above, this does not stop members of any audience from using this site as a resource of any sort. Therefore, you should restrict the use of words in your posts that, say, may be blotted out by dashes or asterisks in news publications. Attempting to blot these words out similarly (e.g. d**n over 'damn') will be interpreted as censor bypass and punished with the same severity as warranted by an unveiled swearword.
7) Report a post if it breaks the rules. If you see a post that doesn't follow the rules, contact a moderator by private message or use the Contacts form. Don't try to address the post on the thread itself.
8) No scamming. By this we mean the acquisition of passwords under the premise of moderator capability on our forums, unrestricted server access, acquisition of items in a manner illegitimate as per the terms of service of any online RPG, or anything along these lines. The consequences for such actions are outlined in the Consequences section.
9) No posting or solicitation of immoral or illegal articles. You may not ask to be presented with or link to or otherwise display pornographic images (adult or child), non-tradable goods, ROMs, warez, hacking materials, credit or debit card numbers, postal addresses, telephone or mobile phone numbers, or anything else that violates international or local laws. The consequences for such actions are outlined in the Consequences section.
10) Don't tell the staff what to do. You may file a grievance about these rules or the actions of a moderator as you would report a bad post, but you are not to talk back to a moderator.

Teams and Clans theme and governance rules

See the Teams and Clans Rules / Information Booth for a comprehensive list of Teams and Clans rules.

Submission content rules

11) Don't pad your submission. In other words, do not inflate your submissions with empty wording to achieve a higher number of points.
12) Get to the story. If what the person asks for requires that he or she complete a large task, state that you assume that they have completed that task and then give detailed instructions. Don't attempt to walk through the entire game just to achieve one minor objective.
13) Don't rate and hate. Giving false ratings or verifications to discredit a member may result in a permanent ban.

Consequences
This is not a comprehensive list of infractions and consequences, and the penalties listed below may be more or less lenient depending on the severity of the offence.

Common offences
Posting infractions (double-posting, off-topic, etc.): Manual correction or deletion of post; in cases of willful disobedience: (1,2) Warning (3) 48-hour ban
Forum topic infraction (topic flooding, or against board or forum rules): Manual correction or deletion of post or thread; in cases of willful disobedience: (1,2) Warning (3) One-week ban
Using multiple accounts: For evading a ban, ban length doubled; otherwise, we will ask you which account you want to keep, and ban the other account(s)
Advertising (a rival site, for personal gain): If you have 5 or less posts, permanent ban; otherwise: (1,2) Warning (3) One-month ban

Flaming
Excessive formatting for emphasis (misuse of tags, ALL CAPS): Manual correction of post; in cases of willful disobedience: (1,2) Warning (3) One-month ban
Playing the moderator: (1,2,3) Warning (4) One-week ban
Swearing (including racial or sexual epithets): (1,2) Warning (3) Two-day ban (4) Two-week ban
Flamebaiting (trolling, harassing another member): (1) Warning (2) One-day ban (3) Two-week ban
Insubordination: (1) Warning (2) One-week ban (3) Permanent ban
Security threats: (1) Two-week ban (2) Permanent ban

Illegal and immoral activities
Asking for prohibited material (pornography, ROMs, warez): (1,2) Warning (3) One-month ban
Discussing ROMs and warez (but not distributing them): (1) Warning (2) One-week ban (3) Permanent ban
Adult pornography (including 'jailbait' images): Permanent ban if you have 5 or less posts, otherwise: (1) Warning (2) Permanent ban
Asking for SuperCheats passwords: (1) One-moth ban (2) Permanent ban
Asking for sensitive information (e.g. telephone number, address, credit card numbers): Permanent ban
Distributing other prohibited material: Permanent ban

https://docs.google.com/ope...kaDlOdGM


Thank you,
Cross Stinger
SuperCheats.com Forums Administrator

« Last edited by Forgoten_Scars on Dec 11th 2012 »