Community Rules and Guidelines

Throughout the New Team of Weapons and Tactics, there exist areas of our network where members and visitors can socialize through the use of our community, forums, status updates, and other communication channels. To have the best experience in our community, we invite everyone to take a moment to familiarize themselves with these basic rules, enforced to help keep our community areas a friendly environment for all. Please note that these rules apply throughout our network wherever user generated content can be posted, including (but not limited to) our forums, status updates, and communication channels.

Table of Contents

• Definitions
• Rules
• Guidelines
• Infraction/Violation System
  • Actions Taken Based on Accumulative Points
• Table of Network Violations

Definitions

• Flaming: Language or comments that are antagonistic, provocative, slanderous, derogatory, abusive, aggressive or confrontational.
• Hate Speech: Discriminatory language or comments towards certain groups; such as racism, sexism or homophobia.
• Harassment: Continued intimidation, pressurized, pestering or forceful remarks towards a member in public or in private, sexual or otherwise.
• Explicit Material: Posting or linking to any explicit, pornographic or offensive media; such as sex, nudity or gore (this includes signatures & avatars).
• Spam: Off-topic, nonsensical, one word or otherwise pointless and non-contributory posts, double posting is frowned upon, and only allowed if necessary. Do not bump a topic unless needed.
• Malware: Posting links to, requesting or discussing unwanted malicious software or other media.
• Warez: Posting links to, requesting or discussing illegally obtained or pirated materials; such as games, software or other media.
• Ripping: Stealing or plagiarizing other people’s work and claiming it as your own; such as game mods, images or written content.

Rules

1. Respect everyone, including New Team of Weapons and Tactics staff, members, and visitors
2. Please use English only unless it is explicitly allowed in a certain area or section
3. No spam
4. No flaming
5. No elitism or condescending behavior
6. No hate speech
7. No harassment
8. No explicit material
9. No malware
10. No warez
11. No ripping
12. No advertising
13. Do not post or discuss illegal content or activities
14. Do not post or promote harmful or abusive content
15. No recruiting for external groups or communities
16. No buying, selling, trading, or advertising anywhere on the forum
17. Do not attempt to bypass word filters
18. No begging for content
19. Avatars must comply with all the aforementioned content and size rules
20. Signatures must comply with all the aforementioned content and size rules
21. No more than one account per person
22. Do not hijack threads; stay on-topic
23. Do not abuse forum systems or tools
24. Post topics/threads in the appropriate section
25. Do not bump topics/threads unnecessarily with the following exceptions

• It is unresolved
• The topic is not on the first page or is very near the 2nd page
• At least 48-72 hours (2-3 days) have passed—remember, people don’t always visit the site daily
• The topic is not too old:
  • Many things tend to be loosely time sensitive in that they may be relevant now, but not necessarily later
  • This of course will vary from topic-to-topic—one topic might be relevant for a few months where another might be a few years
  • Few topics may even be timeless and may still be relevant even many years later
  • Overall, please use your best judgement and if a topic is too old and is likely irrelevant, open a new one. Otherwise bumping a topic that is still relevant is generally fine

• Search before posting questions
• Do not direct users to external search engines or websites unnecessarily:
  • You can never guarantee that any external websites will be around for any useful period of time. They might exist one minute and be gone the next
  • The same gist goes with search engines along with the fact that results often vary based on geography and a slew of other factors
  • Thus please instead include content within your post and give credit where appropriate
  • Doing this helps keep your posts and content as helpful and useful as possible
• No ban evasion; contact staff for appeals
• Do not abuse the reputation system
• Do not misuse technical data without proper rights
• Give proper credit for shared content
• Only one account per member
• Do not delete content from resolved threads
• No backseat moderating; use the report feature
• Usernames must not be offensive or misleading
• Staff may remove or edit any content at their discretion
• Personal donation addresses are allowed only under strict conditions
• Invalid or disposable email addresses are not allowed

Guidelines

• Please remember that we are not responsible for any messages posted. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message, and are not responsible for the contents of any message.
• The messages express the views of the author of the message, not necessarily the views of this website. Any user who feels that a posted message is objectionable is encouraged to contact us immediately by email. We have the ability to remove objectionable messages and we will make every effort to do so, within a reasonable time frame, if we determine that removal is necessary.
• We rely heavily on our community to flag posts, topics or members that break these rules using the Report system, a link of which is found at the bottom of every post and member profile.
• Overall we recommend using common sense and if so, you will likely get along just fine. Like any other community, there are unspoken “rules” of etiquette amongst the community regarding spamming (the occasional meme is fine and is actually funny if used in moderation, but please don’t go overboard) and trolling (deliberately acting out to annoy or flame the community). While such things aren’t generally enforced as rule breaking, staff members will take action if such posts become a habit, cause problems or result in complaints from other members.
• Please remember that the New Team of Weapons and Tactics Network and its community are offered as a free service. To ensure our community remains an enjoyable experience for everyone, we may remove you from the forums at any time if you are found to be breaking the rules or otherwise abusing the service.

Infraction/Violation System

To help moderate the network and our community (forums), we have curated a violation system that uses points to help unify the user experience throughout our network, specifically with regard to policy violations.

In the event that a user violates one or more of our policies, an administrator or moderator can issue an infraction called an Infraction (formerly called a Network Violation or Community Violation) that correlates to the policy (or policies) that they violated. Each infraction adds a certain number of points to the account of the user who it is issued to. These points function differently than most systems—whereas gaining points is typically positive, in this case, accumulating points has a negative effect. The more points a user account gains, the closer they are to facing penalties for repeated or severe violations. Depending on the type and severity of the infraction, points may expire after a designated period, while some points from serious infractions may be permanent. Some infractions also have a corresponding warning version, that doesn’t result add any points to an account. For first-time offenses, administrators or moderators may use these instead but ultimately, the choice will be up to the staff member in-question.

Actions Taken Based on Accumulative Points

• 4 infraction points – Content moderated for 14 days.
• 6 infraction points – Restricted from posting for 30 days.
• 8 infraction points – Banned from the network for 7 days.
• 10 infraction points – Banned from the network for 14 days.
• 15 infraction points – Banned from the network for 30 days.
• 20 infraction points – Banned from the network permanently.

Points Deducted from Rank Progression Based on Infraction Points

Each infraction issued will also deduct a certain number of points from member's current point value. The list below shows points deducted for each infraction based on its point value.

• 1 infraction point: -10 points.
• 2 infraction points: -20 points.
• 3 infraction points: -40 points.
• 4 infraction points: -60 points.
• 5 infraction points: -80 points.
• 6 infraction points: -100 points.
• 7 infraction points: -125 points.
• 8 infraction points: -150 points.
• 9 infraction points: -175 points.
• 10 infraction points: -200 points.
• 11 infraction points: -250 points.
• 12 infraction points: -300 points.
• 13 infraction points: -600 points.
• 14 infraction points: -1000 points.
• 15 infraction points: -1500 points.
• 16 infraction points: -2000 points.
• 17 infraction points: -4000 points.
• 18 infraction points: -8000 points.
• 19 infraction points: -16000 points.
• 20 infraction points: -32000 points.

Table of Network Violations

Filter Violations: