No doxxing. This means actual, real life identifiable information that could feasibly be used to contact, stalk, or harass someone in real life.
American Heritage Dictionary wrote:
To publicly disclose the identity, address, or other personal details of (someone), especially as a form of online harassment.
HQ is not a social media website, Therefore:
Please limit so-called 'self-doxxing'. Do not post links to your personal Facebook account and so forth. Do not post 'selfies'.
Have a picture of a cool game box to show us? Don't take a photo with your fat mug next to it.
Published a book, comic, or similar that happens to have your name on it? That's fine to share.
'vlog'-style videos discussing your life are not acceptable content. You may type it out in text and put it in the Off-Topic forum if you want, but most of us aren't going to read it.
Videos of you playing, reviewing, or commentary on a video game are acceptable content. If possible, please do not include those annoying overlays of your face/reaction on the gameplay video.
HQ recognizes that this rule is fairly open-ended. If your content is deemed a violation, it will simply be edited or removed, no administrative action taken.
Nothing illegal. This means United States of America law.
NSFW content must either be put behind a spoiler, or in a thread appropriately labeled as NSFW. It's just polite.
Avatars must be SFW. If you choose an animated avatar, it must be sensibly animated, no flashing lights. No other restrictions, but prefer a gaming avatar.
Posts should be in English. Acceptable exclusions include threads dedicated to non-English discussions and quoting third-party sources in a non-English language.
Delete & edit are privileges. If abused for mass censoring or distorting a conversation, they will be revoked. A mostly immutable history is an important part of an internet forum. If you have sensitive or private information that needs removed, please contact an admin so it can be fully purged from our database.
Don't think you're being smart by editing your posts to overwrite them to get around restoring deletes, edit history is kept and they can be rolled back.
Impersonating another person via username will earn you a special impersonator rank.
We also have a few guarantees to encourage lively discussions without self-censorship or fear of reprisal:
HQ will allow you to share your opinions, even if — especially if — we disagree with it. It might be moved if it's off-topic, but you will be allowed to discuss it as long as it's not violating US law.
HQ will never abide by any country's laws except for USA, and any requests from non-USA governments for content takedowns will not be complied with.
HQ will never release personally identifiable information of any poster unless required to by US law enforcement. Non-US government requests for user information will be denied.
If in the future HQ ever decides to accept donations, HQ will never require your personal information and will use payment processors that allow transactions to be done anonymously. We do not want your personal information.
If you find any of these rules unclear/bad/wrong, please make a thread in the Feedback forum.
a. Acting with or exhibiting good judgment; reasonable: a sensible person; a sensible choice.
b. Not ornate or impractical: a sensible hairdo; sensible shoes.
Basically, if I think it might give someone a seizure it's getting nixed.
Avatars get extra restrictions not found on other content because they can't be put behind spoilers and everyone must view them by default. I believe this to be a reasonable compromise.
All further changes will receive a reply to this thread explaining what changed and why. if you disagree or want to discuss or dispute a change, please make a thread in Feedback so we can talk about it.
Rule #1 clarified. I'm not your father or mother, if you have a username shared elsewhere with the one you use here then that's not my fault and you need to learn better cyber hygiene. I will help you change your name here if it's an issue, but I will not ban someone for merely deciding to look it up in a search engine.
Rule #4 clarified that if a thread is marked as NSFW, then no individual spoilers are needed for NSFW content. Consider the title to be the spoiler warning, you have been warned.
Rule #7 updated to point out that editing your posts to overwrite them is pointless. Again, if it's to censor personal information, contact an admin to have it fully deleted from our database. If you feel it must be removed immediately, feel free to delete it but you must still contact us to actually delete it from the database. A delete from a user is merely a 'soft' delete that effectively just hides it.
