Guidelines + Warning Point System

[Ippert]

Meta-Plays Warning Point System

Every forum site comes with a set of rules users need to live by if they don't want to get in trouble. The rules for Meta-Plays are outlined in its terms of service and can also be read below. If you break any of these rules you will receive so called warning points. The punishments attached to a certain amount of warning points is outlined below.

Meta Plays Site Rules:

1. The only language allowed on this site is English.
2. No spam. All automated messages, advertisements, links to inappropriate websites, excessive manually made posts can be flagged as spam by staff. Bumping of a thread where the last post was more than a year ago can be considered a spam post when there was no need to bump it.
3. Post in relevant sub-forums only.
4. Respect other users. No excessive flaming or abusing of fellow forum members. Staff will be using their own judgement to determine if trash talking takes a wrong turn.
5. Harassment. No threats or harassment of other users, racism / cheating accusations / impersonation are also included here.
6. No profanity.
7. Adult content. No pornographic, violent, or vulgar content.
8. Illegal content. No re-posting of copyrighted materials or other illegal content.
9. No intentional exploiting or abuse of on-site systems.
10. No topics containing either cheats, exploits, or hacks that can potentially influence multiplayer games.
11. Using either cheats, exploits, or hacks in Meta-Plays sanctioned events results in punitive action on the website itself.
12. No creation of secondary accounts.
13. No sedition.

Warning Points Explained:

If you break the rules a staff member will punish you and give you a certain amount of warning points with a certain decay time. For a general indication of what punishment to expect for each transgression read below. You can both increase your warning points total by transgressing multiple times in a short amount of time or lower your warning points total by not transgressing for a long time.

You can for example get 5 warning points with a decay time of 180 days. You will then be banned for 7 days and after you've been un-banned you will still have 5 warning points on your account for the next 173 days. If you then commit a low level offence and get 1 warning point you will be banned for 10 days. This 1 warning point can decay in 30 days bringing you back down to 5. All in all this means that you can get yourself back down to 0 warning points with prolonged good behavior. Or get increasingly harsher punishments if you continue your bad behavior.

The only exception to this is when you manage to accumulate 10 warning points. When you reach 10 warning points you will be banned for 365 days. After that ban expires you would normally be back at 0 warning points because the decay time of warning points never exceeds 365 days. But since accumulating 10 warning points is seen as a big offence you will from now on always have 4 warning points on your account that can't be decayed. Meaning that each future offence will always result in a ban of a minimum of 7 days.

Guidelines For Punishments:

If the transgression has to do with a post the post will always be deleted / modified in addition to the punishments laid out below.

Punishment for breaking rule 1 Posting in any other language than English:

• The offending account gets a warning explaining that the language used is not allowed. If the user continues his behavior after the warning each consecutive post will be labeled as a spam post and those rules will apply.

Punishment for breaking rule 2 Spam:

• If the offending account made 1 - 5 posts labeled as spam the account receives 1 warning point which decays after 90 days
• If the offending account made 6 - 10 posts labeled as spam the account receives 2 warning points which decay after 90 days.
• If the offending account made 10+ posts labeled as spam the account receives 3 warning points which decay after 180 days.
• If the offending account is clearly an account purely made to create spam posts the account in instantly perma banned alongside an IP ban.
• Unnecessarily bumping of topics may also be classified as a spam post.

Punishment for breaking rule 3 Post in relevant sub-forums only:

• If a post is deemed to be in the wrong forum a staff member may move the thread to the correct forum. Usually this kind of offence isn't an intended offence and no official warning will be given. But if the offending account deliberately continues this behavior a warning will be issued. You may receive 2 warnings for this offence before the misplaced threads are considered spam topics and the rules for those apply.

Punishment for breaking rule 4 Respect other users:

• Every instance of this happening will be evaluated individually by staff and a fitting punishment will be determined. This punishment will also serve as a guideline for future similar transgressions. Generally 1 or 2 warning points will be given for this offence which decay after 90 days.

Punishment for breaking rule 5 Harassment:

• Every instance of this happening will be evaluated individually by staff and a fitting punishment will be determined. This punishment will also serve as a guideline for future similar transgressions. Generally 3 to 5 warning points will be given for this offence which decay after 120 to 180 days.
• Every instance of impersonation will be evaluated individually by staff and a fitting punishment will be determined (depending on the intent of the impersonation). This punishment will also serve as a guideline for future similar transgressions. 
  Impersonation during tournaments (excluding smurf tournaments) will result into a perma ban for both the main account and the impersonating account.
• Death threats will result into the offending account receiving 10 warning points which decay after 365 days.

Punishment for breaking rule 6 Profanity:

• Generally posts containing profanity are deleted/modified and the staff member will give the offending account a warning. You may receive 2 warnings for this offence before the staff will give 1 warning point which decays after 90 days. 

Punishment for breaking rule 7 Adult Content:

• If the post clearly is pornographic, violent, or vulgar the offending account gets 2 warning points which decay after 180 days.
• If the post is deemed one of the previous three things but it isn't clear cut the offending account could know it would be labeled as such the offending account receives a warning explaining that this type of content counts as adult content. If a similar post is made after the warning the offending account is given 2 warning points which decay after 180 days.

Punishment for breaking rule 8 Illegal content:

• If the post clearly contains copyrighted or illegal material the offending account gets 2 warning points which decay after 180 days.
• If the post is deemed one of the previous three things but it isn't clear cut the offending account could know it would be labeled as such the offending account receives a warning explaining that this type of content counts as illegal content. If a similar post is made after the warning the offending account is given 2 warning points which decay after 180 days.

Punishment for breaking rule 9 Abuse of on-site systems:

• Every instance of this happening will be evaluated individually by staff and a fitting punishment will be determined. This punishment will also serve as a guideline for future similar transgressions. 

Punishment for breaking rule 10 Posts with cheats:

• Every instance of this happening will be evaluated individually by staff and a fitting punishment will be determined. This punishment will also serve as a guideline for future similar transgressions. 
• If it is clear that the offending account knew fully well that the cheats, exploits, or hacks would have serious implications for multiplayer games the offending account will receive 10 warning points which decay after 365 days.

Punishment for breaking rule 11 Using cheats in events:

• The offending account will receive 10 warning points which decay after 365 days. In addition to this the account's rating will be reset and is exempted from any winnings that were still outstanding or would be earned even with the reset + 365 day suspension.

Punishment for breaking rule 12 Secondary accounts:

• If a user created a secondary account the secondary account will instantly be perma banned and the main account will receive 5 warning points which decay after 365 days.
• If a user created a secondary account to enter in Meta-Plays tournaments the secondary account will instantly be perma banned and the main account will receive 10 warning points which decay after 365 days. In addition to this the main account's rating will be reset and is exempted from any winnings that were still outstanding or would be earned even with the reset + 365 day suspension.
• You are not allowed to make a secondary account to dodge a ban on your main account. If you do so the secondary account will be perma banned and the main account will receive 5 warning points which decay after 365 days.

Punishment for breaking rule 13 Sedition:

• Every instance of this happening will be evaluated individually by staff and a fitting punishment will be determined. This punishment will also serve as a guideline for future similar transgressions. The punishment will strongly correlate with what you're trying to get a fellow Meta-Plays member to do. 

If you excessively misbehave on other platforms directly related to Meta-Plays (e.g. official Meta-Plays Twitch channel chat / Meta-Plays Discord) you may also be punished on this site:

• Every instance of this happening will be evaluated individually by staff and a fitting punishment will be determined. This punishment will also serve as a guideline for future similar transgressions. 

On top of each of these punishments the staff member can decide to moderate your content. Meaning that each post you make for a period of time (length decided by staff on own judgement) must be approved by a staff member.

Serial offenders may receive punishments different (harsher) from the outlined ones in the guidelines. It can for example happen that a user is intentionally juggling warning points to not reach 10 but keeps making minor offences that puts the user at let's say 9 maximum. This serial offender may be punished with an amount of warning points the staff sees fit.

Not every situation is the same and intention matters. Because of this punishments may deviate from the guidelines (this will rarely happen though). In the end the staff always has the last say in what is a fitting punishment for a specific transgression.

How To See Your Own Warning Points:

If you have been issued a warning a big red bar will appear in your screen. You must then first acknowledge your warning before you can continue posting. This way we're sure you know you have been warning and you must tread carefully.

You can view your own warning points history by going to your own profile and looking at the left side of your screen. You will then see something like this (hopefully without warnings of course):

In this example the offending account received 2 warning points that decayed after 1 hour. Thus you can see that there are no current warning points but in the past it was 2 warning points which prevented the account from posting for 1 day. 

You are always able to see the following things after you have been punished:

• How many warning points you were given
• Who gave them to you. 
• The category of the offence + the reason explained.
• The time it takes until the warning points decay.
• The punishment attached to the accumulated warning points.