TWC Official:Terms of Service

THIS IS JUST A DRAFT AND IS NOT BINDING YET.

Terms of Service

TWCenter provides the services to you, the visitor, based on its Terms of Service outlined here. When using the services provided by TWCenter, you are subject to these posted terms. Usage of the services on this site denotes acceptance of these terms. The TOS may be changed at any time and without direct notice to individual visitors, so it is recommended that you check back with this page at any time you have questions or concerns.

Registration Requirements

In order to view messages on the TWCenter message boards without user restrictions, no registration is required or necessary. In order to post messages on the boards, and use other advanced services, you must register with TWCenter using a valid e-mail address. Upon registration, an Activation Key in the form of a URL will be mailed to the address you provided. You must visit this URL using the web browser of your choice to activate the account. No posting privileges are granted until the account is activated.

TWCenter does not require you to use your real name or other identification that can be easily traced to you, and the e-mail address you provide will be kept private. In order to register on TWCenter, registrants must be 13 years of age or older. TWCenter does not knowingly collect any information from any users under 13 years, and if it is found that an underage user has fraudulently registered, their account will immediately be terminated.

Content Notice

By viewing the site content, you agree that all content on the TWCenter message boards is the responsibility of the person from which the content originated. You agree that neither TWCenter nor its sponsors or affiliates are responsible for all content that you personally post or upload. TWCenter does not directly control any content posted on the boards, and does not guarantee the truthfulness or quality of any content.

You agree that while using the TWCenter message boards, you may be exposed to content that is offensive or objectionable, and that you will in no way hold TWCenter nor its sponsors or affiliates liable in any way, shape, or form for any harm or loss that may come to you or others as a result of viewing this content. TWCenter is not responsible for screening content before it is posted, although an offensive language filter is installed on the system that will reject certain posts that may contain certain words deemed offensive or used most often in an offensive way.

Account Responsibilty

Users are solely responsible for protecting their accounts from access by others. You are strongly encouraged to select a hard-to-guess password and not re-use that password on any other sites where it may be read by the owners or administrators of that site.

While it is acceptable for users to maintain multiple accounts on TWCenter, TWC can and does track multiple shared accounts from a single or multiple computers as one account in terms of TOS violations. If the TOS is violated severely enough to warrant the banning of one account, all known accounts shared between a single or multiple users who use the same computer may also be banned for the actions of the violating account at the administrators' discretion.

Because of this rule, it is highly recommended that board users do not share their accounts with others, nor share their computers used to access the site with others, as the actions of some other person could easily directly impact all known shared message board accounts.

Privacy and Release of Information

Under normal circumstances, TWCenter will never release your provided information to any third party without a court order requiring us to do so. However, in cases of certain severe and/or repeated TOS violations or illegal activities, we reserve the right to forward any and all known information about you and your accounts to your ISP (including libraries, schools, and places of employment), e-mail service provider, your ISP account owner (if someone else is actually paying for it), and any parties whose copyright has clearly been infringed by your actions on the boards.

To view TWC's full privacy policy, see below.

Member Conduct

You agree that you will not use this service to perform the following actions:

Signature Size Violation (1 point)

Members may not use signatures where the total size in bytes of all signature images combined is more than 250 KB.
Off-topic Posting (1 or 2 points)

Topicality is expected and will be enforced on all forums, so take the extra time to post on the proper forum. Examples of off-topic posting include, but are not limited to:
- Unsolicited advertisement for any website, product, service, or facility not first vetted by TWC staff
- Threads that are not related to the topic of the forum in question
- Re-posting threads that you have already posted elsewhere
- Posts that do not in any way relate to the discussion or debate in an ongoing thread
You can advertise websites, products, etc. in your signature, avatar, or other profile fields, as long as you post productively and don't just try to get exposure for your advertisements. Recommendation of websites, products, or other resources are also allowed if relevant to legitimate discussions.
Censor Bypassing (1 or 2 points)

Attempting to bypass the censor by misspelling, inserting spaces or symbols, transposing letters, using look-alike symbols, or any other method is not allowed. For example, if "gris" is a banned word:
- Not allowed: g-r-i-s, gr*s, g***, 9|-1$, girs, gryeeeas, grizznizz, **** (rhymes with "bris")
- Allowed: ****, ****ed, ****ing, g'ed, g-word
Prohibited words may not be used in images or videos embedded in posts. If external websites use prohibited words, you can link to them only if you post a warning alongside the link.
Hard-to-Read Posts (1 or 2 points)

Posts that disrupt the message boards for other users, intentional or not, are prohibited. This includes, but is not limited, to:
- Conducting conversations in foreign languages, outside designated forums
- Posting excessively in capital letters, leet speak, or other hard-to-read writing styles
- Using misleading topic titles
- Consecutive posting. (I.e., double posts, triple posts)
- Making misleading topic titles
Insulting Others (3 or 6 points)

Posts clearly insulting other board members, individually or as a group, directly or indirectly, are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Name-calling ("You're an idiot", "You moron")
- Direct insults ("Screw you")
- Offensive orders ("Go kill yourself")
- Using threatening, harassing, defamatory, hate-speech, or libelous language
- Using race, religion, sexual orientation, culture, ethnicity, handicap, nationality, or gender as a means of insult, either directly or implied
- Insinuations ("Are you stupid or something?") or insults towards family ("Your mom...")
Instead, members should criticize the post, not the poster. SEGA, the Creative Assembly, and related bodies are considered board members for this purpose, since some of them are. You can still criticize their games without insulting them personally.
Posting Profane or Sexually Explicit Content (3 or 6 points)

Posts of a patently offensive nature are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Posting or requesting links to or material from pornographic, obscene, or hate-speech web sites
- Posting links to web sites with other potentially offensive content without a clear warning
- Descriptions or details about any sexual act or sexual organs
Using Modders' Work Without Permission (3 or 6 points)

Using or distributing part or all of any Total War modification without permission is prohibited.
Impersonation (4 points)

Falsely claiming to be another message board member or other known individual is not allowed. Moderators may use discretion in enforcing this against impersonations that are clearly not serious and so unlikely to fool anyone.
Promoting Illegal Activities (4 or 8 points)

Posts that incite others to violate the law are not allowed. This includes, but is not limited to, asking for or providing:
- Illegal copies of copyrighted software (ROMs, Warez)
- Methods of circumventing copyright protection (Cracks, CD Keys, mod chips)
- Illegal copies of copyrighted music (MP3s), movies, videos, or any other type of media (including in Mods)
- Copies of original Total War game files
- Methods of cheating in online games
Harassment or Invasion of Privacy (4 or 8 points)

Continual harassing behavior directed towards a certain individual or group with the intent of creating an intimidating, offensive, or hostile environment on the boards, with or without use of explicit or implicit threats is prohibited. Posting private information without permission is also prohibited.
Other

Any other activity that is clearly detrimental to the flow of conversation and normal activities of the boards and its users may also be deleted, and responsible users may be penalized at the discretion of the Chief of Moderation.

Terms Violations

Cautions

Cautions are given when a member commits an offense that is exceptionally mild. Cautions do not contribute toward a member's warning level. It is only noted to let other moderators know that the user has committed an offense in the past. This information is to be used by other moderators when evaluating future situations. A member's first offense should result in a caution unless it is particularly severe.

Warning

Warnings are given when a member commits an offense the moderator considers too serious for a caution. Warnings expire after three months and contribute toward a member's warning level. How many levels an offense is worth can be found in the Member Conduct section in (parentheses). Whether to give the first or second number is up to moderator discretion.

Warning Levels

Warning levels are penalized as follows:

4	Can neither give nor receive reputation
8	Suspension for 1 day and no custom title nor invisible mode
12	Suspension for 3 days and cannot use avatar/signature/profile picture
16	Suspension for 7 days and placement in probation
30	Indefinite ban

Penalties (other than suspensions and bans) last until the warning level is reduced below the specified penalty. Time during which a user is banned may not counted toward the expiration of warning levels.

Privacy Policy Statement

Definitions

"Visitor" refers to any person who is not a registered member of this site who is viewing it using a web browser.
"Member" refers any person who is a registered member of this site.

Policy

This is the web site of Total War Center.

You may contact us at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php.

For each visitor to our Web page, our Web server automatically recognizes only the visitor’s domain name, but not the e-mail address (where possible).

We collect only the domain name, but not the e-mail address of visitors to our Web page, the e-mail addresses of those who post messages to our bulletin board, the e-mail addresses of those who make postings to our chat areas.

For purposes of validation, registered members of our forum are required to provide a valid email address. This email may be accessed by moderators of the forum, and dependant on settings, may become viewable by members of the public. If you do not wish this information to be shared, you can modify your privacy settings here. TWC will never disclose your email address to third parties, and use by moderating staff is for the enforcement of the Terms of Service only.

If you do not want to receive e-mail from us in the future, please let us know by notifying us at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php or by deselecting the "receive mail" options in your User Control Panel.

If you supply us with your postal address on-line you will only receive the information for which you provided us your address. Your address details will not be stored for future reference, and will be deleted once requested information has been supplied.

To try and bring you offers that are of interest to you, we have relationships with other companies that we allow to place ads on our Web pages. As a result of your visit to our site, ad server companies may collect information such as your domain type, your IP address and clickstream information. For further information, consult the privacy policies of Google Ads.

Upon request we provide site visitors with access to all information [including proprietary information] that we maintain about them by paying a reasonable fee as determined by the site operator.

Visitors can have this information corrected or removed by visiting us at http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php.

We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we have collected from you at our site.

If you feel that this site is not following its stated information policy, you may contact or us using the following URL: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/sendmessage.php.

This site is in full compliance with terms of the United Kingdom's Data Protection Act 1998. This site is additionally in compliance with the terms of COPPA. In furtherance of this, those visitors under the age of 13, wishing to become registered members of the site must get permission from an appropriate parent or guardian, and provide proof of this by completing this form. Failure to comply will result in the removal of your account, and the deletion of any details held by us about you.

TWC's Probation System

Instead of being permabanned as in the past, repeat offenders are now placed on a new probationary system. The details are as follows:

Probationary System

If a user is a repeat offender he may enter in the probationary system. This is decided in one of two ways: (1) A member is automatically enrolled following the receipt of his third active warning. (2) A member is enrolled by the Chief of Moderation following consultation with the moderating team. Any member of the moderating Staff can propose users for entry into this system.

How it works

If a user is in the System every warning results in a suspension.
If a user has a history of a certain type of violation, consider that history to be a caution (i.e., a user with a history of flaming should receive a warning if they do so again instead of a caution).
The length of the suspension is decided by the Head of Moderation after consultation with the moderating team and it should not be shorter than a month.
Consecutive suspensions during the probation period will increase in length.
The length of probation period is decided by the Head of Moderation in consultation with the moderating team and sholud usually be no shorter than three months; the period restarts at the end of each suspension.
The user in question is made fully aware of the rules and function of the system.
Warnings acquired while on probation will result in a suspension and an upgrade to the next highest stage of probation (see below).

The Stages

Stage One probation consists of a three month term with a one month suspension for any warnings acquired during that term.
Stage Two probation consists of a six month term with a two month suspension for any warnings acquired during that term.
Stage Three probation consists of a twelve month term with a four month suspension for any warnings acquired during that term.

And what about the "permaban"?

The permaban is reserved for cases of spambots and posting porn.

Secondary Probation

These members are in the "limbo" of the probationary system, for lack of a better term. For instance, a member earns two warnings followed by a caution (obviously this rarely happens, but it can). These members are not treated as a normal member, nor are they treated as a member on probation. While the caution is not enough to place them on probation, any infraction they earn in the next month (caution or warning) will result in them being placed on probation. Note that this is different from a normal member, who may only be placed on probation upon receiving his third active warning or by the Chief of Moderation.

TWC Official:Terms of Service

Contents

Terms of Service

Registration Requirements

Content Notice

Account Responsibilty

Privacy and Release of Information

Member Conduct

Signature Size Violation (1 point)

Off-topic Posting (1 or 2 points)

Censor Bypassing (1 or 2 points)

Hard-to-Read Posts (1 or 2 points)

Insulting Others (3 or 6 points)

Posting Profane or Sexually Explicit Content (3 or 6 points)

Using Modders' Work Without Permission (3 or 6 points)

Impersonation (4 points)

Promoting Illegal Activities (4 or 8 points)

Harassment or Invasion of Privacy (4 or 8 points)

Other