Handbook:Moderation/Policies/Accounts
From The Otherkin Community
| The Otherkin Community Handbook » Moderation » Policies » Accounts |
| The Otherkin Community Handbook is a collection of information about The Otherkin Community, Inc. and its services. The Handbook is designed to provide helpful aid to members and visitors of The Otherkin Community, as well as information for staff, employees and volunteers.
Categories: Forums, Moderation |
Member accounts at The Otherkin Community are handled in a manner that protects the interests of both the interests of the members and the Community. The policy attempts to strike a balance suitable for both parties.
Contents |
Account Termination
Member accounts at The Otherkin Community are never permanently deleted. Account termination is simply an account suspension, with the duration dependent on the context of the termination.
- Accounts terminated by request are suspended only until the member wishes to re-activate his/her account. Accounts may be re-activated upon request (see Contact).
- Account termination due to violation of the Rules & Regulations will result in a permanent suspension.
Masking
Terminated accounts, regardless of the cause, have right to minor censoring in order to mask the username of the account. This option is provided as a courtesy to members; the Community has the right to revoke this privilege should it be abused. The Otherkin Community does not hold the right to withhold this privilege based off of personal discrimination or bias.
Maksed usernames will appear as the first two characters of the username, followed by an undefined number of asterisks. For example, if the username was "JohnDoe", the censored username may appear as "Jo*********". The number of asterisks will be random in order to ensure that others will be unable to determine the username. In the future, usernames will be entirely masked (once the system supports that feature).
Do not rely on masking in order to secure your identity. There are a number of situations where masking does not help:
- Posts within The Otherkin Community Forums will not be censored, so users who had previous discussions with the terminated member may be able to determine the username. Members are encouraged to keep all personal or identifying information in their signatures, so it may be removed from the posts (for example, do not sign each post with your name/username).
- Search engines (and possibly other websites) cache content contained on the various Community services (primarily The Otherkin Community Forums). Members and visitors may also keep their own personal logs and save content. Therefore, once you join the site, be mindful of what you say and post, as that information may forever exist somewhere in the massive web of computers known as the Internet.
- Administrators and moderators will still be able to see your username unmaksed.
Banning
Administrators must always consult with other staff members and reach a majority vote in favor of the suspension before permanently suspending (banning) a member account. A valid case against the member must be present. No personal bias shall ever be cause for account termination.
Censorship Policy
The Otherkin Community does not censor content, such as posts on The Otherkin Community Forums, unless it contains personal information. Due note that our Rules & Regulations prohibit the posting of personal information outside specific areas, such as the user profile, in order to avoid situations such as these and to help protect our members from malicious users.
This policy is in effect primarily in order to preserve content on The Otherkin Community Forums. For example, if a user were to terminate their account or be banned and have their account deleted, his/her posts would suddenly go missing. Therefore, any thread he/she participated in would no longer make sense to others reading it. Censoring of submissions, such as posts, is not permitted in order to ensure that information remains available to all other members and visitors of The Otherkin Community. The majority of the content comes from the members themselves. There are many threads and articles that members may rely on for information. If the posts were censored, that information would be lost.
All submissions, in the form of posts, chat discussions, or use of any other service provided by The Otherkin Community, are considered to be donations to the organization. The Otherkin Community holds the right to retain that information for as long as it sees fit, and to display such information in whatever form it pleases, with respect to the member's privacy. For example, The Otherkin Community will not publish submitted articles without consent from the author. For more information, please see Section 7 of the Terms of Service.
Multiple User Accounts
The Otherkin Community asks that users create a single account per individual for a variety of reasons:
- To properly moderate individual users in the event of warnings and suspensions
- To prevent users from chatting with themselves (spam)
- To reduce intentional deception of other users
This policy cannot be enforced on the basis of IP for a few reasons:
- Multiple members may live within the same household (thereby having the same IP address)
- The user may be using a common proxy, from which other members have registered/posted on
- Certain public areas may use a shared IP address for all computers at the location (libraries, cyber cafes, etc)
Therefore, this policy will be enforced only if the staff has the ability to prove that a single individual holds multiple accounts. If the individual has been found to use multiple accounts, they will be contacted in private and asked to choose which account they would like to keep using. The other account will be suspended. If the user had been previously suspended on another account due to violations, then the new account would also be suspended.
Some members have created multiple accounts for the purpose of reflecting other personalities or some "other side" of them in regards to their being Otherkin. While the staff does sympathize with such a decision, we still ask that you please do not create multiple accounts.
Benefits Note
Do note that, in the future, accounts will receive benefits for participation and other membership options. Users may notice the point system, which will be used in the future. These benefits cannot be transferred between accounts, so users who create multiple accounts will only be splitting up their benefits, disallowing a greater experience. Also, if the staff finds that the user does use multiple accounts, the benefits on the account(s) that are suspended will be lost.
Creating a single account will ensure you get the most out of your experience once those benefits do become available.
