SWLRP is meant to be welcoming and supporting to as many roleplayers and roleplaying styles as possible. However, like every community SWLRP has behavioral rules and expectations. When you are participating in the SWLRP forum, Discord chat, in-game chatroom, the wiki, the collaborative writing pads or the Twitter bot please follow the guidelines below.
Guidelines
These guidelines can be roughly summarized as "don't be a jerk." This list may not be exhaustive and cover every cornercase, use common sense.
- Be considerate to others. You don't need to agree with everyone or be sunshine and rainbows all the time, but openly antagonizing, mocking, harassing, belittling, or generally being a jerk to other people is not acceptable
- OOC threats of any kind will not be tolerated. This includes death threats, threats of physical harm or sexual assault, 'doxxing', telling people they are better off dead or should kill themselves, and other reprehensible behavior.
- Hate-speech and harassment will not be tolerated. This includes defamation of someone's race, religion, political views, sexual orientation, gender expression, etc. 'Civil disagreement' is not the same as 'hate-speech', but even then: if you're having a heated political, religious, or other discussion, you should probably be having it privately, not in a public channel. Note: Political, religious, etc. heated topics are what the 'spicy_subjects' Discord channel is for but even there, keep the discussion civil!
- Do not spread rumors & lies. What happens between you and other players be it IC or OOC, is private by nature. Be sure to get the other players consent before sharing. Lying is not acceptable.
- Do not force interactions with someone. It is everyone's right to choose with whom they talk or roleplay. Circumventing blocks, making characters to target specific players or asking others to get someone ton play with you despite their wish not to, is not acceptable.
- Be yourself. Don't impersonate another roleplayer, community member, Moderator, or Administrator.
- Respect people's privacy. Do not post logs or screenshots of people's roleplay, characters, etc. without permission from the other person. Likewise, do not share real life personal information in public venues, including names, email addresses, telephone numbers, genders, etc.
- Respect people's property. Do not post other people's artwork, stories, and creative works without their permission. This includes copyrighted works from the internet, artwork commissions, and 'borrowing' characters for your own personal stories.
- Avoid graphic topics. Again, we are all adults and are accustomed to topics like sex and violence. However, in-depth discussions of sex, sexual acts, violence, descriptions of violence, and similar are inappropriate for public chatrooms and forums. Use common sense.
- Place NSFW and potentially sensitive roleplay materials behind a 'Spoiler' tag, and/or include a warning in your post. NSFW / sensitive topics might include graphic sexual content, graphic violent content, sexual violence, domestic abuse, or harm to children. Note: The 'spicy_subjects' Discord channel is not for NSFW materials like erotica, pornography, graphic violence, etc.
- Keep cursing to a minimum. We are all adults and occasionally use 'bad words', but we are also creative, expressive people who don't need to use profanity four times in a sentence to make a point. If you are prone to using curse words, please consider masking words (f'k instead of fuck, for example).
- When in doubt, ask. If you're unsure whether a particular action -- whether yours or someone else's -- is acceptable, ask a Moderator or an Administrator. That's what they're here for.
Consequences
Breaking these rules may result in anything from a polite "please don't" to an outright ban, depending on the severity and frequency of the offense. Be aware, we have no tolerance for harassment, ooc-threats and hate speech and it will result in bans. (It is sad enough that we have to express this.)
Unless it is a time critical matter, Moderators discuss punishments before they are applied. If you feel you have been punished or banned without good reason, you may 'appeal' the situation with another Moderator or the site Administrator (Rovena).
Conflict Resolution
While we run into very few rule violations on our properties (forums, discord, wiki & pads) conflict between community members occasionally arises on other platforms. This can be simple misunderstandings but also more severe issues, like harassment or ooc-threats.
We can not police activities outside of our property.
Still, our goal is to have this community be welcoming and supporting as many roleplayers as possible, we have to take action if a member (or group of members) is showing repeated (or very severe) misbehaviour towards other members, even if it only happens outside of our properties.
If a community member brings a complain to us, we try to establish dialog with all involved parties and try to work out a solution. That process is guided by the following principles:
- Resolution over Mitigation: The primary goal is to solve the conflict. In many cases it is possible to find some middle ground or compromise. Establishing a compromise that allows all involved parties to be part and enjoy their time in the community takes priority over quick solutions and bans. We will aim for solutions with the minimal possible impact.
- Evidence Based: Allegations need to come with evidence as do counter claims. We will not act upon hearsay.
- Privacy & Confidentiality: We will not make any of these conflict resolutions public. This includes the results. We are not going to put anyone in the pillory or publicly shame them. To protect the victims and witnesses we will not grant access to the evidence to the offending party.
- Transparency: Both the complaining and the offending party will be informed about the type of allegations and the nature of the evidence submitted. We will keep everyone involved informed about the next steps and results.
- Protection: In the end, we have to protect our community members. So if all else fails or the misconduct was too severe, we will exclude offenders from participating in activities on our properties.