These are the Cosplay.com rules. While the list may seem long, please remember that we have many areas of the site and each section may have rules which are repeated from other sections, but are posted here in context to the section they are referring to. We pride ourselves in running a very open site with a friendly atmosphere, and will do everything we can to keep it that way.
All questions regarding the rules should be directed to the administrator of this site, either via the forums (username: Admin) or via an email to support AT cosplay.com.
General Site Rules
The following rules apply to ALL sections of the site. Please read them carefully.
1. No harassing of other members. This includes but is not limited to sending mass PM’s to strangers, confrontational posts with malicious intent, stalking other members, and anything that could be construed as harassment.
2. Please respect the moderators and the administrators. We are very relaxed in our policing of the site, however if we feel the need to step in and take care of a situation, we would appreciate your understanding that we do so in the interest of the cosplay.com community as a whole.
3. We reserve the right to update these rules at any time, and as we see fit. We advise members to check back to the rules page on occassion in case we have added/modified any rules. In good faith, any major rule additions or changes will be coupled with a site-wide announcement in the forums.
4. Solicitation of the members of this website is absolutely prohibited without permission from the site owners. This includes but is not limited to sending out emails/PM's to members, posting casting calls, soliciting models for photoshoots, and seeking cosplayers for non-cosplay events. All solicitation not approved first by the administrators of this site may only be posted in the Spam forum. Out of respect to the cosplayers who make this site their regular destination, violation of this rule will get you banned very, very fast.
5. The laws of the State of Nevada, U.S.A, shall govern any disputes between Cosplay.com, L.L.C. and any user, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. By using this site, You and Cosplay.com agree to submit to the personal and exclusive jurisdiction of the courts located within the county of Clark, Nevada, U.S.A. The failure of Cosplay.com to exercise or enforce any right or provision of the site rules shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any provision of the site rules is found by a court of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the site rules remain in full force and effect. You agree that regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to use of the site or the site rules must be filed within one (1) year after such claim or cause of action arose or be forever barred.
Text Posts and General Comments
The most important rule: Be courteous, and use common sense when posting.
The second most important rule: Just because it's not listed in the posting rules, does not automatically make it ok.
The rule that supersedes all rules: The administrators of this site will always make the final call on any rule.
Now that those are out of the way . . .
1. No personal attacks toward other members. This includes but is not limited to anything placed in your signature, username, avatar, title, and the post itself.
2. Everyone has an opinion, and many times it will differ from your own. Please respect other members' opinions and if you feel the need to argue, please do so in a nice, honorable way.
3. No spamming, defined as either posting to deliberately advertise something, or excessive posting with no general motive other than to post nonsense. In regards to advertising, you are more than welcome to have a URL listed in your profile, as long as you’re not posting just to drive people somewhere else. URL’s that lead to affiliate programs are absolutely not allowed. In regards to excessive posting, we will for example not tolerate members irritating others in the community by constantly posting in as many threads as possible, whether it be to get their post counts up (for some odd reason, people actually do this) or simply out of mere boredom. Small offenses will be met with a polite request to cease the activity. Repeat and/or larger offenses will be met with removal from the site. Posting anything for sale, no matter if it's cosplay related or not, may not be posted to the front page of the site.
4. No posting anything illegal, or any links which lead to anything illegal. No porn, warez, crackz, hackz or roms. No discussion of P2P clients, no discussion of where to download anime.
5. No nudity or graphic violence in posts, attachments, avatars, etc. NO HENTAI. No "blurred" hentai either.
6. No excessive swearing on the public forums. We do have plenty of under-18 members. No vulgar innuendo or sexually explicit messages.
7. No "Post Hijacking", defined as posting nonsense or off-topic babble on other people’s posts if the post started out as something on-topic.
8. No copyright infringement in posts and attachments.
9. Please research where to post. We have many forums, each with different topics or subject matter. For example, all advertising should be posted in the Spam Board. We do not allow off-topic posting on our main forums and may close threads that go too far off-topic.
10. We have an invisible field on everyone’s profile, where we keep track of complaints if there are any. Please keep that in mind as we may forget but the profile info won’t.
11. If anyone is harassing you or you notice them breaking the rules, please send a PM or email to the site administration and it will be looked at.
12. Administrators and forum moderators have the right to close any thread they feel should be closed. While the reasons for closing a thread are too many to list here, chances are it will be closed (or possibly deleted entirely) if it violates one of the rules listed above. We will also consider closing any thread that deviates so far off of the original topic that it warrants a new thread entirely.
13. Administrators and forum moderators have the right to censor any post they feel should be censored, within reason. For example, if a post has plenty of merit yet has a link to objectionable content, a moderator may come along and merely remove the link, leaving the rest of the post intact.
14. If you are posting a link to your convention photos or event photos in a gallery on another website, please keep it reasonable. Continuously posting in multiple threads to drive traffic to your website may result in anything up to removal from our site, and especially if it is commercial in nature. Please note that we do allow you to post a link to your gallery in a specific convention forum (i.e. "My Anime Expo pics are up" with a link), but if you do it multiple times we will be concerned about the spam effect it has on our forums.
15. Thread Rezzing - Please do not ressurect old threads unless you have something important to add to them. Thread rezzing is defined as responding to a thread that has been inactive for a long time (usually months). While there is nothing stopping you from adding something important to an old thread, we'd like to avoid, for example, threads from 2002 suddenly popping up with replies like "yeah same here!" and suddenly being reborn in the forums. Actions like this can be confusing to other members when a huge inactive thread suddenly appears again, not to mention it's considered by many people as bad forum etiquette.
16. No posting home addresses or phone numbers of anyone, member or not.
Image Posts
As a member of cosplay.com, you are able to upload images which can be viewed from the site. Here are the rules:
0. The photo gallery is for PHOTOS. No full-image artwork is allowed.
1. You must be the copyright holder (owner) of the photo. In other words, you took the photo yourself.
2. If you are not the copyright holder, you must have permission from the person in question if you are to place it on the site.
3. You may NOT upload any photos which defame/defraud/slander anyone.
4. Photos must be PG-13 or less. No nudity allowed. No implied nudity. No sexually suggestive images.
5. Please limit your non-cosplay and non-convention photos. If you post a few "hanging around the house" type photos it's ok, but if you post 200 pictures from your school trip to Washington D.C. we will remove them. Note: a few means "a few".
6. Due to recent abuses by a few members, a few modeling or candid photos are ok but the gallery must be cosplay-oriented in its intended usage. The overwhelming majority of the photos in your gallery must be cosplay related. Rather than completely remove offending galleries, we will be forced to arbitrarily remove non-cosplay related photos when we feel the gallery is being used for purposes other than cosplay.
7. Absolutely no full-image screen-caps or artwork.
8. Hotlinking to your images is disabled. You may, however, link from your website to the images' html pages themselves.
9. If you are commenting on a photo, please limit any criticism to *constructive* criticism, and even then realize that you are criticizing someone publicly when it would probably be more polite to do it privately. You must have member privileges to post comments in the gallery, if we find you insulting other members for whatever reason we will be more than ready to remove your account access site-wide.
10. No racially insensitive images, even if presented in a historical nature, and even if it is a fictional character from a series. This includes but is not limited to KKK uniforms, nazi uniforms, etc. Every time an image like this is posted, it turns into a MASSIVE argument and we are not going to adjudicate these arguments any longer.
11. The same rules for text posts apply to posting in the comments, where applicable.
By uploading any photos to the site, you are submitting that you understand the rules as laid out above and are agreeing to them. Breaking of any of the rules may result in suspension and/or removal of your cosplay.com account. We reserve the right to remove any photo from the site.