silwritersguild | MOD POST: Updates to the SWG Site Etiquette and Terms of Service (Reply)

Over the past few months, various changes to our Site Etiquette and Terms of Service have been proposed and discussed. When the SWG moderators detect something missing or in need of revision, we mods discuss it first and draft a revision or addition to the existing Site Etiquette and ToS. This is then put before the members for discussion and comment.

The following changes have been made to the Site Etiquette and ToS:

Working Email Address Required. The following item has been added to the Terms of Service:

Upon registering with our archive or any future site features that the SWG might offer, members will be expected to provide a working email address. If an email address is found to be not working, the account will be locked, and the member can contact the moderation team to have the account unlocked and email address updated. In the instance of mass registrations of invalid email addresses that do not appear to be intended for legitimate use of the site, or other suspicious activity, the SWG moderators reserve the right to delete these accounts. An account with any legitimate past or present activity (including but not limited to entry of information into the bio page, review activity, posting stories or podfics, or creating a Favorites list) will never be deleted under this rule.

This FAQ has more information: What should I do if I forget my login or password? What should I do if the site won't allow me to register with my email address? What are the SWG's requirements for working email addresses?

Image Use on the Archive. The following revision has been made to the Author Etiquette to address the use of images on the archive:

Please take care to properly reference any sources that you use in your writing. This includes direct quotes from Tolkien’s works, direct quotes or original source material that belongs to other authors, and secondary source material, such as song lyrics or books. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism and is considered unprofessional and unethical. (View the SWG Plagiarism Policy for more information.)

In order to protect SWG from copyright infringement, it is important that you do not reproduce all or most of a copyrighted work on the site without permission from the copyright holder. As this group is home to writers and artists, it is important that we protect the rights of all writers and artists—and so protect ourselves.

Likewise, while we allow the use of images in certain areas of the archive, members who use images in their stories, profiles, reviews, and other areas of the site must be legally allowed to use the image, provide proper credit to the artist or photographer, and follow other archive policies related to image use. Members who want to use images are strongly encouraged to view the SWG Image Policy for more information.

This FAQ has more information: Can we include images in our stories? What are the guidelines for using images on SWG?

Important!! If you use images on your profile or in your stories (aside from banners, which are obviously made to be displayed), please review the image use rules in the FAQ link above and make sure you are using images legally and with proper credit given to the artist/rights holder. Thank you to those of you who have done this already.

Multiple Accounts and Pseuds. The following addition has been made to the Site Etiquette:

Each member is permitted to register for one account on the archive. The sole exception to this rule is the creation of a second "pseud" account that participates on the archive independently from the identity of the primary account. Anyone interested in setting up a pseud account should read the Pseud FAQ before doing so.

This FAQ has more information: Am I allowed to set up more than one account on the archive? What are the rules for pseud accounts?

The translated ToS have not yet been updated but should be within the next few days.