17S Forum and Discord Policies

[LadyLameness]

See Also: Code of Conduct | Etiquette Guide | Forum Welcome & Information

Below are a number of policies that apply to the forums and Discord. Sometimes, these get broken either accidentally or by technological malfunctions--if you come across anything that goes against these policies please let the staff know so that we can fix things up in the background (delete spoilers, move threads etc). 

These are, in general, administrative fixes that won’t have any impact on members or lead to moderation--don’t worry, we all make mistakes! However, members found to be deliberately or repeatedly (after being reminded of the below) breaking policies may be moderated.

For more information on reporting, please see the ‘Reporting’ section of the 17th Shard’s Code of Conduct. Reporting can be done via the forums or Discord.

• General Policies
• Forum Polices
• Discord Policies
• Spoilers and Unpublished Works Policy

[LadyLameness]

General Policies (applicable to both forums and Discord servers)

Spam;

• Can refer to;
  • Links to unrelated third party websites that are posted, without a valid reason, in topics, galleries, user pages, or Discord. These are largely caused by spambots or trolls. Will result in an immediate ban from all platforms. 
  • Repeatedly posting the same content or message either in one or many forums or Discord channels.
  • Discussion about religion is completely fine, however, advertisement or prosetylizing of religion/non-religion of any variety is not to be done on the Shard.
  • Forum: Deliberate post count padding, (posts that contain no substance, eg. that contain single word responses or emoticons) will be deleted. Members who repeatedly create post padding will be contacted directly by staff.
  • Discord: Unnecessarily sending repeated single words, emoticons, or short phrases over a short amount of time.

Advertising/Selling content; 

• Advertising, with the intention of sale, of Brandon related artwork is permitted provided;
  • It completely adheres to Brandon’s fanworks policy
    • Links should be to a specific piece of content or art and not an overall page or channel
    • Links are not spammed
  • Please use appropriate forum or Discord channel;
    • Forum: Sanderson Fanworks
    • Discord: #fanworks
• 17th Shard does not permit advertising of the following (in addition to Brandon’s policy);
  • Crowdfunding for unofficial, unlicensed projects that are unaffiliated with 17th Shard
  • Unauthorized, direct replication attempts (including explicit or unintentional suggestions of how to replicate) or distribution of Brandon works.
• Publicly available material produced by Dragonsteel (such as Warbreaker) can be linked freely.
• Unpublished material can only be distributed by authorized sources*

Content that does not adhere to Brandon’s fanwork’s policy or breaks copyright law will be removed and may lead to legal ramifications. 

*17th Shard has been authorized by Dragonsteel to distribute Aether of Night samples chapters on request.
 

[LadyLameness]

Forum Policies

• Avatars should not be animated GIFs.
• Be considerate when including images in forum posts--if posting multiple images or large images please put behind a spoiler tag to make it easy to navigate the thread.
• Stay on topic in a forum topic! If you'd like to discuss something else, make another topic for that subject. Off topic posts will be removed.

Signatures;

• Signatures are restricted to approximately four single lines. Images and text must be contained within this height for readability purposes.
• Total images size is restricted to 500x100 pixels (can be multiple smaller images or single 500x100 image).
• Animated GIFs should not be used as they cause issues with the site as well as those who are sensitive to flashing images.
• Sanderson Elimination scorecount are not to be recorded in signatures.
• Spoiler boxes are not allowed in signatures.
• Signatures are disabled on mobile.

Grammarly;

• Grammarly has been found to cause unfixable issues when used in forum posts. Unfortunately, these posts will be deleted--please save yourself the time of retyping a long response by not using Grammarly on the forums. Instructions on how to disable Grammarly on the forums only can be found on the extension's support page.

Double posting;

• Refers to posting twice in a row if you are the last poster in a thread. Unless new material and a significant amount of time has passed (eg. updating a theory post when new sample chapters are released), please edit your last post.
  • Glitches will sometimes cause posts to directly duplicate. You may remove duplicate posts of yours by pressing the Hide button (next to Quote), or, if it is a duplicate topic, press Moderation Options at the top of the page, and hit Hide. If you see this on another user's post, please let us know if this is the case by reporting it.

Post Necromancy;

• Refers to reviving an inactive and out of date topic without a legitimate reason. If you wish to continue the discussion please make a new post.
• Legitimate reasons for reviving a post could include;
  • New information has been released that directly relates to the central theory being discussed and creation of a new topic would not substantially differ from continuation of the original post.
  • Continuation of a forum game or roleplay
  • The topic in question is specifically meant to be ongoing (eg. Typo threads)
  • Many old topics have been locked to prevent thread necro’ing--if you believe a thread should be reopened, please contact a moderator.
     

Edited December 8, 2020 by Chaos

[LadyLameness]

Discord Policies

• Swearing (including acronyms and censored words) is not permitted outside of the 18+ channel. A bot is in use to delete swearing--don’t try and circumnavigate the bot.
• External emojis are disabled, including for Nitro users.
• General photo sharing, particularly of multiple photos, should go in #other. If bulk sharing pictures, please be considerate of how many images you are posting so as to not turn sharing into spamming.
• Stay on topic in each channel and adhere to the spoiler policy for any given channel. Check the channel description if you are unsure.
  • Brandon based art should be posted in #fanworks, general art discussion should be posted in #arting
  • Occasional spoilers in non-related channels are fine but must be hidden in a spoiler tag (||information||) and have a prompt as to what they are regarding. If it's an ongoing conversation requiring spoiler boxes, please move to an appropriate channel instead of flooding another channel with black spoiler bars.
• No discussion of politics.
• Streaming of media (either as pure audio or via the Go Live feature) in the Voice Channels is not permitted.
• If you wish to discuss a topic and an active conversation is occurring in the relevant channel, please wait until the conversation has finished or use another appropriate channel (#general and #other are often interchangeable, #cosmere can be used in lieu of individual cosmere series channels)
• To change your username color or flag yourself with a Discord role, use the ?rank command in #botspam
• #you_people channel is available for 18+ years old users. Request access to it and confirm that you are over 18, then a staff member will add you to it. Staff reserves the right to uninvite users from this channel if their behavior is deemed inappropriate or disrespectful. Please read the rules of the channel available in a pinned message.

[LadyLameness]

Spoiler and Unpublished Works Policy

• Unpublished work that has not been publicly released by Brandon and his team (including the original manuscript of Dragonsteel), may not be discussed on any 17th Shard platform.
  • Publicly available chapters or samples of unpublished work may be only discussed in the appropriate forum or Discord channel. 
• If in a book specific forum or channel, you wish to refer to another series please use spoiler markup or, if appropriate, move to a full spoiler channel. A reference to what the spoiler is related to, should also be included. (eg. OB (SPOILER))
  • Forum: The ‘eye’ button will create a spoiler box in which text and images can be added.
  • Discord: Add || to either side of a sentence without spaces at the beginning or end (eg. ||spoilers||)

Forum: 

• Stick to the appropriate forum. Check forum board description if you are unsure.
  • Spoiler topics posted in non-spoiler forums must contain ‘Spoiler’ in the topic title.
• New books can be discussed without spoiler tags in the dedicated new book subforum/area only. 
  • Topic titles should not contain spoilers 
  • You are strongly encouraged to post topics on new works in the new book subforum/area only. If you must reference something in a spoiler period outside those forums, you must spoiler tag it.

Discord: 

• Stick to the appropriate channel. Check the channel topic if you are unsure.
• New books can be discussed in the dedicated spoiler channel only. 
  • Dedicated spoiler channel will have full spoilers for entire universe (eg. all cosmere books can be discussed in the spoiler channel for any new cosmere books)
  • New books should not be discussed in the regular book channels until the spoiler period has ended.
  • Some exclusions like fanworks and cosmemes apply, and new books can be discussed here tagged. Work channels like Coppermind or Arcanum can have new book spoilers untagged. Check channel topic if exclusions apply. 
• The tagged spoilers channel can have any spoilers, but must always be hidden behind spoiler tags.

Spoiler Period and Spoiler Period Lengths for Forums and Discord:

• Cosmere novels - six months
• Cosmere everything else - three months
• Non-cosmere novels - three months 
• Non-cosmere everything else - one month