Deadlystream Forum Rules

[Snigaroo 119]

Deadlystream Forum Rules

 

Useful Links:

• Deadly Stream Home Page
• KOTOR Subreddit
• KOTOR Discord

 

General Forum Rules
 
The Deadlystream forum is a civil community, and the rules have been put in place to maintain this. Please be friendly when posting here.

 

1. General Posting Habits

• Threads and posts must be placed in their appropriate forums: check out the forum description before posting your message.
• Before posting a new topic, do a search to see if there is already a recent thread on the subject. If there is already a thread similar to what you’d like to post, feel free to read it and post a reply in the existing thread. If you can find no suitable thread that has received new posts recently you may post your own. Do not revive threads that have not had any activity for months or years this way unless you have something of substance to add to the topic.
• Be specific when you name your topic. This will aid in topic searches and help prevent someone from posting something you already have.
• Please refrain from starting topics on your life experiences. Deadlystream has blogs for each user, and that would be a wonderful place to post such topics instead.
• Try to stay on-topic. Discussion is a good thing and is encouraged, but if what you have to say deviates a lot from the topic, do not post it in that thread. Consider starting your own thread instead. This is a matter of respect to the thread starter.
• If you open a topic requesting help with a game or a specific modification, you must list all modifications that you currently have installed. Inaction or inability to list your installed modifications will result in our inability to provide assistance; we can't help if you can't provide this information.

 

2. Flaming

You cannot, in any way, insult (or "flame") someone else on the board. People may not be insulted just because their opinion differs from yours. Flaming includes calling people names, insulting them, or saying offensive things to them. This also includes harassment (the act of systematic and/or continued unwanted and annoying actions of one party or a group, including threats and demands).
 
Any flaming will result in one warning, after which your posting ability will become restricted and if necessary you will be banned.
 

3. Spamming

Spamming is strictly prohibited. Your post needs to contribute to the discussion or the topic. Spam Details:

• Do not post messages that are irrelevant to the topic or attempt to derail the conversation. Your posts should contribute to the thread in some manner.
• Avoid simplistic replies that include negligible discussion; "I agree" or "This!" as replies aren't necessary, and you can easily use emote reactions on a post in their place.
• You may not post threads about the amount of posts, post status, or rank that you or a fellow member has.
• Refrain from making successive posts (edit your previous post instead).
• Refrain from making many threads in rapid succession; if possible, try to consolidate anything you'd like to speak about to fewer threads that cover broader topics.
• Do not start topics solely designed for posting spam. Find some other forum to work out your inanity.
• Do not spam the Private Message (PM) mailboxes of other users.

 

4. Inappropriate Language

Refrain from using excessive profanity in your posts. Basically, let the censor do its job. Don't attempt to undermine it.

Avoid using leet/IM/chatspeak in your posts. This is a forum, not an instant messenger or a cell phone so please make an effort to use proper English to make your posts easier to read and understand. [Example of chatspeak: "h0w r u m8" --> "How are you mate?"]

We are aware that this is an international forum where not everyone speaks English as their native language. Everyone can make grammar and spelling mistakes and that's okay; as long as a post is broadly intelligible, no other users should attempt to correct one's English, nitpick grammar, and so on.

 

5. Bumping

Please do not make posts simply to move the topic back up to the top of the forum. This is called ‘bumping,' and outside of very specific circumstances it isn't allowed. The circumstances where it is allowed include:

• You have made a thread requesting help but have received no helpful replies as yet, and your thread is now both more than halfway down the forum's first page AND you posted your thread over two weeks ago.
• An existing thread dealing with an issue you're currently experiencing includes some relevant information, but your issue persists. You may continue discussing from it.
• A mod submission thread hasn't been bumped in some time, but you need to report an incompatibility, error or other meaningful matter to the modder.
• You have meaningful contributions to add to any unlocked staff/administrative post.
• You have meaningful contributions to add to a work-in-progress, tech demo, tool or tutorial thread (and the project in question hasn't been declared defunct).

 

6. Usernames and Personalization

Do not duplicate anybody's nickname, avatar, and/or signature. You may not wrongfully take the name of someone outside the community, such as names or nicknames of game developers, moderators of other communities, and so on. Impersonation is strictly prohibited.

 

7. Multiple Accounts

Multiple accounts are not allowed. You must also use a valid email address when registering. If you do not like your current account name, please create a thread in the Helpdesk Forum and the staff will assist you in changing your name. 

 

8. Illegal Material

Do not discuss or post links to illegal material or discuss where to obtain illegal material (i.e. where to get illegal cracks, etc.). Do not post magazine scans and other copyrighted material. This is prohibited. Discussions about how to perform activities that are illegal in the US are also prohibited (i.e. torrents to acquire the games illegally, etc.).

Deadlystream may at times host files that circumvent DRM; in these instances, these files are only to enable the normal and legal use of the games they are made for. In all instances you must own the content you are using, and Deadlystream does not condone, promote, or enable piracy. Discussion about piracy is strictly prohibited.


9. Obscene Material

You may not post obscene material. This includes text and/or images that are pornographic, or which incite or encourage violence or discriminatory behavior.

10. Advertisement

While linking to legal and non-obscene websites is permissible, please do not specifically advertise other websites, nor make posts or threads about other websites or forums solely in an effort to direct traffic to them. You may include links in your signature, but you may not include links for the sole purpose of advertisement within your posts.

Commercial advertisement for companies, or products or services you are trying to sell, is strictly prohibited.

 

11. Spoilers

Despite being an old game, many users are new to them, and as Deadlystream hosts many bugfixes and content restorations deemed critical by the community, we can and should respect the importance this site, its download pages, and its forums have to other users. In areas where first-time players are likely to travel, major spoilers should be kept to an appropriate minimum and, where necessary to include, should be mentioned beforehand. This rule won't be too rigidly enforced, but for your fellow posters, please do try to be considerate.

 

12. Liability

You remain solely responsible for the content of your messages, and you agree to indemnify and hold us harmless with respect to any claim based upon transmission of your message(s). We reserve the right to reveal your identity (or whatever information we know about you) in the event of a complaint or legal action arising from any message posted by you.

 

13. Appealing a Restriction of Privileges
 
If your posting, replying, uploading or downloading privileges are revoked for whatever reason, you may request a repeal of the restriction immediately after the imposition of the reduction. Please allow up to seven days for the appeal to be processed, and understand that, if an appeal is denied, the terms of your restriction's eventual removal (if any) will be at the sole discretion of the moderation. Any attempt to get around a revocation of privileges will result in an immediate ban. If your privileges are revoked you will be notified when and why via a PM.

 

14. Re-registration after a ban

You may not re-register after receiving a ban. If you re-register after you are temporarily banned, you will be banned permanently. If you keep re-registering, you will be IP-banned, preventing you from viewing the forums at all.

 

15. E-mail Addresses

For your own privacy and security, do not post your e-mail address in the forums. If you want somebody to contact you personally, then please use the Private Messaging system built into the forums, or turn on the option allowing other users to send you e-mail via your profile.

16. Thread Closure or Deletion

If you have reason to prevent a thread you've made from receiving further replies, you can ask a moderator to close your thread. Moderators may or may not approve the closure request at their sole discretion.


17. Reporting Posts

If you witness someone breaking the rules, don't post about it in the thread. Instead, please use the 'report post' button to inform the moderating staff of the problem. Please use it only to report posts that are in violation of the forum rules.

 

18. Uploads
 
In almost all circumstances, all content on Deadlystream must be uploaded by the original creator(s)/owner(s) of the content, with limited exceptions. Uploading content that is owned by someone else is strictly prohibited, unless explicit permission can be demonstrated by the uploader. If you are found to upload content that is owned by another person without explicit evidence of permission, the first offense will result in a warning and removal of said content. Any additional infractions will result in a permanent ban. 

All mods that are uploaded to Deadlystream require at least one screenshot of the mod being used in game to be approved. If the Staff finds that the screenshot that is uploaded does not meet this requirement, we reserve the right to reject the mod until a proper screenshot is provided. 

Deadlystream Staff will, from time to time, reach out to authors of content not currently hosted on Deadlystream to see if there is an interest in having their content uploaded to Deadlystream. This activity should only be performed by Deadlystream staff members. While users may attempt to get in contact with modders who have yet to upload their content to Deadlystream and politely ask if they would do so, they should respect that modder's stance if they decline, and, most importantly, should not upload their content on their behalf, unless with express (and provable) permission!

In cases of abandonware mods (defined as being content which is no longer publicly available and whose authors have been entirely unreachable for a duration of no less than two years), a process exists for these mods to be reuploaded as archived content on Deadlystream; the specific guidelines are included in the second reply to this thread. If you wish to submit mod that qualifies, you may submit a request to the administrators and they will proceed with the steps towards having the mod publicly uploaded.

The Deadlystream Staff reserve the right to reject any file or modification for any reason that is within the interest of Deadlystream. 

By uploading any file or modification to Deadlystream, you are acknowledging that the Deadlystream Administration and Staff reserve the right to edit, reupload, repackage and move any files as administration deem necessary for the maintenance of hosting mod files and ensuring mod functionality. This means that files will be subject to periodic changes or alterations when deemed necessary. File attribution will always stay with creator and/or uploader of said file(s). 

19. Sale of Modifications
 
The sale of modifications is strictly prohibited on Deadlystream. All hosted modifications on Deadlystream are to be released for free; any deviation from this will result in an immediate and permanent ban. Any attempt to link to a modification made for sale, or to sell a modification hosted at a third-party website, either through the Deadlystream PM system or Deadlystream forum system, will also result in an immediate and permanent ban.

While the sale of mods is strictly prohibited, allowing users to voluntarily tip mod creators (WITHOUT any expectation of reimbursement, implied or actual) is permitted, albeit with significant regulation. If you are an interested modder, please see the first reply to this thread for those regulations. Failure to abide by the regulations as listed may result in the revocation of your right to post your tipjar information on Deadlystream.

20. Users' Responsibilities

Maintaining a healthy forum environment is paramount to Deadlystream, and that includes being welcoming to new users. Whatever a user’s reasons for coming to Deadlystream, they should be respected and helped to the utmost ability of the regular users of this forum. This rule does not mean that our regulars should bend over backwards for new users; it does, however, mean that new users should be assisted to the best ability of our friendly regulars, should not be denied help over trivialities or incomplete information (ask for additional info WHILE helping them instead!), and should not be derided, talked down to, or otherwise dismissed for a lack of knowledge or familiarity with these games, modding, or even general tech-savviness. All users of Deadlystream should assume a user is friendly and willing to learn, however unfamiliar they are with what they may need help with, until and unless the user proves otherwise.

21. A Simple Catch-All

The most important rule of all: Don't be stupid. Use common sense.

This is a wonderful rule that covers all the loopholes. These rules are not a code of laws set in stone. Moderators will use their discretion to determine how they are best applied for the good of the community here.

[Tyvokka 198]

Tipjar Requirements & Regulations

 

1. Deadlystream permits modders to present users with links to  tip jars under the understanding that these systems are to be fully optional for both parties. Users who give a tip to a modder through the tipjar system should not expect, request, or be entitled to additional support, influence, or access to a modder as a result of their gift; similarly, a modder should not hold donations over the heads of users in exchange for promises of further support, mod releases, specific content production, etc. The cornerstone of the system is its voluntary nature, for both modder and user. This also means that a modder may choose to display or not display a tipjar entirely at their preference, and on a mod-by-mod basis, at their complete discretion.

 

2. In order to further reassure users of the voluntary nature of tipping our modders and avoid unwanted solicitations, tipjar links should not be included in signatures, sent to users via PM, or posted on the forums in exchange for anything, even mod or crash support. Tipjars are to be housed on the mod download page(s), mod forum page(s), and/or readme(s) of whichever mod(s) you as the creator choose to include tipjar links on, and nowhere else.

 

3. To facilitate their use, a user may have multiple types of tipjar for end-user convenience (such as linking both Paypal and Ko-fi), but any site used must comply with the following basic criteria:

• It cannot include any system whereby the modder has enough control over the tipping system that they can force tips to become recurring.
• If a user sets their pledge to recurring, we expect the modder to get in touch with the user and confirm that was intentional. This is meant to be a courteous system on both sides.
• It cannot be housed on any site which promotes or allows illegal activities.

With these regulations in mind, sites like Patreon are not acceptable. Sites and methods including Paypal, Ko-Fi, and Bitcoin donations are acceptable.

 

4. Although sites which allow the locking of certain content behind tip levels (such as a private chat, unique mod content, special updates, etc.) are allowed, these features within these sites cannot be used; no special features, unique content, private chats, or any other benefit of tipping can be provided from the action of tipping, whether facilitated through the site itself or not. Similarly, while sites that allow the locking of tip levels to a certain minimum requirement (such as a $5 minimum) can be used, these minimum donation features cannot be used, and tippers must be permitted to give at whatever level they feel comfortable with.

 

5. For mods with multiple collaborators, all collaborators must completely agree on the presence of a tipjar and the split of its earnings for that mod to be able to include a tipjar link. The tipjar links for these mods must be separate from your typical tipjar (you must completely segregate the money that you get for each collaborative mod made by different collaborators OR any mod with a different agreed split of money between collaborators under an entirely different account) in order to be absolutely sure you and your collaborators know exactly how many donations any given project has earned, separate from personal work and other collaborative projects. For the purposes of these regulations, a "collaborator" is determined to be any individual whom you implemented direct assets or work from; it might be polite to consult those you received significant advising from, but we don't mandate it.

In cases of collaborative tipjars, funds are to be split precisely according to the agreement of all parties when the tipjar is initially established, at a timetable or monetary ratio (for example, once every six months, or every $10) also agreed on by all parties. Collaborators are fully free to retract their right to any of the money gained from any given mod's tipjar at their discretion. Deadlystream staff WILL NOT arbitrate disputes about monetary dispensation. If a disagreement is reached about tipjar use, the right to use a tipjar on a given collaborative project will instead be instantly and permanently revoked.

 

[Snigaroo 119]

Guidelines for Reuploading Abandonware Mods

 

For the purposes of the KOTOR modding community, ABANDONWARE will be defined specifically as mods which are no longer publicly available, whose authors have been entirely inactive on all known accounts or other methods of contact for over two years, and whose content was uploaded and readme written under the presupposition that their content would always be available for download on the official venue(s) of their choosing. For the purposes of this community, at the time of writing this definition also entirely disregards all mods which have ever been uploaded to DeadlyStream by the author or an agent of the author.

When reuploading abandonware content, certain mandatory guidelines must be followed. If all the above is true and the readme for the mod in question (if present) contains no indication that reuploading the mod is against the wishes of the author, the following steps must be taken (and can only be taken by a DS admin):

 

1. Contact the modder on any platforms where extant accounts of theirs may still be present and informing them of the imminent content reupload, with instructions for requesting the content be removed if their stance on reuploading has changed from the stance taken at the point of writing their readme.

2. Create a DeadlyStream account with the name of said original modder.

3. Upload the modder’s mod under the new account, with all the original files and readme present, unaltered, and packaged in the original format.

4. Add a note to the bottom of the readme as displayed on deadlystream clarifying that the mod is an abandonware reupload of a mod created under the author’s name, and unequivocally stating that the mod will not be actively supported, nor is any user authorized to engage with the mod in any way which is impermissible by the mod’s readme.

 

In the eventuality that a mod matches the definition of abandonware but does include wording which indicates the author would not approve of their mod being reuploaded, the potential reuploader must first ascertain whether or not the mod was uploaded to a site which would cause the user to believe the mod would be available for download on this preferred method in perpetuity. If there is reason to believe that the mod author wrote their readme with the knowledge that their content might not be available after a certain date (ex: utilizing an upload service on some sort of timer or temporary basis which would see the mod lost after a certain date), then the only way to see the mod reuploaded is to gain contact with and permission from the author; if there is reason to believe the author was active and aware that their mod had become undownloadable at the point at which its last official download went down and did nothing to correct it or actively refused requests to have their mod reuploaded and has only become inactive since this date, then the only way to see the mod reuploaded is to gain contact with and permission from the author. Only in circumstances where the mod author is thought to have become absent or inactive within the community before their mod first became unavailable; that the mod author made no statement or other indication that they would specifically deny the right to reupload their mods even in the eventuality that they specifically became unavailable on all official venues; and that the mod author had every reason to believe that their mod would always be available to download on the official venue of their choosing (or that they would be present to reupload it themselves) at the point of their disappearance is it acceptable to violate the readme in this one, specific instance. The steps for reuploading mods of this variety are as follows:

 

1. All due diligence must be made to contact the modder on all known or potential avenues of communication to inform them about the status of their mod and request instructions, including requesting permission for a reupload. If a reupload is permitted, steps can proceed from step 2 above; if refusal, the matter of reuploading the mod is to be dropped in perpetuity. If, however, there is no communication for a period of over 1 month, an admin may move to step 2.

2. Send a second message to all known modder accounts made contact with in step 1 informing the original author of intent to reupload, and steps to confirm the move or request the mods removed.

3. Create a DeadlyStream account with the name of said original modder.

4. Upload the modder’s mod under the new account, with all the original files and readme present, unaltered, and packaged in the original format.

5. Add a note to the bottom of the readme as displayed on deadlystream clarifying that the mod is an abandonware reupload of a mod created under the author’s name, and unequivocally stating that the mod will not be actively supported, nor is any user authorized to engage with the mod in any way which is impermissible by the mod’s readme.