Hello everybody! My name is Scott Alden, and I'd like to welcome y'all to the BoardGameGeek community (which also includes RPGGeek and VideoGameGeek).

 

Everyone is welcome to stay and participate in our community as long as you follow our rules. If you cannot or will not follow our rules, you will be asked to leave. But they are pretty easy rules to follow, and are designed to make sure that all users feel welcome and comfortable contributing to the community.

These rules are in addition to those covered under the BoardGameGeek Terms of Service. These BoardGameGeek Community Rules apply to all of your User Submissions, as defined in the Terms of Service, including without limitation forum threads, forum replies, review, session reports, GeekLists, photographs, files, hyperlinks, ratings, tags, comments, and any other visual or textual content.

 

Community Rules
 

The Short List

• Use common courtesy

• Respect others (even when they don't deserve it)

 

The Long List

• Following the spirit of these rules is as important as following the rules themselves.

 

The following are prohibited:

• Anything that violates the BoardGameGeek Terms of Service

• Mis-attributing the original author or creator of content, either directly or by omission.

• Gratuitous depictions of violence, nudity, and sexuality

• Spam

• Disruptive content, including but not limited to:

• Excessive profanity

• Trolling

• Flooding

• Derailing

  • this includes complaining or otherwise commenting about site moderation in threads not about site moderation
     

• Excessive "signatures" to posts, including anything involving images or web links

• Racism, sexism, misogyny, objectification, homophobia, or any other form of bigotry.

• Raising general issues of religion, sex, or politics outside of the RSP guild.

• Accusing other users of committing rules violations (e.g. accusing someone of trolling)

• Manipulating site statistics through use of multiple accounts

• Otherwise being a nuisance.

• Personal attacks, including but not limited to:

• Statements that abuse, harass, mock, insult, stalk, demean, threaten, or otherwise belittle another user, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, even if the other user started it, and even if you think the other user deserves it.

• Providing personal information about any person for malevolent purposes (aka "doxxing"), including libel, slander, defamation, or harassment.

• Requesting or providing information or materials that allows others to create, purchase, or download unofficial replications of a game or other works protected by copyright without the permission of the rights holder.

• Using the hide list to taunt/antagonize is a zero-tolerance offense and will result in immediate moderation.

• Please do not discuss unauthorized ways to block ads. We depend on ads for the revenue necessary to maintain the site. We offer members who contribute to the site the option of disabling any and all ads.

• Please do not quote inappropriate posts in your replies or your replies will be removed along with the original offender

 

 

​User Driven Moderating

​

You can moderate the forums yourself by clicking the thumbs up button on threads and individual posts, or reporting them as rules violations by clicking the ... button in the bottom right corner of a post. Here are some moderating guidelines to get you started:

• Give thumbs up to posts you like. We encourage the liberal use of the thumbs up button.

• Report a post if it violates our rules.

• Do not Report something simply because you disagree with it; abuse of the Report function can result in moderators ignoring all future

• Reports coming from your account.

• Go easy on new users.

Anything that receives enough Reports will be automatically hidden so that it takes an extra click to read it.

Forum moderators periodically review posts that have been Reported to see if they require official moderation. Please do not complain about having your content hidden.

If you feel a post requires immediate attention, please GeekMail the link with a description to our Community Manager

Official Contests
You may only enter a contest once. The odds of winning will be determined by the number of entries. The contest is open to all BoardGameGeek.com members who have entered valid and verifiable information upon registration, including name and email address.

Employees, agents, and family members of the advertiser(s), BoardGameGeek, or their affiliates, manufacturers, sales representatives, subsidiaries or parent companies, advertising/sales promotion agencies, and the immediate families of each are not eligible to participate in the Contest and shall be ineligible for any prize covered herein. Entrants acknowledge that the advertiser(s) and BoardGameGeek are not liable for reimbursement of any prize or consideration other than the prizes listed. Residents of jurisdictions where this type of Contest drawing is prohibited by law or subject to registration are ineligible to participate in the Contest and shall be ineligible for any prize covered herein. No purchase or online access fee is necessary. Winners will be notified by email.

You may not discuss or share the answers to the questions posed in this contest. Users in bad standing due to unresolved trade, marketplace, or exchange issues are ineligible to enter. Any entrant found to have violated any of these contest rules will be disqualified.

Unofficial Contests
Contests are a fun way to engage the community. If you are thinking of running a contest please be mindful of the following:
You MUST geekmail the Community Manager with the subject line "CONTEST" to receive permission before running any contest on the site to ensure it conforms to the site rules. Your contest is likely to be approved as long as the contest is not promotional or you are not otherwise personally benefiting from it.
Requiring users to give a thumb to a geeklist, thread, or similar content as part of participating in the contest or in return for any other compensation is not allowed.
Failure to meet these requirements may result in the contest being deleted without warning.
Advertising and other Self-Promotion
Promoting goods or services in which you have a personal stake is not permitted
This includes ALL crowdfunding campaigns (e.g. kickstarter, indigogo), whether you created it, backed it, or are just interested.
This includes giving incentives in return for users manipulating site stats - this can also result in the manipulated content being removed from the site.
Advertising a promotional contest held on another site falls under the same rules as holding an unofficial contest detailed above.
A new product or service relevant to the topic of this site may be announced in a single post in the Press Releases forum. Contact the Community Manager if you have questions about if your post is appropriate.
Promoting sales you have in the Marketplace is not permitted without explicit permission from the Community Manager
Promoting a current geeklist auction is permitted in the Geekbay forum. The geeklist itself must include language stating that you will pay the 3% commission on sales facilitated by the site, as required by the Terms of Service.
Forum moderators have the final say in determining whether a given post is inappropriate.
Private Messages
All of the rules governing general content also extend to private messages.

If you are the recipient of an inappropriate private message, please forward the entire exchange to our Community Manager

Moderation Consequences
Here is what happens if you do not follow our rules:

Your posts will be flagged for rules violations by the other users in the community.
Your posts will be hidden by our forum moderators.
An account that commits frequent or severe violations of site rules will have its posting privileges suspended to prevent further incidents.
Bypassing a suspension with another account will get you indefinitely suspended from the site.
We reserve the right to immediately terminate or suspend anyone who fails to abide by our rules. The decision to suspend or terminate accounts will be made at the sole discretion of the site administrators. All account terminations (bannings) are to be considered final.