Code of Conduct
The Chao Island community pages are for friendly discussion. This page outlines the guidelines set by the site Admins – these cover all official Chao Island mediums including the Forums and Discord unless otherwise specified.
Please keep “on topic” and post in the correct forums or Discord channels.
Firstly, some notes for everyone which should be well known:
- In order to post messages on the message boards, you must register using a valid e-mail address and follow all required registration confirmation procedures. No posting privileges will be granted until the account is fully activated.
- Joining the Chao Island Discord requires a Chao Island forum account, which will need to be verified. Any rule-breaking on the Discord will also affect your forum account, and vice-versa.
- For the first few posts, you may have trouble posting messages containing URLs and/or pictures – this is to avoid spambot registrations, and you should have no trouble after a few normal posts.
- YOU are responsible for protecting your accounts from access by others. You are strongly encouraged to select a hard-to-guess password and not re-use that password on any other sites.
- Accessing or attempting to access any account not belonging to you without permission is not allowed and can lead to a permanent ban of all accounts.
- The Chao Island staff have the right to immediately ban or suspend anyone who do not follow the rules set here. The decision to suspend or terminate accounts will be made at our discretion.
- Messages and topics may be removed at any time and for any reason at the discretion of the staff. The final say of what is “acceptable” and “unacceptable” will be determined solely by the administrators and moderators, in accordance with the rules laid out on this page.
We don’t want to make this forum a place where everything is clamped down with rules and heavily policed, so please just try and use common sense to realise what’s right and what’s wrong.
1. Multiple Accounts
While in the past it was deemed to be acceptable for users to maintain multiple accounts, multiple accounts owned by the same person is no longer permitted. Please bear in mind that in regards to multiple people in one location (e.g. family), we can (and do) track all accounts used on the same computer(s) and will consider them one account for the purpose of rule-breaking. If the rules are violated severely enough to warrant the termination of one account, all known accounts held by that user and/or all accounts using the same computer(s) may also be banned at the administrators’ discretion.
To make that clear, if you get banned on one account you may lose all accounts that share that IP address or have shared it in the past.
2. Username Changes
Currently usernames are not changeable. This will be a future feature of Chao Island. If you have an old username and would like this changed, please contact an administrator. This will be changed at our discretion, but generally we prefer to do this over a new account being created.
3. Offensive Material / Flaming
No offensive language and no insulting or flaming other members of the site. On the forums, we have censors in place that prevent you from posting “bad” language that generally isn’t allowed on family-friendly television.
Chao Island has had a history of being very family-friendly since its forum inauguration in 2003. Almost 20 years have passed since then, and the internet has become much more prevalent in everyday life. Therefore, we do not have a total ban on word censoring like before, but please keep in mind that vulgar language isn’t always necessary, and staff may remove posts at their discretion.
4. Memes and Disruptive posting
There is no meme discord channel or meme/spam/forum games board on the Chao Island Forums as of current. Please do not post such things out of nowhere as it will result in a warning, and a ban if not adhered to.
Don’t post messages designed solely to disrupt the normal flow of posts or conversation in Discord. Most of this should be obvious, but a few examples are interrupting discussion with large images, memes, or YouTube videos. ALL CAPS, AlTeRnAtInG cApS, empty posts that force long scroll horizontally or vertically, special characters that bleed into other lines, links to browser traps or glitches, “rick-rolls” and other tricks.
Along the same lines, no posting or linking to offensive/disturbing material– I shouldn’t have to give examples because it should be obvious what I mean.
Any guideline which has a “per-day” posting limit is based on the users day on a normal sleep cycle. We expect there to be at least 12 hours separating the posts and thus a further 24 hours after that.
5. Trolling
No trolling (inciting flames/insults from another user), i.e. if you are going to post a topic about how much you hate Chao with the sole intention of annoying the board, this is not allowed. On this note, the topic of “Chao Haters” caused a huge disruption in the past. If you want to post facts and research on the effects of attacking Chao, then do so, but aimless posting about beating Chao (Chao torture stories or something similar) with the intention to annoy other users is not allowed.
6. Spoilers
No spoilers– please use the spoiler tags appropriately. Posting spoilers intentionally with the sole purpose of ruining things for others will get you banned. Games like Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 have been out for ages now, so most people should have completed it, but if a poster has stated that they are playing through it, please try to mark spoilers where necessary.
In regards to other spoilers, please give warning for what you are spoiling. There is no point adding a spoiler tag without any warning of what is being spoiled.
7. Harassment
No harassment or discrimination of other users. Any problems with other users should be directed to myself or the other moderators of the site. This includes direct messaging/emailing a user continually that has asked you to stop.
Continual harassing behaviour directed towards users or groups will be punished by the staff.
Using and/or creating an account with a name clearly intended to impersonate, mock, or antagonise another user; copying another user’s profile information and/or signature; or otherwise falsely claiming to be another member without permission is not allowed.
8. Personal Details
No personal photos of yourself or other users are permitted to be posted on the forum or Discord. Discord avatars are of course exempt from this, as they are the users own personal account.
Requesting or posting contact details and other private information of another user without permission is forbidden - this includes real name, location, address, phone, private e-mail, photos, etc. Especially important is age, and asking someones age with the intent of making them break Discords USA COPPA rule is forbidden.
9. Political, Religious, and Social Topics
Topics involving political, religious, gender, and social issues are not allowed on the forums or Discord. We avoid leading discussions into areas that can start to cause aggressive and/or defensive replies or intend to convert others. If you truly want to discuss these topics in more depth with a user, please PM them.
Hate speech towards a particular group or viewpoint is also not allowed.
10. Medical Advice
The users of this website are not professional medical staff, and so the advice to any sort of health questions is to check with a doctor or GP. It’s impossible for anyone to factually say what you are describing is the same as something else that someone else has experienced, so it’s important to always get the advice of a trained doctor.
11. Venting and Personal Problems
In an attempt to keep the Chao Island atmosphere positive and upbeat, please limit the amount you use the forums and Discord as a personal venting platform. Chao Island is not the best place to release serious frustrations about your life issues or health due to the nature of the site being a relaxed, peaceful environment (much like a Chao Garden itself). Such topics can kill the current mood for everyone there, leading to an atmosphere no one wants to be in.
There is no dedicated “venting” message board or Discord channel.
12. Advertising
You are not allowed to spam your or another person’s site/social media. You can ask opinions and comments on a site you have created socially, or reply to direct requests, but not with the intent of just advertising your site. You can use your signature and/or website link in your profile if you need to do that. This includes advertising any commissioning or items for sale that you have.
Advertising in the form of posting links and referrals to “get a free Nintendo 3DS!” or other things like that is not allowed.
This also applies to websites such as “Dragon Cave” and similar games. These games require people to click a users link to progress with the game. Posting topics to advertise and gain clicks and views is not allowed. This should be kept to your signature.
13. Warez/ROMS/Illegal Downloads
While discussion about emulators and ROMS and piracy in general is allowed, linking to where you can obtain illegal goods is not allowed. Generally, emulators are legal and allowed, but ROMS and copies of games are not to be linked to.
14. Invasions
While it hasn’t been a problem before, I will add that flooding another board or forum as a group (otherwise known as “raiding”), or inciting a “war” with the regular members of another board or Discord is not allowed. If you participate in any kind of organised invasion, you will likely be suspended for it.