The Elder Stats Site Rulebook

As a member of The Elder Stats, you have access to the many features that The Elder Stats has to offer. However, in order to be guaranteed continued access to these features, we kindly ask that you remain in compliance with the following rules and guidelines.

Rules

Rule #1: No Posting Foul Language or Material. Please refrain from posting any words or material that may contain any of the following: inappropriate language, inappropriate images, viruses, threats, false information about any person or subject, illegal content, copyrighted content, unauthorized content, cracks, warez, malicious code, etc. Occasional slips of the tongue with minimally-offensive words are acceptable at the discretion of the Board of Moderation. #

Rule #2: No Aggressive Arguing with Members. If a member is giving you a hard time, please do not start arguing with members and resorting to threats or name-calling. Do not try to set anyone else off and do not set yourself off. If you have a problem with a member who is causing you to want to argue, send a private message to any Board of Moderation member for help. They will try to help you the best they can. #

Rule #3: Respect Administrators and Moderators on The Elder Stats. The administrators and moderators (Board of Moderation) work very hard to keep this website and forum family-friendly and free of spam and spammers. Please respect us and our duty to do so. Please do not argue with us if we lock or delete a topic or post you have created on the forum, or if we lock or hide a character profile of yours. If we do so, it is most likely for a good reason. If you are ever banned from The Elder Stats and don't know why, please e-mail an administrator and let them know your situation. If you were banned for a specific reason and would like to be unbanned, please calmly contact an administrator to discuss the possibility of your ban being lifted. Do not argue with any administrators or moderators when you are banned or corrected for not following the rules. #

Rule #4: Respect Other Members. Please also respect the other members of The Elder Stats. We want all of our members to feel safe and secure and, most important, enjoy their experience on this website. Please refrain from arguing with other members and try to maintain peace and calm conversation with other members on the forum and in comment threads. We do, of course, always welcome spirited debates, just please keep respect in mind before you post. #

Rule #5: No Advertising/Spamming. We do not permit the advertising of outside websites and businesses on The Elder Stats website and forum. Any content posted on our website that may be considered advertising of an outside website or business without permission from the Board of Moderation will automatically be deleted on sight with the author(s) of the content being issued a warning. If it continues to happen, offending members will be banned for a short amount of time. Also, please do not spam on the website or forum. We will warn and ban members who do this repeatedly. You may, however, post links to any websites in your forum signatures that comply with Rule #1 of the Site Rulebook and with the Signature Guidelines. #

Rule #6: No Creating Multiple Member Accounts. We do not allow members who are already registered on The Elder Stats to create additional member accounts on the website. Having one account is enough, so please do not create more than one. If we see that you and another member have used the same IP Address on occasion, we will send you a private message inquiring about it. If we are not able to successfully resolve the issue through contact, then further action will have to be taken depending on the situation. #

Rule #7: No Excessive Flaming. We understand that some members will get caught up in flame wars with other members and we allow this to a certain extent because debating is what a forum is all about. We will try to calm members in flame wars down but we won't delete flaming posts unless asked to do so. However, if certain members are flaming other members constantly, we will being to take action. Members who flame other members constantly will have all of their flaming posts deleted and could suffer ban time. If you are being pestered with threatening or otherwise unwanted private messages from other members, please contact a member of the Board of Moderation and they should be able to take care of the problem for you. When in a situation where excessive arguing has ensued, it's always best to take a step back and never add to the fire. #

Rule #8: No Posting False Information or Stats in Character Profiles. The main purpose of The Elder Stats is to provide a fun and useful community for players of The Elder Scrolls games to post statistics for their characters and share those statistics with other fans, or receive feedback on how they're doing with their characters. Therefore, it's rather unnecessary to post false or incorrect statistical data for any of your characters on The Elder Stats. Doing so detracts from the usefulness of the website, and causes you, as well as others, to have a less enjoyable experience here. If a Board of Moderation member sees a character profile that contains some fairly unbelievable statistics, they have the right to hide that character profile from public view and contact the author asking them for proof of these statistics. If you run across a character profile containing statistics that look false, you have the ability to report this profile to the Board of Moderation using the "Report Profile" link present on every character profile. The way we see it, what is the point of posting false statistics for your characters? It only ruins the fun of The Elder Stats, so please keep this in mind. #

Rule #9: Please Report All Non-Compliant Content. The Board of Moderation tries their best to keep The Elder Stats free from content that violates our rules and guidelines; however, it is nearly impossible for the Board of Moderation to review every single article of content that is entered into our databases. Therefore, we rely on other trustworthy members to report any content they find that is not in compliance with our rules and guidelines. If you ever see any content such as a character profile, forum post, or profile comment that is not in compliance with these rules and guidelines, we kindly ask that you report this content immediately using the Report features located near each article of content. Reporting non-compliant content that you find on the site is always much appreciated by the Board of Moderation, and each report you send will be reviewed by the Board for validity. If the report is found to be valid, then appropriate action will be taken to resolve the situation. #

Rule #10: If a Character of Yours Uses Exploits, You Must Indicate it Properly in the Character's Profile. There are exploits (a.k.a. cheats, tricks, glitches, etc.) in The Elder Scrolls games that, when used, allow the player to raise certain statistics for their character above the set limit defined by the game. In order to accommodate all types of characters, you are allowed to post the stats for your character even if they have been increased by using exploits. However, you must make it known that you have used exploits to increase stats for that character. To do so, simply edit the character profile in question and select "Yes" for the "Has this character used any exploits to increase stats?" option, located under the "Bio & Info" tab. As long as you specify this for each of your characters that uses exploits, your character should be in full compliance with this rule. Please note that the use of the in-game console to increase a character's statistics should also be noted as an exploit. #

Rule #11: [Oblivion Characters Only] If a Character Has Made Use of the Oghma Infinium, You Must Indicate it Properly. This rule is quite similar to what is described in Rule #10. There is an item in Oblivion called the Oghma Infinium which can be used to raise a character's attributes above the maximum cap of 100. We do not equate usage of the Oghma Infinium to using exploits. Although we do not care if you use exploits or the Oghma Infinium, we do care if you indicate it properly in the character's profile. Under the "Bio & Info" tab of the profile, be sure to select "Yes" for the option that asks if you have used the Oghma Infinium at any time with that character, if you have in fact done so. Failure to do so could result in moderator action being taken against that character. #

Signature Guidelines

Signatures on our Forum may contain a maximum of three images. These images combined may be no larger than 700 pixels by 200 pixels and should be in either .jpg, .png or .gif format. Any signatures with images or combined images larger than this will have the image(s) removed immediately without warning. Text may also be included in signatures, but must comply with Rule #1 and the other rules and guidelines which govern the posting of content on The Elder Stats. If images are included in a signature, up to four lines of normally-sized text may be included above or below it. If there is no image in a signature, up to eight lines of normally-sized text may be included in the signature. Your signatures may also contain up to three links to external (non-elderstats.com) websites, and you may make an image into a link in your signature. Any links to material that violates our rules will be automatically removed. #

Character Photo Uploading Guidelines

Members are able to upload photos for each of the characters that they add to their accounts on The Elder Stats. Since the uploading of photos leaves a lot of leeway for members to use the feature in undesirable ways, we ask that these guidelines be followed by all members when uploading photos for their characters.

Photos that are uploaded for characters must be either third person screenshots of the character from in-game Skyrim or Oblivion, or first person screenshots that show some sort of relation to the character that the photo is being uploaded for. Any photos that are uploaded that are not compliant with this guideline, or that have absolutely nothing to do with your character or with The Elder Scrolls games will be deleted without warning. This is to ensure that we reserve proper site resources for all of our members who wish to share photos and screenshots of their characters and the adventures they pursue in-game.

We also require that uploaded photos not contain any of the following types of content: vulgar language, obscene language and/or imagery, pornographic imagery, non-Elder Scrolls related imagery, copyrighted content, or any content that is otherwise deemed inappropriate or undesirable by our Board of Moderation. Violators of these guidelines will have such photos deleted and proper moderation action taken against them.

By uploading photos for any of your characters, you agree to abide by these guidelines. #

Site Rulebook Update History
 •  February 18, 2009 - Added Rule #10 About Proper Indication of the Use of In-Game Exploits in a Character's Profile.
 •  February 24, 2009 - Added "Character Photo Uploading Guidelines" with the Release of Elder Stats 1.0.2 and Character Photo Galleries.
 •  March 30, 2009 - Updated Rule #10 to require the citing of all statistical increases made using the in-game Console.
 •  May 6, 2009 - Added Rule #11 about proper indication of the Oghma Infinium.
 •  August 22, 2012 - Changed the title of this rule set from "Rules and Guidelines" to "Site Rulebook"; modified language to be more relevant to the new update to our website.