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staff rules; topic containing about 1959 words

If you become a staff member of survive the wild, you agree to be bound by the following rules and regulations.

1. Commands and access methods

You are not allowed to share or expose any command or tool that your rank allows you to use. This includes but is not limited to pasting strings from administration menus on the chat, telling a player how someone is jailed, telling people how logs are accessed etc. No one but fellow staff members know what tools you can use, and what they are used for. While your character is playing in the game, you are not allowed to use any commands or tools that can't be used by players, with the exception of someone being in trouble and needing your attention.

2. location

If you for any reason need to retire to the conference room to solve a problem while playing the game, you agree to only use the "Go to conference room" option in the administration menu to do so, and the accompanying option to return to the game. This is so that your location in the game is not lost, thus you being given a free teleport in the game. If you were actively involved in an activity such as PK when an urgent administration case forces you to abandon the fight, try not to leave the abandoned players hanging and to return to the activity as soon as possible! This is really just important in cases where players could not go offline in a similar situation that you are in, such as when health was recently lost. Basically do not use the go to conference room option to get out of danger unless you very urgently need to solve some game breaking case such as a security breach!

3. Look versus admin look

While you are playing, you are obliged to use the normal look feature, unless someone creates a ticket or sends a pm indicating they're stuck. You can not, under any circumstance use admin look during gameplay to look at people to figure out where they are, or check their stats, even if the person you're looking at trusts you.

4. invisibility

Invisibility is only to be used when players need to be observed, or when you're testing something and do not want to be bothered with PMS. The option should never be used while playing the game, for obvious reasons.

5. inventory backups

If a staff member dies while creating content for the game, such as by a script misfiring or a map gone wrong killing their character, they are allowed to ask a master to restore their inventory from the most recent backup. Of course, if a master finds that a staff member should lie and attempt to get an inventory restore after dying during genuine gameplay, this is grounds for instant demotion.

6. maps and in-game scripts

Especially as a worldmaker, you have the opportunity to build maps and new in-game items. With these possibilities also come responsibilities and a few limitations.

- You can not, under any circumstance, create maps or scripts that award players with paid items, or quest items of existing quests, or even standard resources unless it is warrented and aprooved. For example, a pack of survival gear that gives some pots and some food etc would be fine, but a script that gives death free card, 10000 grass, quest items, etc is absolutely not allowed and may result in instant no questions asked demotion and/or ban.

- You can not give players items that are being worked on, or that are not approved by the entire admin team for inclusion in the game

- You can not create maps for immediate in-game use, they first have to be checked and approved by the admin team.

- You need to make sure your script does not slow down the server, and if we feel you are making a script that is purpasfully made to crash/harm the server, there will be issues. Of coarse accidents happen and that's one thing, but never try to make a script to harm the server.

7. shelters

As a staff member, you are not allowed to change shelters of any player, but you can modify your own shelter to your own liking. However, shelters have to be treated as a place where you can hide from animals or nature or pk players, and should never be an in-game map replacement. This means that you cannot spawn animals, or items, in your shelter, and all tiles which normally give you resources have to be equipped with a tile setting to prevent people from picking up those resources. Furthermore, you should never, purposefully, apply map changes that cause players to suddenly die or get stuck without a way to escape.

8. warning, jailing and banning

Admins are obliged to follow a certain chain of events when irregularities are discovered.

- Staff members must always assume that players have read the rules. As the game rules state, you have the authority to apply any of the punishments in the staff member authority section to a player who is verified cheating. If a player has no history with us, a warning to the player telling them to stop is usually in order. If the player ignores this warning, or if the player has previously cheated and thus does not need to be re-warned, then you may move on to other punishments described into the game rules, of course being only as severe as the case demands.

- If a player is caught insulting or spamming on the out of character chat, or any other channel, where spamming is not allowed, a warning is in place. If your warnings get ignored, you are entitled to jail the offending player, but only if it's clear your warnings got ignored.

- Banning should always be treated as a last resort if neither warning nor jailing does not stop the character from repeating the rule breaking. Always make sure you ban someone for a clear reason, and not out of personal vendettas or revenge. If you are in doubt on if a ban is in place, ask fellow admins or moderators for advice.

- Again, you should use the in-game rules as a springboard for how you should act. For example if you encounter somebody using duplicate accounts you can instantly ban them, just as it says in the rules file.

9. use of in-game data

Every bit of information you acquire due to administrative operations is kept confidential and not shared with others. This includes, but is not limited to IP's, inventories, banning reasons, jailing reasons, shelter locations, ... This information is not to be used while you are playing the game either, because it can lead to advantages if you already know what a person has.

Note that this section of the rules especially stil binds if you step down from your position for any reason. In this case, we ask that you please destroy all copies of any data you have collected during your time with us. The biggest thing though is that even after you are no longer a staff member, you must NOT share ANY! information you collected durring your time with anyone. If we find out you are doing this your character will be banned from the game, and if we know what sharing service you used etc we will report you to whatever sharing services you are using wherever possible to attempt to insure that confidential data stays secure.

10. passwords and account sharing

You can not, under any circumstance, share your account containing a privileged character with anyone. Even though this is already in the rules, it can not be stressed enough. If a player asks you to reset his password, do not directly change it, but try to acquire first if the character requesting the reset belongs to the right person. When resetting a password, the new password is not to be kept anywhere, nor is the account to be used by you as a staff member. It is recommended that you suggest to the player to change there password themselves after you reset it for them.

11. quests and giving items

You as a staff member are not allowed to share quest solutions or hints that directly lead to solving the quests. You can also not walk up to newbie accounts and give them a lot of stuff to make their life easy. Keep in mind that this is only for items you have collected as a staff member. You are completely allowed to play the game with your promoted character. As such, it is completely fine to give others some of your actual items. But giving a player items that you would not have if you did not have a rank is not ok.

12. logs

As a staff member, you have the right to know that all of your actions are being logged. When abuse is discovered, depending on the severity of the abuse, action will be taken and can go from being told to stop, to a demotion and or a permanent ban. When reading logs, any data found therein is to be kept confidential and not to be shared with anyone.

13. Access to beta or test server

As a staff member, you might be granted access to a test or beta server. This access is meant for you, and you only, and not to be shared with friends or family without the express permission of SamTupy. Furthermore, you can reset your beta or test inventory with the one from the main server, but not the other way around. Items or maps that are part of new features or quests, should not be taken to the main server until they are ready to be released, nor should their contents be revealed before the release takes place.

14. Content ownership

Once content that you create goes official in the game, you relinquish the right to ask for such content to be removed from the game. This is because once content is official, players are now actively on your map or doing your quest or have your items in their inventories, and removing content that has been published would very much inconvenience these players while at the same time rendering all time put into tutorials for an area useless, causing players to need to be moved and have broken items taken away etc. For these and other reasons, as soon as content you make goes public, you lose the right to have it removed. You can ask, but you understand that it may not be possible.

15. rule breaking and consequences

If you are discovered bending any of the above rules to your own hand, or flat out breaking them, any or several of the below sanctions can apply depending on the severity:

- getting an official warning

- temporary rank revocation

- permanent rank revocation

- entire inventory reset

- permanent ban

Note: depending on your reasons, if desired, a temporary or permanent rank revocation can be asked for to be applied. This can be done, according to your own preference, either publicly or silently. If you ask for a rank revocation we may certainly ask you if there is anything we can do that would change your mind or whether a simple break would illeviate any issues that are causing such a request, but you should not allow such questions to cause you to be uncomfortable with making it clear that you do indeed wish to be demoted no questions asked, which is a request we will surely honor with thanks for all help you've given to the game.