Dutch Angel Dragons
Community Guidelines: Warnings and Bans
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TL;DR
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Admins are only doing their job: enforcing guidelines that everyone who participates in the community agreed to when they joined.
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You will receive warnings before being banned. Banning strictly means you will not be welcome to participate in any officially run DutchAD community platforms or events.
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Banned from the community does NOT mean being banned from using your character.
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The only special exception is NSFW art which is an immediate ban and your character will also be dismissed from the species.
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Interacting with or conducting business with people who are banned will NOT get you in trouble.
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Fun fact: Did you know? With nearly 10,000 members of the community in its existence over 4 years, only 22 people have ever been banned! (as of 9/21/17) [Not counting explicit trolls or bots of course].
Be respectful, mature, cooperative, and understanding; your behavior in discussions with both admins and members alike speaks volumes about your character. Think before you act, research before making assumptions, and own up when you’ve made mistakes. We all look out for one another. We truly do have a great group of people here and appreciate you guys being such outstanding examples of the amazing and supportive Dutch Angel Dragon family. Thank you!
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Info About Warnings
What can you receive a warning for?
When a member receives a warning, it can be due to a plethora of things. Our common warnings are:
-Art theft/tracing/heavy referencing
-Being disrespectful to members/admins
-Mini modding
-Failure to follow the group/species guidelines (not typically done for minor offences).
Sometimes, an admin might reach out to you in PM to simply discuss, inform, clarify, or answer questions; our team is dedicated to lending a hand and educating the community whenever possible. Just remember that talking with an admin does NOT automatically mean you’re in trouble or it’s a bad thing; please don’t be afraid to talk to us! We will specifically tell you if a warning was issued and why you are receiving it; you will always have a chance to help correct the issue. We are here to help you best we can and your cooperation and assistance is always appreciated.
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You will NOT be given warnings for asking questions on guidelines or about your character design- even if the design breaks the rules unintentionally, we will always give you suggestions and chances to adjust it! Continued failure to cooperate or apply required changes to your design as agreed upon can lead to warnings however. If your desired design elements do not comply with the species’ requirements and you refuse to modify them, then we might issue a warning for failure to adhere to the guidelines and your dragon cannot be granted approval nor be considered a member of the species. You will be welcome to participate in our community despite this, but your character cannot be posted to the group. If your behavior or actions becomes problematic for the community and/or admin team, you may receive further warnings.
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How do warnings work for different issues?
For art theft, we typically only give ONE warning, provided you are cooperative in the discussion of the issue, before we outright ban the next time it happens. Art theft bans are almost always permanent bans. Artists are a highly valued and respected part of our community and we wish to support them thoroughly. Most cases of art theft are honest misunderstandings about the etiquette of using and sharing art, so we focus on forgiveness through education for a first offence and believe our members are responsible and respectful enough to not have to be told twice.
For NSFW artwork that is discovered of your Dutch Angel Dragon character, you will not receive a warning and will be immediately banned. More information on this can be found below in the banning section.
Every other warnings we normally operate a 'two strikes and you are out' basis. Depending on what type of warnings they are, and your behavior throughout communication with you, you may be banned for only a certain period of time or indefinitely. You will always be told why.
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How do warnings work over time?
In certain cases, claims can stack up against members comprised from several smaller issues and warnings that we as an admin team have to consider as a whole before banning a member. No matter if something happened years ago or happened recently, our job is to monitor, assist, and document problems so we can best serve our dragon-loving community as a whole. Guidelines that were disallowed in the past and no longer apply in the present may have potential of being forgiven, depending on the circumstances. Many issues are typically dependent on how a member reacts/interacts with the community as a whole and how they treat admins. Time certainly as the potential to be a healer but it can also show patterns of behavior, both good and bad. An individual’s actions, even outside the community, can play a factor.
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The little things are not typically messaged about, but we will continue to keep tabs on the suspected member based on private claims made by other members. If the behavior continues over time, based on evidence from all the claims made by different members, we will then consider warning or banning from the group for the peace of mind for the community. There is no universal rule on what smaller issues mean for warnings, bans, and the length of time they’re in effect for; every situation and issue is unique and the penalty will be adjusted accordingly to what the admin team deems as fair.
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How do you keep track and provide accountability for group issues and warnings?
The archangels/admins keep in consistent contact with each other and have several methods and platforms we utilize to maintain full communication between us. We all have access to a data archive where we log all major issues- providing names, screenshots, records of dates/times, conversations, etc. as collected evidence in the need of calling upon it for thorough review and discussion of issues to ensure it is examined properly and proper action can be taken. Like a jury, we are a wide group of individuals with different backgrounds and ideas but strive to cooperate and be as unbiased as possible, else individuals will sit an issue out if it promotes any conflict of interest. We always consider multiple points of view and review the potential outcomes or consequence as a group before we act as a group. We are all human and can make mistakes, which is why we work to keep each other in check, switch off tasks, or take breaks when necessary. It can be a demanding position that requires hard work, great communication, and dedication, sometimes without much recognition. But we do it because we all volunteers who deeply care.
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The team primarily operates under “majority rules” but more often than not we work best we can to come to unanimous decisions and this is the most common outcome of discussion topics. All warnings and bans are serious issues that the team always thoroughly discusses and provides evidence for before any actions are taken. Warnings need majority vote but bans need unanimous vote.
You are always free to discuss an issue with multiple admins, as we each may provide different kinds of assistance or methods of communication and explanations, but warnings and bans are always given as a team and not coming from an individual admin. Some admins will more commonly be available or provide the service of messaging members than other admins, keep in mind that whomever contacts you is simply the messenger on the full admin team’s behalf. Don’t shoot the messenger! We are simply doing our job and that is following and enforcing the guidelines that everyone who participates in the community agreed to when they joined!
Info About Bans
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What does a ban mean for a member?
Essentially a ban means that because of your actions, you are no longer recognized as a civil member of our community and you will be removed from the Facebook group and or any other officially run groups and community pages, including being unable to participate in convention events. Some bans can be temporary but most are permanent.
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What happens to my character if I get banned?
Unless the ban was for NSFW content, everyone who has been banned is still able to continue to use and own Dutch Angel Dragon characters. Remember that the rights of the species belong to Ino, but the rights of the character belong to you.
Anyone at any time has the choice to keep their characters and their species, sell or give them to someone else, purchase or adopt new ones, or modify them to become a different character and/or species. If a dragon’s design is modified to the point of being at odds with the species guidelines, then it is automatically considered a different species regardless if it was an approved character in the past. You will not be banned for modifying your character, just not allow to post it to the group anymore if it does not follow guidelines or had its species changed.
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If an owner desires to change the species of the character, we respectfully suggest also including enough physical modifications that best indicate this change visually and not just descriptively. The closer a character appears to a Dutch, the more likely it will be commonly mistaken as a member of our family. This mistake is often not desired by either party wishing to dissociate from one another and can cause more harm than benefit, so we encourage you to be more imaginative and original with your character’s new species and physical changes whenever possible.
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Am I still allowed to talk to or about someone who has been banned?
If a person is banned from the group, you are permitted to continue to speak with them and do business with them; there is no punishment for interacting with banned members. Their banning does not put restrictions on our members expect in the case where talking about a banned member or posting their characters to the community would cause unnecessary drama within the group.
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What are the banning rules about NSFW content?
One of the most swift and severe bans you can obtain is having “not safe for work” (NSFW) adult-themed art of your Dutch Angel Dragon. The ban is effectively immediately upon its discovery and is a complete ban from both the community and right to use the species. It does not matter if the art was drawn by you or not, done as a joke, gifted, or commissioned for you by someone else, please take it down immediately or ask the offending artist to remove the inappropriate post before it is reported to us. If you discover an unauthorized and inappropriate image of your character has been made without your consent and you are unable to resolve the issue to have it removed, please bring it to our attention yourself as soon as possible to explain the situation.
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The community and the creator (Ino) alike does not tolerate the existence of adult artwork of the species; whether something is considered “adult” or not is subject to Ino’s discretion. Dutch Angel Dragons by nature are a family-friendly species, and one of the required aspects of the species’ core physiology is that they do not have any digestive or reproductive organs of any type, nor can they ever manifest any type of sex-specific body features because sex and gender does not exist in the species. Anything that is intended to resemble or function as such is not permitted; regardless of the owner’s claims it is NOT a Dutch Angel Dragon if it includes any of these elements. We also strongly discourage anthropomorphic art with sexually-related dimorphism in general (eg. female breasts) but this alone is not a bannable offence, it is merely not an ideal representation of the species. The two things we look for are the inclusion of sexual organs and the context in which the art is presented. If we find you are a member of our community and we find inappropriate art on any platform (not just Facebook), it is an immediate ban that is incredibly hard to contest. This ban also applies to everyone outside the Facebook community.
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The admin team does its best to make sure our members are clean and respectful, but we absolutely appreciate the unsung heroes who help report issues and concerns to keep our community running smoothly. If the issue is happening on a post within our group, you can tag an admin on the post causing the issue, but keep in mind this will be seen publicly. You can also hit the “report to admin” option on a post (click the dots on the top right) or message one of us individually and we'll jump right on it as soon as possible. Please do not 'wait it out'.
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If you have any further questions, public comments and questions can be posted below, message an admin directly, or use the contact form on our website and we will speak with you when we can. You can also submit anonymous reports on the “Help and Feedback” post (link found in the pinned post). Thank you all!