Community Guidelines

Community Guidelines

Hello and welcome to the Cat's End Community! When using the social features of the site, including the forums, trades, messaging system, personal profiles, cat biographies, and any other user input fields, all users must abide by the following rules.

Failure to adhere to these rules will result in moderator action, varying from simple reminders to full account closure.

These rules operate in conjunction with the Terms of Service, so please be sure to make yourself familiar with both.

Shortened forms of each section are available in quote boxes for easier comprehension. However, reading the longer descriptions is heavily recommended as they provide examples and further details on each section.



Warnings and Processes

Cat's End Admins and Moderators regulate the community to keep it as safe and drama-free as possible. They have the right to clear content fields, warn users, and issue community bans or account closures to users breaking the rules. Forum Helpers assist in moving, locking/unlocking, pinning, and removing threads within the forums specifically.

If you notice rule-breaking content, please do not "mini-mod" or inform others that they are breaking the rules or attempt to change their behavior. Instead, report the thread and let the mods take care of it.

If you are asked to refrain from engaging in certain topics or activities, you are expected to do so immediately. Continuing to engage in this behavior will result in additional disciplinary action being taken. Additionally, you may not discuss moderation decisions or actions publicly. If you have questions, please contact us via email.

The Cat's End Community operates under a flexible three-strike policy. After the third warning, the user's file will be reviewed and they may be issued a 60-day suspension from community features. Additional infractions after the suspension is lifted may result in the reinstatement of the suspension or closure of the account. In the case of particularly severe infractions, users may be escalated directly to a community suspension or account closure with no prior notice.

You can view your account's status and warning history under your account settings.



Behavioral Guidelines

The following list is subject to updates and changes as new situations arise. All users will be notified of any edits, with specific notes on what has changed.

Harassment

The core policy of Cat's End is to treat all other users with respect and kindness. The following behaviors will be considered harassment:

• Directly aggressive statements, such as insults, name-calling, or bullying.
  
• Passive aggressive statements such as veiled insults, back-handed compliments, targeted sarcasm, or otherwise condescending or mocking behavior.
  
• Stalking or circumventing a block or otherwise trying to force a user to interact. This includes actions such as having a third party message a blocked user, sending repeated gifts, friend requests, or messages when told to stop, and otherwise failing to respect other users' boundaries.
  
• Misusing the block feature by repeatedly blocking and unblocking a user in order to engage in a one-sided conversation. This includes temporarily unblocking a blocked user to send them a private message they can't respond to or to leave posts they cannot read on their personal forum threads.
  
• Public blacklisting, call-outs, shaming, and gossip. This includes calling someone out without directly stating who they are.
  
• Maliciously reporting users, blackmail, threatening to report users, and reporting users and continuing to argue with them.
  
• Ganging up on people who have made mistakes. If one person has already corrected them, it is not necessary for people to continue to correct them.
  
• Telling someone else how they should play the game, trying to influence what they do on the site, or shaming playstyles.

Drama and Excessive Negativity

In order to keep the peace and maintain a healthy community, inciting drama or negativity is not allowed. The following behaviors will be considered inciting drama:

• If a user's forum activity is found to be made up primarily by complaints, disagreement, or "salt", this will be considered excessive negativity. The appropriate venue for serious concerns is to email staff, and constructive feedback is more helpful than simple and/or public complaints.
  
• Baiting, trolling, or inflammatory content meant to incite a response or rile people up.
  
• Escalating or engaging in prolonged arguments. Debate is okay, but if things are getting heated, all involved parties will be asked to step away and cool down.
  
• Escalating or otherwise commenting on how a thread is going to be "interesting" due to drama, or locked soon. This includes "grabbing popcorn", "inb4 lock", and other such statements. Please report the thread instead so a moderator can handle it.
  
• Public discussions of site rules, moderation, or staff actions. Please take commentary to staff directly via email.

Discrimination & Hatred

In order to maintain a safe community for all, content that promotes discrimination or hatred is not tolerated and is subject to immediate suspension or ban. This includes the following:

• Any content (including links or references to such content) that puts down, shames, bullies, discriminates, or otherwise targets people for their identity. This includes (but is not limited to) age, race, nationality, sex, gender & gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, and disability.
  
• Any use of slurs or offensive terminology.
  
• Perpetuating harmful stereotypes or making broad, sweeping assumptions about groups of people based on identity.

Obscene, Vulgar, and Inappropriate Content

This is a safe-for-work community with users able to join as young as 13. As such, the following content is not allowed:

• Attempting to get around the language filter with symbols, spacing, typos, etc. Hitting the filter is okay, but evading is not.
  
• Sexual content, nudity, or otherwise lewd conversation is not allowed under any circumstances.
  
• Descriptive references to bodily processes and fluids, or other "tmi" things. This includes toilet humor and similar jokes.
  
• Using pick-up lines, innuendos, openly flirting with other users, or otherwise engaging in uncomfortable public displays of physical affection.
  
• Unwanted and uncomfortable social contact or attention. This includes putting someone on a pedestal and constantly praising them when they say not to, giving excessive displays of affection, or otherwise giving public attention they don't want.

Blood, Violence, & Dark Subjects

Content may touch on dark subjects and themes, but should be done so respectfully. The following content is not allowed:

• Excessive blood, gore, or body horror above a PG-13 level.
  
• Excessive references to violence or violent acts, both real and fantasy. While talking about a fictional war or battle is fine, going into vivid and graphic detail is not.
  
• Any references to abuse, violations of consent, or real-world violence, including but not limited to mentions of torture, slavery, self-harm/suicide, sexual misconduct, or domestic violence.
  
• References to illegal or illicit substances such as drugs and drug-related paraphernalia.
  
• Bright flashing gifs, jumpscares, and shock images intended to startle, scare, or upset people.

Venting & Mental Health

We care about you and your well-being, but we are not trained or equipped to handle real-world crises. We encourage you to find professional resources for these issues, and we've linked some below.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US): https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
Trevor Project: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Crisis Text Line: https://www.crisistextline.org/
IMAlive: https://www.imalive.org/
7-Cups: https://www.7cups.com/

In addition, we ask that you refrain from the following:

• Talking or venting about heavy, upsetting real-world subjects including, but not limited to death, self-harm, violence, assault, abuse, politics, and discrimination. This includes making dark jokes about these subjects.
  
• Posts expressing strong negative emotions, including feeling hopeless, intense self-deprecation, and other similar behaviors.
  
• Excessive posts seeking attention or pity, or otherwise guilting readers into feeling bad, such as "nobody likes me" or "if you scroll past this you're heartless".
  
• Please be mindful of common triggers, including blood, needles, photos of spiders/insects, eye horror, and others. You may be asked to link to said content with a warning instead of posting it directly.

Controversial Issues

There are some issues which people often have strong emotional responses to and are very difficult to moderate. As such, please refrain from the following:

• Discussion of religion, politics, or other highly debated real world events.
  
• Soliciting or providing medical advice. If you have any questions or concerns about your health, please ask your doctor.
  
• Soliciting or providing pet care advice. If you have questions or concerns about the health of your pet, please talk to your veterinarian.
  
• Posting real-world personal fundraisers or requests for financial aid. We cannot verify the validity of such posts, and prohibiting them protects you from scams and those who would take advantage of your generosity. Linking to accountable charities, however, is okay.

Spamming & Clickbait

To keep our forums nice and clean, refrain from spamming other users. The following are all considered spam:

• Posting the same topics multiple times, in multiple places, or repeatedly in the wrong places.
  
• Bulk pings or messages without consent.
  
• Clickbait titles. Titles should be informative and you should be able to tell what they are about before you open them. Forum Helpers may assign you a new title if yours is not informative.
  
• ALL-CAPS, Typ1ng Qu1rks.
  
• Text that cannot be clearly read due to font size, color, type, etc.
  
• Nonsense, incomprehensible memes, ARGS, or posts that otherwise do not seem to serve any kind of coherent purpose.
  
• "Bumping" threads manually rather than using the bump button provided in appropriate forums.
  
• Forum games with heavily inflated post-counts such as counting games. They are very straining on the server.
  
• Wishlist threads and other private threads posted in the forums. Threads for personal reference only should be kept in cat bios, scene bios, or on the user's profile instead.
  
• Advertisement of any real-world product or service. Accounts found to be posting real-world advertisements or surveys will be closed without warning. This does not include art commissions, which are fine!

Begging & Unwanted Solicitation

Users who wish to trade or sell their belongings will post them for trade/sale publicly. The following behaviors relating to sales and solicitation are not allowed:

• Begging, including asking for gifts, free items, loans, or favors.
  
• Hosting giveaways with strings attached. Items or cats no longer in your account do not belong to you anymore, and you may not try to control what a user does with them.
  
• Sending unsolicited trade requests, messaging users to ask if items not listed for sale/trade could be sold or traded, or otherwise sending unwanted solicitation.
  
• Unless a user otherwise states that they are okay with offers, do not message them to ask if they will give you a discount, sell for an alternate price, take a payment plan, or hold items or cats.

Note: This section on solicitation above does not apply to: offering to return severely underpriced cats/items, offering corrections to incorrect information in the listing or thread (eg. someone accidentally posted the wrong genetic string on a cat listing or is misusing a genetic term), or contacting a user about an accidental listing (eg. if you gifted a cat to the wrong user by mistake).



Bad-Faith Trading & Scamming

We want to protect our userbase from scams and others who may wish to take advantage of them. As such, the following is not permitted:

• Attempts to trick or deceive users, or otherwise knowingly taking advantage of another user's generosity or lack of knowledge. This includes, but is not limited to, low-balling, fake pity posts, or lying about an item's rarity.
  
• Intentionally failing to follow through on trade or service agreements without refunding the other party.
  
• Plagiarism or theft of art, writing, photography, or other creative works and services.

While we cannot return items, cats, or currency lost in these ways, we will issue community suspensions or ban users found to be taking advantage of users.



Cat & Item Sales

Pixel Cat's End allows the sale of cats and items via the Cat Recruitment Board and Open Marketplace. All listings and descriptions are expected to abide by the following:

• Listings must be related to the cat or item being sold. Linking to a sales or trade thread the cat or item is included in is okay, but linking to a thread the cat or item isn't included in is not.
  
• You must be willing to sell/trade the cat or item. Listing for extremely high prices to solicit offers and linking to sales/trade threads are okay, but if your only intention is to show the cat or item off or advertise an unrelated thread, that is not allowed.
  
• "Flipping" is considered a valid playstyle, however please keep in mind the Bad-Faith Trading & Scamming section above. Scamming or taking advantage of other users' lack of knowledge in order to get cheap cats or items to resell is not allowed.

For more information on the sales boards and sales rules, see the special article on the Cat Recruitment Board & Open Marketplace.



Terms of Service

In addition to the above rules, the following rules are based on the Terms of Service. Users found to be in violation of them will be subject to immediate account closure.

• Do not exploit bugs, glitches, or other mechanics, or teach other users how to exploit them. If you do find an exploit, email support and do not use the exploit.
  
• Do not engage in funneling behavior. Accounts may not exist to benefit another account and both users need to be playing of their own free will.
  
• Do not create additional accounts. If you have lost your login info, email support.
  
• Accounts can only be used by one person. You may not share your login information for any reason, including having someone "watch" your cats or manage threads for you.
  
• The use of third-party apps and scripts is forbidden, with the exception of superficial altering of CSS fonts and colors for accessibility. However, please consider posting in the Dev Corner so they can be implemented formally for everyone!
  
• Cross-site trading is not allowed with any site. Trading for real-world items or currency, including cryptocurrency, is not allowed.
  
• You must be at least 13 years old, or the relevant age in your country. This is required by US and EU law and underage users will be immediately banned.
  
• Do not post personally identifiable information, including but not limited to your full legal name, address, and phone number.

Special Subforum Rules

Some subforums have special rules and policies specific to them in addition to the site-wide rules.

IRL Kitty Appreciation

This category is meant to be a happy place to share our love for pets and animals of all kinds. As such, do not discuss upsetting topics such as animal abuse or death.

Additionally, do not solicit or provide pet health advice. Leave that to the vets!

Dev Corner

The purpose of the dev corner is to provide helpful feedback and brainstorm ideas and solutions with the game's developer. If you participate in discussions or offer suggestions in this forum, you must agree to abide by the extended policies for the forum outlined in the pinned Dev Corner rules thread.

In Character & Roleplay

All roleplay must be at least somewhat relevant to Cat's End. Roleplays for other media and content are not permitted.

Discord Server Advertising

While Pixel Cat's End does not and will not have an official Discord server, we do allow the advertisement of unofficial, user-run servers provided the following rules are followed.

• Servers may only be advertised in the Off-Topic section of the forums.
  
• Servers should utilize limited-use invites to invite users into the server. The PCE forums are public and viewable to unregistered or logged out users, so in the interest of everyone's safety, public invites may not be used.
  
• Servers must make it clear that the server is unofficial and that no official business will happen in the server by staff, as we will not be in the servers to begin with.
  
• We will not moderate individual servers. However, servers found to be in severe violation of the site rules (for example, spreading/promoting hatred or exploits) will have their threads removed and any members participating in the content in question may receive site account action.
  
• Servers may not have NSFW content, including NSFW channels. Servers who do have NSFW content will have their advertisements removed.