Tobold's Blog
Friday, November 09, 2007
 
Tobold's MMORPG Blog Terms of Service

After discussing various aspects of game's terms of service, and having had several discussions this week in the comment section about what is acceptable use of this blog, I've decided to formulate *my* terms of service. Of course I am not a lawyer, and this isn't a legally binding document. But it should give you an idea of what I consider my rights and your rights regarding this blog.

1) This is Tobold's MMORPG blog. The opinions expressed here are mine, unless attributed to somebody else. While I strive to be rational and give balanced views, it is inevitable that everything I say is just a subjective opinion. I don't claim to speak in absolute truths. Feel free to mentally add "In Tobold's opinion," in front of every sentence you read here.

2) I have the right to talk about any subject I want. Most of my posts are about various aspects of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPG). But occasionally I do talk about other games, other sorts of entertainment, or just about things that happened in my life. You have the right to simply skip the posts you don't like. I tend to mostly talk about the games I am currently playing. But even if I play one particular game for a longer period of time and write a lot about it, there is no guarantee that I will not stop playing and writing about that game.

3) You have the right to propose subjects for me to talk about. Preferably you'd do so by email, there is a clickable email address in the upper right corner of this blog. I have a good track record of replying to my mail and many of the reader suggestions made it into blog posts. But I do reserve the right to not post about the subject you suggested if I find it doesn't fit in here. If you want me to quote you, please add instructions to what name I should attribute the quote. When I have no instructions I tend to not mention anything that looks like the real name of my readers, for privacy reasons, so you might want to sign your letter with whatever pseudonym you usually go by on the internet.

4) You do have the right to comment on this blog. Be aware that your comments are moderated by me before appearing on the blog, which could take a while. You also have the right to disagree with what I say, or with whatever other commenters say. You do not have the right to voice this disagreement in the form of personal attacks or by using foul language. In the interest of keeping the level of the discussion at a high standard, I do reserve the right to delete comments that are insulting or full of profanity. If you want to be heard, try to present a counter-argument in a polite and rational way. I will never delete well argued comments just because I disagree with them, but if you ended your argument with a phrase like "your review of game X sucks, go back to game Y" the whole comment will end up in the bin, because I can't selectively cut out offending phrases, even if the rest is written reasonably.

5) You do have the right to privacy. You are not required to give your real name at any point to comment on this blog. You are, however, required to have a free account under some pseudonym with one of the following services: Google, OpenID, LiveJournal, WordPress, TypePad, or AIM. This is a policy I am not terribly fond off, but it turned out that even using captchas didn't prevent my blog from being flooded with anonymous comment spam when I allowed anonymous commenting.

6) You do have the right to include links into your comments. But be aware that only HTML coding works, so you need to use code like <a href="http://tobolds.blogspot.com">Look at my blog</a> to make your links clickable. Please be aware that Blogger automatically tags all your links in the comment section as NOFOLLOW, which means that linking to your site in my comments section will not improve your Google pagerank, and will be ignored by many other search engines as well. Thus comment links will only produce traffic for you if other readers find them relevant enough to actually click on them. It is therefore advisable to link to specific posts on your blog with a good description of what the link is about. Just putting a general link as your signature is less effective. I do reserve the right to delete comments if a link in them leads to a site which is overly commercial or otherwise inappropriate. Specifically I frequently delete comment spam leading to sites selling gold or cheats.

7) You do have the right to quote me, and use my posts partially or in full, as long as you attribute them correctly as having been written by "Tobold" and link back to the source (preferably directly to the individual post, although linking to the blog is acceptable). I do not have the time or resources to start any sort of legal action if you steal my stuff without linking to me. However I do reserve the right to point fingers and mock you mercilessly on this blog if you do so. As you probably stole my stuff to gain credibility somewhere, you would probably find that being pointed out as a thief on my blog is counterproductive to your purpose. You have been warned! You do have the right to use my RSS feed as feature on your website, as long as it is set up in a way that links back to my blog.

8) I do try to attribute quotes and ideas to the sources I got them from. If you think I quoted you without properly naming the source, please send me an email and I will rectify the situation if the complaint is justified. Please note that in the case of "news" I might just quote the one blog where I saw the news first, or not quote any blog if I see the news at many different places at once and can't really follow the news to its source. Please note also that MMORPGs are a relatively narrow field of interest, with a limited number of subjects, so it is perfectly possible that I post an idea similar to some idea you had some time ago without having actually read your blog, and thus without a link to it. Feel free to add a "I wrote something similar on my blog" comment with a link to your blog post in my comment section in these cases.

9) If you have a blog and feel that I am ignoring you, feel free to send me an email with a link to your blog, so that I can have a look at it. I do not guarantee that I will link to you, but if there are some particularly interesting articles on your blog, I might link directly to those. I do not have a blogroll, nor do I plan to add one, as I found that the quality and quantity of blog posts on most blogs fluctuates, and I don't want to spend lots of time verifying the blogs on my blogroll constantly. Nor do I want to get into fights which blogs should or should not be included. Feel free to include this blog in your blogroll, but if you only list blogs there that link back to you I totally understand if you leave me out.

10) I do not run advertising in the form of banner ads or similar permanent front-page links on this blog. I do reserve the right to change this policy if somebody offers me large piles of money. Although I am not as religiously opposed to gold selling as some other people are, I do refuse to link to sites that sell gold, sell guides or cheats, as well as to sites that offer a platform for this sort of trades. Not because I hate them, but because I want to stay away from the controversy. If you have a product or website that you think would be of interest to my readers, you can send me an email, and I will have a look at it and judge whether I will post about it. If you have a game you want me to write about, I am willing to test it if you give me trial or beta access to it. In no case will the fact that you invited me to your site or game as opposed to me having found your site or game on my own make any difference to the way I report about you. I will always try to report about any site or game in a fair way, but if your game is bad, I will say so, even if I got in for free. You can't buy good reviews on this blog. Furthermore, following FTC rules, all freebies I receive will be disclosed.

I would appreciate feedback on whether you find this terms of service fair. Please also tell me if you think that I have forgotten to cover something I should have mentioned.
Comments:
/approved
 
/signed Copra

...do you take any responsibility for causing peoples' brain hurt in case they start working after reading your Blog? Or for causing people to think in the first place?

Copra
 
Nicely done Tobold. I guess you need to make this a "Sticky" if blogger allows that sort of thing.
 
sounds reasonable and fair (and like common sense imho :)
 
From my point of view you've completely missed the point. For a start I can read and comprehend each and every one of your terms. Secondly I found reading each point to be entertaining and communicated volumes not only about your expectations from me as a user of your blog but also what we can expect from you.

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't terms of use meant to obfuscate their own contents and be completely impenetrable to the average human so that they really have no idea to what they are agreeing and blithely accepting the most obscene breaches of privacy and common decency because its a damn sight easier than trying to understand the terms of use?
 
Nicely done Tobold. I guess you need to make this a "Sticky" if blogger allows that sort of thing.

Good point. I added a permanent link to this Terms of Service post on my sidebar to the blog description.

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't terms of use meant to obfuscate their own contents and be completely impenetrable to the average human so that they really have no idea to what they are agreeing and blithely accepting the most obscene breaches of privacy and common decency because its a damn sight easier than trying to understand the terms of use?

Yeah, but that only really works if the user is forced to click an accept button before actually being able to see the content. In my case a reader of my blog could pretty much guess the content of my terms of service by simply observing the blog for some time and never reading the ToS itself. Which makes obfuscation pointless. :)
 
/approved

all seems very fair. good stuff.
 
That's probably one of the few Terms of Service I've read all the way through. Now, where's that "Accept" button?
 
What if I took your posts and condensed them into review article and then sold those reviews on ebay? I'm not selling your words, I'm selling the time I took to read your post and write a review.

Also what if I get a third party program to read your blog for me and then post witty comments in order to raise my noteriety 'level' on your blog without having to spend any time at the keyboard?

Tongue firmly planted in cheek,
Zigabob
 
Yeah, following up on what Zigabob said, am I allowed to pay someone else to read your blog for me? =P
 
Hah! I outwitted you by making this blog level-less. :)
 
I seem to recall a similar post about this time last year. ;)

Wolfgangdoom
 
Just like very ToS that's too long. I ain't reading it.
 
Thine Wall of Text doth crit me for countless points of health, verily!
 
Please add and addendum stating that the dog should not be left on the porch for extended periods.

Otherwise I think you have it covered :P Good stuff Tobold, I'll try to fashionably argue with you from now on and skip commenting on bad days :)
 
You forgot some ; in some entities in item 6...
 
LOL at the "large Piles of Money" part. Instead of 1., 2., 3. you might want to cahnge it to something like this:
1. Overview:
2. Subjects of Posts:
3. User Submitted Post Ideas:

Etc.

That will probably get people to atleast read the parts that interest them.
 
This was funny, but wait, were you serious?
 
/agree
 
+1 Fair. Agree.
 
Hi!
I just came across your blog and I think these terms are very fair. Some parts a little bit funny too. But I understand where this came and whatever you have written is quite clear.
 
#fair
 
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