Guidelines and site rules

The following guidelines count for ALL contests:

• DON'T use copyrighted images without approval from the original author. There are plenty of sources on the web to find good material, free to use without any licenses. When you do use someone elses image with copyright, make sure you have permission from the author.
• DON'T claim you are the owner of an image from someone else.
• DON'T use extreme violence, terrorism, extreme gore, extreme blood, ... in your entries. Some people are very sensitive for this, some are not. Keep your entries suitable for everyone, including children.
• DON'T use pornographic material in your entries. There is a difference between artistic nude and pornographic nude. Your entry should not be offensive to anyone, including children. If you have doubt, you can ask the administration or a moderator first. If we have a contest for adults only, we will have them in an adult-only section.
• DON'T bash any religion or political ideas. Just don't offend anyone with your entry.
• DON'T use someone elses entry from an old contest. If you have an entry from yourself in an old contest that PERFECTLY FITS in a new contest, you can use it again. If you have doubts, it's probably not right and you're better off making a new one.
• DON'T submit filter-only works. Take time to make something unique, it will increase your chances of winning.
• DON'T use watermarks on your entry.
• DON'T submit entries to promote your business or website.
• DON'T submit 3 crappy entries to each contest, just to reach the max. number of submissions. It's better to make 1 good entry than to make 3 bad ones. You'll get more satisfaction from it and others will respect your work more :)
• DON'T forget to include your sources or a step-by-step guide with your entry. Saving the URL's of the sources used in your entry is only a few seconds work. If you don't mention them people can get suspicious and give lower scores and red flags. When you don't include sources or step-by-step guides, moderators can give you a warning. In this warning they will explain what's missing in your submission. Add your sources or create a step-by-step guide and you'll be fine.
• DON'T submit the same entry more than once in the same contest..
• DON'T submit an entry with only a very small moderation compared to another entry of yours in the same contest..
• DON'T mention your name in your image, image name, description or anywhere else. This way the contests stay anonymous..

• Theme contests: Take the time to read the goal of a theme contest. These goals are usually simple and to the point. An off-theme entry can result in removal of the entry.
• Contests with source images: In a source contest it's mandatory to use the source image in your entry. Not only use it, but also manipulate it in some way. Simply using a fantastic image and pasting the contest source on it will probably still look good, but it's not really photoshopping anything. These kind of entries can be removed by a moderator or by the adminstration.

People want a fair evaluation of their entries. Voting unfair will result in loss of votepower and can make your votes obsolete. In addition to that, moderators monitor your votes and can report suspicious vote behavior. This means that even if your votepower saldo is positive after a set of contests ends, you can still lose votepower if moderators decide that you vote very unfair on purpose on only a few entries. Good voting means voting fair ALL THE TIME. If you really don't know what to vote on an entry, simply don't vote at all on that entry. Also, a reported vote means the vote becomes INVALID and will not count in in the score calculation of an entry. Plus, you will lose a significant amount of votepower for each reported vote. To keep your vote reputation up, try to stick to these simple rules:

• If you really have no idea how to vote on a specific entry, it's best not to vote on that image.
• If you decide to red flag an entry, don't vote extremely low on it because your vote may be reported for the wrong reasons and you'll lose votepower.
• If you have family or friends in a contest, it's best not to vote on their entries.
• If someones askes you to vote on specific entries to increase his/her chances to win, don't vote on these entries or make up your own mind about them. 'friendly voting' is strongly discouraged.
• Don't tell anyone which entry is yours. This might influence this persons vote behavior.

When you comment on an entry, don't do anything on this list:

• DON'T mention the name of the author in your comment. Contests are anonymous and mentioning the authors name makes voting less fun and less accurate.
• DON'T personally attack anyone. (no flaming or bashing)
• DON'T offend anyone by making political or religious statements.
• DON'T make negative comments without suggestions for improvement. (eg. "THIS SUCKS", "WHAT A MESS", "LOW VOTE FROM ME", ...) The author will be discouraged by these comments can do absolutely nothing with them. There's nothing wrong with critique. But, it should come with a suggestion.
• DON'T talk about your favorite holiday destination in someones entry.
• DON'T start discussions in someones entry that are totally unrelated to the entry.
• DON'T ask someone for dinner in someones entry. Keep this private!

It's simple, just be nice and write constructive comments. Comments such as "nice" and "great" will not be removed, but the author is probably expecting a little more. Violation of any of the items on this list can result in removal of your comment and all violations are logged.

The forum is a place to hang out, have fun and get to know other people. It's NOT a place to complain and insult others. Because forum discussions can get completely out of hand, here are some strict rules about posting on the forum:

• DON'T post personal attacks.
• DON'T complain about an entry that you think does not deserve that high or low spot. Although, this may be your opinion, the general public obviously thought differently about it.
• DON'T blame voters for the low score of your entry. You were probably expecting better results for your entry, but complaining about it won't change anything. Results are final.
• DON'T complain in public about any of the site rules, about the vote system or about someones vote behaviour. There is nothing wrong with posting a good suggestion and ask other opinions about it on the forums. But, complaining or whining won't help.
• If you are not sure, keep it private. Sending a complaint or suggestion to the administration has more effect than doing it on the forum.
• Read the FAQ and do a search on the forum first, before you ask a question. Many questions were already answered in an older thread or are explained on the FAQ page.
• If you post on the forum that you are leaving, your account will be banned automatically. Everyone has the right to leave this site if they're not happy. These guidelines are here to keep everyone happy. If you are not satisfied and you decide to leave the site, there's no reason to start a thread about. Afterall, you left the site, so you can't read the reactions anyway :)

Violation of these rules can result in removal of your account on the forum. If you break forum rules, but not the site rules, your forum account can be removed and your site account can remain active.

If you manage to get banned (which is hard if you follow all the simple guidelines!) and really, really, really want to be active again, the best thing to do is sending a mail to the administration and explain what went wrong. Maybe you will get a second chance! :) If you get banned, your IP will also be banned, so you can't make a new account. Don't try to make a new account on another computer, because you will be caught. Another thing that will result in an immediate ban is having several accounts to manipulate the contest results. All IP addresses and all vote behavior will be monitored, so we can keep everything fair and smooth! We don't like to ban people and it doesn't happen alot either. But sometimes, it's absolutely necessary. If someone keeps breaking the rules or simply annoys the hell out of everyone, he/she will get banned.

The more people who follow the rules and the more people we can satisfy, the higher the prizes we can give with each contest. PST is a place to have fun and to meet new people with the same interests!
So, if you follow all these simple guidelines, PST will stay fun and everyone will be happy! :))

Good luck!

As a moderator, you can look at all the red flags an entry receives. If the red flag is not obvious, then it comes with a reason most of the time. It's up to the moderator to decide if these red flag reasons are valid or not. Red flags should be used as an extra help when you are deciding if an entry needs to be removed or not. If an entry receives several red flags, but you think these red flags are not justified, you can decide to leave the entry in the contest.

As a moderator, you can remove entries from the contests. The entry will not be removed permanently, but will be taken out of the contest immediately. If after an administration review the entry appears to follow all the rules, the entry will be placed back in the contest. If after an administration review, the entry does not follow the rules, it will be removed permanently. Remove all entries from the contest that make big violations with the general and specific contest guidelines. Send a warning to the author first in case of small violations.

As a moderator, you can remove any comment that does not follow the commenting guidelines. Comments can be removed without warning.

As a moderator, you can send warnings to all users. Send a general warning to a user when he/she is not following the site rules. This can be anything from very small violations to big violations. The point is to warn the user so he/she knows what the problem is. If after the warning that person keeps making the same violations, you can report that user to the administration and explain the problem.

If an entry only has small violations which you think can be fixed easily by the author, you can send the author a specific warning about that entry. If you sent someone a warning message about an entry and at the end of the contest, the author did not fix the violations, you can remove it from the contest.

As a moderator, you can see all votes placed on the entries in the active contests. Voting is personal and subjective, but if you are seeing ridiculous votes like 1% on superb entries or 100% votes on terrible entries, you can report these votes. This reporting is not meant for reporting every single low or high vote. It's meant to report votes that make no sense.
For example:

• If you see a really high vote on a mediocre or bad entry and you suspect this vote to come from family or friend of the author: report it.
• If you see really low votes on all entries in a contest and only one high vote on one particular entry, then this is probably because this voter wants to manipulate the results in order to make a specific entry win: report the high vote and explain the details.

When you report a vote, the vote will be removed from the final score calculations and the user who placed the vote will instantly lose 50 votepower.

As a moderator, you can track someones vote behavior. When you can see all votes, you might notice strange things in someones vote behavior every once in a while.
Report this person if you suspect him/her doing one of the following things:

• User votes only high on entries from 1 particular author. This is 'friendly voting' and thus unfair and inaccurate.
• User votes extremely low on all entries. This is unfair and undeserved because it brings the final scores down.
• User votes extremely high on all entries. Maybe this person is trying to be santa or something, but it's not really accurate voting.
• User votes the same percentage on every single entry. Voting 50% on all entries for example is considered 'safe' because the chances to lose votepower are much lower this way. Always Voting between 60% and 65% is also considered 'safe', but should be reported too. Good voting behavior means having a large variety of different votes in a wide range.

Remember, even if you suspect someone with VOTEPOWER 0 has one of these strange vote behaviors: report it.
When you're in doubt if someones vote behavior should be reported or not: report it.
When someone breaks any of the site rules: report it.