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Terms and Conditions Questions and Feedback Thread

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As I'm the sort of weird person who reads through (short) terms and conditions, I noticed this issue in the terms and conditions:

 "Buying" Eggs/Hatchlings/Dragons

There are no official means through which eggs, hatchlings, or dragons can be bought, whether from the site or from other users. Exchanging any sort of currency, real or virtual, for eggs, hatchlings, or dragons is expressly forbidden.

It claims that there are no official ways to buy or sell dragons, and that you're not allowed to exchange currency for dragons. Obviously, this makes the Market banned under DC's own terms and conditions.

This should probably be corrected to allow on-site buying.

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That might mean actual real-life money as opposed to in-game currency. I definitely think the currency those T&Cs meant should be clarified though.

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No CURRENCY is important though.

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It also explicitly states that there are no on-site ways to purchase dragons, when there is one.

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I brought this up when the Market was first introduced but didn't really get a response. I agree this definitely needs to be changed.... The T&C of any website are pretty darn important to read, understand, and follow, and having something so blatantly false in the T&C would probably be very confusing to new users who don't know that the Market wasn't always there. It does say 'real or virtual' currency, as well, which definitely would seem to include the 'shards' we use in the Market.

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Actually, can you retitle this and make it "Update the T&C" because I just went through it and found this:

"Inactivity

If you are not active on the site, your dragons will not be taken away. However, dead dragons will be removed several weeks after death. In addition, dragons may have their names removed after several weeks of inactivity in order to free up names for active users."

 

This is no longer true. 

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6 minutes ago, Dalek Raptor said:

Actually, can you retitle this and make it "Update the T&C" because I just went through it and found this:

"Inactivity

If you are not active on the site, your dragons will not be taken away. However, dead dragons will be removed several weeks after death. In addition, dragons may have their names removed after several weeks of inactivity in order to free up names for active users."

 

This is no longer true. 

 

Well technically dead dragons *are* removed, from the scroll... you can still see them in lineages, but they are removed from the scroll. It also says dragons *may* have their names removed, not that they *will*, so I think that is okay to stay, especially given that many people would love some way to take inactive names and there have been suggestions like that that may possibly be implemented someday (TJ even talked about a name-stealing feature at one point...). 

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But names MAY still be removed if TJ chooses, so the warning is still valid.

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Still, it should be reflected that the names won't be removed unless TJ decides to remove the name. 

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I'm not sure why. It remains a possibility and is worth being aware of. It was always up to TJ. (A friend of mine abandoned her scroll LONG before he stopped un-naming all of them - in 2012 - and her names are still up there, while others at the same time were wiped.)

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2 hours ago, Dalek Raptor said:

Still, it should be reflected that the names won't be removed unless TJ decides to remove the name. 

 

Not sure why that would be needed... It says right there that dragons *may* have their names removed. That shows that it's a possible thing. Not a sure thing, but a possible thing. I don't see the need for anything more then that. It covers the possibility of removed names, while not saying for sure they will be removed. 

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Currently, the ToS (terms of service)/T&C (terms and conditions) contain this section:

 Reverse Engineering
Users of the site agree not to reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to derive any processes or formulas used by the site’s internal calculations.

This is really broad and kind of useless.

The vagueness of it mean that

  • my tan ridgewing study (having people count tan vs purple ridgewings they bred, to figure out the proportion of tan to purple ones)
  • ND experimenters trying to check the best parameters for making NDs (I can't say more due to the bizarre prohibition on talking about it here)
  • that person counting eggs they saw in the cave
  • anyone trying to figure out how many views different breeds need to hatch
  • probably many other good examples

are banned under the Terms and Conditions.

 

Yes, this doesn't mean much unless for some bizarre reason TJ09 starts enforcing it excessively, but like the Market issue it does make an important piece of the site not reflect its actual use.

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@purpledragonclaw couldn’t find the forum feedback thread so pinging you here. This user mentioned the T&C technically bans the market and TJ updated it pretty quickly, so I think there’s no harm in leaving the other T&C thread that just got closed open a while to catch TJ’s thoughts. While I understand the uses of keeping it vague, it could probably be clarified a little better; even if the reverse engineering bit hasn’t been acted on (that I know of) in years, it DOES raise questions. I’m participating in a common mass breed that tracks how egg abundance changes over time and I have to say I thought of the T&C and hoped it wasn’t a problem when I saw all that sweet crunchy number data. A little more clarification thus would be nice. Maybe just a ban on sharing actual mathematical formulas, which pull the curtain back a lot more than observing, say, “NDs usually like these many views” or “there were 20% less Teimars in the cave this week than last” does, for example.

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This is more Cave Feedback than Forum Feedback, but I can leave that release thread open for a bit longer to catch TJ's thoughts. 

 

ETA: Hm, actually, I think it would be best to just have a T&C questions thread, rather than these disparate threads running about. I don't want this to get buried in Cave feedback.I'll set that up.

Edited by purpledragonclaw

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SO many of them are already way out of date. I thin a clean slate would be better. Quote any you want to ?

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I've done a merge of the two threads, deleting the posts that are no longer relevant. Not the prettiest, but the meat of the discussion from both threads is here. 

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Regarding the reverse engineering thing: like with the hub rules, it's kind of bad having vague rules up in an important place.

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True. Back in the day, people got their scrolls burnt for repeat engineering because they repeated to others what TJ told them in a public chat about how snow angel wings got assigned... XD 

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8 minutes ago, olympe said:

True. Back in the day, people got their scrolls burnt for repeat engineering because they repeated to others what TJ told them in a public chat about how snow angel wings got assigned... XD 

That doesn't even come under the reverse engineering section, there's nothing about spreading "reversed engineered" data.

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I think if you are told not to do something, telling others how to do it comes under that umbrella.

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On the flip side, rules like that are often intentionally vague in site's terms so people can't point to overly-specific terms and say 'but it doesn't say NOT to do that!'

 

I couldn't think of any better wording for that section, honestly.

 

Quote

This is really broad and kind of useless.

The vagueness of it mean that

  • my tan ridgewing study (having people count tan vs purple ridgewings they bred, to figure out the proportion of tan to purple ones)
  • ND experimenters trying to check the best parameters for making NDs (I can't say more due to the bizarre prohibition on talking about it here)
  • that person counting eggs they saw in the cave
  • anyone trying to figure out how many views different breeds need to hatch
  • probably many other good examples

are banned under the Terms and Conditions.

 

Yes, this doesn't mean much unless for some bizarre reason TJ09 starts enforcing it excessively, but like the Market issue it does make an important piece of the site not reflect its actual use.

 

I mean, I wouldn't really get too into doing any of the above, with maybe the exception of NDs because they're meant to be made like that.

 

'Unless TJ starts enforcing it excessively' This is really the point - TJ isn't, he's not really interested in burning scrolls because people are trying to figure out tan vs purple ridgewings. The terms are MEANT to be broad so if a new and unexpected exploit comes up that is clearly malicious, it's still covered as against the rules.

 

You have to trust TJ to be reasonable with the terms, about what is malicious vs what isn't. That's what this comes down to... distrust of the admin. And I can't stay if that's valid or not, I'm not going to argue if that's the way you feel. But a lot of sites have 'umbrella' terms like this - I ran over to another adoptable site and one point was 'Exploitation of glitches or loopholes is not permitted.' boom, done.

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1 hour ago, Kaini said:

You have to trust TJ to be reasonable with the terms, about what is malicious vs what isn't. That's what this comes down to... distrust of the admin. And I can't stay if that's valid or not, I'm not going to argue if that's the way you feel. But a lot of sites have 'umbrella' terms like this - I ran over to another adoptable site and one point was 'Exploitation of glitches or loopholes is not permitted.' boom, done.

Well, there are reasons for not trusting TJ with being "reasonable" all the time. Unfortunately. Didn't the creator of EATW have their scroll burnt for reverse engineering, too - because they made up their own formulas on how many views an egg/hatchling needed to develop, and applied that formula to their fansite? Or did I get that wrong? => Apparently got that wrong, see below.

Edited by olympe

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2 minutes ago, olympe said:

Well, there are reasons for not trusting TJ with being "reasonable" all the time. Unfortunately. Didn't the creator of EATW have their scroll burnt for reverse engineering, too - because they made up their own formulas on how many views an egg/hatchling needed to develop, and applied that formula to their fansite? Or did I get that wrong?

Actually I think it was for using a script.  There were several people caught at the same time. (Including one person who was actually hunting at the time and ran into DC chat  screaming for help.  Hers was restored.) The thing you mentioned is what caused EATW to be removed from the fansite listing.  And he was warned to stop.  At least that is what I remember.

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