- copy, republish, broadcast, distribute or otherwise use the CONTENT of this website in any way except for viewing, printing, utilizing or saving a back-up copy to your local hard disk for your own personal, non-commercial use
- create multiple accounts - if you can't find your account details or if you want to change your username, contact us and we'll help you sort it out; otherwise you risk getting all of your accounts removed
- use disposable email address - because almost everyone who does that, is a previously banned user who's looking to cause trouble
You may
- copy small parts of our exclusive articles only if you provide proper credit with link back here
- provide only links here for our exclusive files (downloads), so no redistribution is allowed without written permission from the original file authors/uploaders
Posting Guidelines (for comments and messages)
Failure to follow the 10 rules below will result in receiving a warning. A second warning would mean temporary ban of your account. A third warning would equal to a permanent ban. So please take a little time to read them carefully.
- Write in English only. Posts or comments in other languages will be removed on sight.
You may write in a different language on our live chat since we have real-time translation service, but only if you can't write in English. - RESPECT other members. Speak your opinion in a mature and respectful way. Avoid insults and try to censor swear words.
- NO team / staff / site bashing or insulting.
- NO flaming, no sexist/racist/religious/discriminatory/hateful comments. Don't use any avatar, banner or nickname 'linked' with such ideologies.
- NO talking about pirated copies of the FM game or a third party FM tool.
- NO advertising allowed without staff permission. Anything we don't develop (tools) nor publish (content) here, should be avoided. Avoid spamming our members via private messages as well; if we receive such complaints, you won't even get a warning.
- NO pornography-related material.
- NO one-word forum posts. NO replying with a phrase like "it sucks" without backing it up with some argument is totally useless.
- Refrain from using Caps Lock, unless it's only for a couple of words. Never write the whole topic title in uppercase!
- Topics must stay on topic. Discussion threads that stray off-topic are likely to be locked.
- Do NOT use images to replace big chunks of text. It's bad practice for a number of reasons.
- You are allowed to start stories for your let's play video series, as long as you embed the episodes and provide intro or summary text for each post.
- NO linking to external written content. If you're going to start a story here, then make it a native one. Otherwise it's advertising and requires staff permission.
Submitting Downloads - Rules
Failure to follow the rules below will result in your submission being disapproved or unpublished.
- When you submit any content to this website, you are declaring yourself the creator of the content, or are linking back to the content's place of origin.
- If you wish to host a file exclusively on FMSCOUT's download servers rather than third party sites such as MEGA or Mediafire, please get in touch with Stam.
- Download links must be accessible by all guests and must not require registration of any sort to download.
- Download links must be direct, either to the free file hosting site where the file is uploaded or to the fansite where the file is hosted directly.
- Avoid ADFLY or similar services for your download links. They make it impossible for some users to actually reach the hosted file.
- NO advertisement of any sorts. You may leave a link to your YouTube channel and Twitter in your Author box.
- PayPal donation links are allowed within the download article.
- We prefer fmshots.com for hosting images. You may use other sites, but make sure they are HTTPS and not just HTTP.
- Refrain from using CAPS LOCK. A few words here and there are okay, but not prolonged text.
- Any download page that gets published on fmscout.com grants a non-exclusive license to us for an unfixed amount of time, which will allow us to keep that page online should we choose to, even if the original submitter takes it down. In this extreme scenario, this is what happens with the download link.
a) If the downloadable was exclusive to us, we retain the right to host the content in whatever way we decide, but no further updates shall be made to it.
b) If the downloadable wasn't exclusive to us, we may use a download link hosted on a third party as uploaded by the original submitter.
In every case, full credits will still be given to the original submitter.
Moderators' Codes Of Practice:
- Protected characteristics of equality are age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion, sex and sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity.
- You may use inappropriate language if:
- Quoting a source or an individual
- Humorous reasons
- In a private conversation
When addressing staff:
- Do NOT disrespect the moderators. They patrol FM Scout for the community, volunteering their time helping out.
- We will NOT tolerate abuse towards staff members (doing so may result in a possible ban).
- If you feel you have been mistreated by a staff member, do not insult them. Email stam{at}fmscout.com about it so we can resolve this in a civil manner.
When creating new topics:
- Use the forum search before posting a new topic.
There's a good chance that there already is a similar thread, and there's no need for a second one. - Name your topics according to their content.
If you're writing about some particular subject, try to reflect it in your topic title as clear as possible. Titles like "Check this out!" are no good.
When commenting on other people's stories:
Don't slag off - Be helpful and encouraging
Someone has put in effort and time to write a story, you shouldn't be slagging them off and instead you should offer feedback instead of being abusive/insulting.
If you're writing a manager story yourself, you'd want to see nice comments in it. It doesn't matter if you're competing for SOTM or if you're a better writer.
Failing to respect that, may lead at least to temporary banning from our live chat facility.
That being said, you should have no problem if you make use of a little common sense.
Should you have any question; please send a private message to one of the guys in the moderation team or simply use the contact form before you do something that we may deem as wrong.
