Hearthpwn

The following are the rules and guidelines which are to be followed if you wish to make use of the commenting and posting systems on HearthPwn. Users who do not follow these rules will feel the wrath of the moderators. These rules are applied globally to the website, in addition to any forum specific rules that some forums may have. Please refer to those forums and their relevant stickies to ensure you are in compliance with the rules.

In addition to the rules below, we also abide by the Twitch Community Guidelines.

Things You Want to Avoid

Writing in Languages Other Than English

HearthPwn is an English community and although we understand Hearthstone and its community has a worldwide reach, we are unable to moderate languages other than English and do not provide any coverage or content in other languages.

Due to this and a spam filter that is heavily biased towards non-english content, we ask that all content you write on the site remains in English. If your English isn't the best, don't worry, you can practice by interacting with fellow Hearthstone players right here; We don't discriminate!

Posts written in languages other than English may see deletion. If your non-English post is marked as spam by our spam system, we will not unspam it and ask that you write again using English.

Advertising on HearthPwn

Advertisements for non-beneficial and/or non-related websites, businesses and/or organizations are not allowed on HearthPwn. If you wish to advertise the website of yourself or someone else that has a relevant theme, we would appreciate it if you ask permission first. 

Send a private message to any of our moderators or website admins before making a thread. Also, we do not allow more than one thread per advertisement. We reserve the right to refuse advertisements for any reason whatsoever.

Your Clan, Guild, Team Website

We allow advertising of these types of websites in our Team Discussion forum without having to speak with us first.

Subscription Based and For-Pay Websites

Under no circumstances do we allow "premium" Hearthstone websites to be advertised on HearthPwn. This includes, but is not limited to, sites which offer paid versions of decks and guides. We believe that content should be open and free to everyone, just like we have here on HearthPwn.

Links or references to websites of this nature will be removed regardless of the intent of the poster.

Circumventing a Ban or Suspension

Posting on another account or having someone else post in your behalf when your account has been suspended or banned is not allowed. As a result, a new suspension or ban will be issued.

Discussing Moderator Based Actions

Actions taken against a member of the community are not to be discussed in public on the forums. Opinions about specific moderators or moderator actions (locking, deleting threads, etc) are also not to be discussed in posts or threads.

If you have questions, remarks, suggestions or complaints about moderating in general or specific moderators, please contact a site administrator through a private message. A list of staff members suitable for contact can be found here.

Bans can now be appealed. More information on how to do that is provided in the private message you'll receive when banned.

Naming and Shaming

We don't want to see one sided accusations or any other form of naming and shaming. 

Personal Information

Real life personal information about yourself or anyone else should also not be posted on HearthPwn.

We strongly suggest to never post your e-mail address on the forums, even if you deform it well enough to be picked up by bots. If you want people to contact you, we suggest you use the private message system.

Spamming and Trolling

Neither spamming or trolling is acceptable on the forums. This includes, but is not limited to, the following examples:

• Excessively communicating the same phrase, similar phrases, or pure gibberish
• Creating threads for the sole purpose of causing unrest on the forums
• Causing disturbances in forum threads, such as picking fights, making off topic posts that ruin the thread, insulting other posters
• Making non-constructive posts
• Abusing the Reported Post feature by sending false alarms or nonsensical messages
• Thread-necro: Reviving an old thread for no reason other than bumping it to the first page
• Posting meme or troll images, text, or videos; "cool story bro", "u mad", "10/10", captioned images, etc...
• We are more relaxed regarding these images in news post comments.
• Replying to a thread simply to call the author a troll (regardless of whether the post is actually trolling -- if you feel it is, please use the report button)

Vote Manipulation

Under no circumstance shall you:

• Create multiple accounts to control voting of objects on the site.
• Ask other members of the site to vote on objects, positively or negatively.
• You are allowed to ask people to "upvote", "like", or simply "vote" on your deck page though if they found it enjoyable.

Examples of objects include but are not limited to: Decks, Comments, and Forum Posts.

Vote Begging

Begging for votes on decks now requires that you create some written content before doing so. If you do not have written guide content when asking the community to vote on it, your deck will be set to unlisted, the message removed from your deck, and you will receive a private message from our staff indicating that you need to update your deck. Important things to note about this rule:

• You are not required to write guides for every deck you submit - only if you're asking for votes!
• You can still remind everyone viewing your guide to vote on it if they liked it. That doesn't change.
• You may state you will write a more in-depth guide if you receive a positive response from the community - just make sure you have an initial guide!
• Anyone who is asked to add content to their deck that has asked for upvotes and does not do it and relists their deck public may see their deck get deleted and a warning placed on their account.

Vote Harassment

Under no circumstance shall you:

• Vote negatively multiple times against a user because of an entity they have created.
• Don't agree with one comment? Sure, you can add a negative vote, but don't go through their entire posting history and leave them a negative vote on everything.
• Ask other members of the site to vote negatively against an entity.

Examples of entities include but are not limited to: Decks, Comments, and Forum Posts.

Abusing Player Tagging on Decks

This section is about our Player Decks Site Feature.

All decks submitted to the site which are tagged to a player must belong to that player. This means the player needs to have played that deck on their stream, on ladder, in a tournament, or just stated they are playing that deck.

• You are to under no circumstances tag a deck with a player who is not playing that deck.
• If you made a deck, it isn't Amaz's deck, it shouldn't be tagged as his.
• You must include proof in your deck description which is easily verifiable that the player is playing that deck.
• Proof can be in the form of screenshots, videos, tweets, etc.
• If we don't have proof, we'll remove the association.

Abusing the Player Tagging feature on the Deckbuilder will result in the loss of the player tagging feature.

Videos in Deck Comments

We allow content creators to respond to decks with videos they created provided that they are for that deck.

• The video must include footage of the exact deck present in the deck guide.
• If the video was made for another deck on the site, even if they are similar, your video may be removed.
• As a courtesy to the deck author, you should link back to their deck in your video's description!
• Deck authors reporting comments with videos will be ignored unless the video was not created for that deck specifically.

Posting Any of the Following Subjects on HearthPwn

The following topics are not to be discussed on HearthPwn on penalty of ban.

• Gold-selling/Account selling or trading websites
• Keyloggers, hoaxes/phishing websites
• Activities considered illegal by Blizzard Entertainment (botting, hacking, cheating, exploiting,...)
• Religious opinions/debates
• Hateful language about race, religion, country (Example: US vs. EU threads), political beliefs, etc.
• Pornography
• Content that is considered illegal by law
• Referral links for contests, promotions, or anything else

Bumping Threads

Don't bump threads. If you have nothing to add to the discussion, move on.

Thread authors may reply to their thread if they have made a significant update to the original post.

Signature Guidelines

The following guidelines are to be met when editing your signature. Users in violation of these guidelines will have their signatures deleted and will be contacted by a moderator.

• Width: No larger than 500px.
• Height: No larger than 100px.
• Filesize: No larger than 50kB.

No monetized links or links for SEO are allowed. Links to your personal site or social media accounts are acceptable, however, advertisement banners are not allowed.

Post Text Color and Font Size

You have the ability to change the color of your text on your posts and guides! This can help you customize your content better than before but it must be done wisely.

Please don't abuse this feature. We want to see it used for good and not evil. Anyone abusing it will see their content reset or deleted from the site and we may hand you a warning.

• Make sure your content is still readable. If people can't read it, we're gonna have a bad time.
• No excessive "rainbowing" of your text. Be smart about it.

Infractions and You - The Penalty System of HearthPwn

HearthPwn runs on an infraction based ban system. If you break the rules, infraction points will be added to your account and when you reach certain thresholds, your account will be banned for a predetermined amount of time. Points are typically valid for 3 months, after which they will no longer apply to your account. Moderators are still able to see your expired infractions and may decide to apply harsher penalties to your account at their discretion.

Points Required for Ban Duration

Points Given by Infraction

Update Log

Saturday, August 2, 2014

• Added new sections under advertising
• Clarification that we allow teams/guilds/clans to advertise on our Players and Teams discussion forum without consent.
• Clarification that we do not allow premium content websites to be linked to on the site, regardless of intent.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

• Updated warning point numbers.
• Added section on vote manipulation.
• Removed section on multiple accounts as this is now covered under vote manipulation.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

• Added new section concerning Vote Harassment.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

• Added new section concerning Player Deck Association Abuse.

Thursday, July 2, 2015

• Added new section for Vote Begging.

Friday, March 24, 2017

• We are now also enforcing the Twitch Community Guidelines.

Wednesday, August 17, 2017

• Added section about Post Text Color and Font Size

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

• Added section for "Videos in Deck Comments". This has been a policy internally for a long time and we're now making it public as it should have been.

Thursday, March 08, 2018

• Added section "Writing in Languages Other Than English". Like our last update, this was a policy we've had since the start of the site but it was not public.

Tuesday, May 4th, 2021

• There was no change in policy or rules, but we revamped some of the Warnings we issue to be more logical and relevant to current age in their naming and the amount of points they are worth. For instance, no longer both a "Hateful Langue" and "Hate Speech" warning, but just a singular "Hateful Language" warning.