Site rules

Hotbar is for Minecraft. Builds, maps, skins, banners, palettes and the things people make around them. A section is for what it says it is: a skin goes in skins, a world goes in maps.

Off this ground, and it does not belong here:

• Work that has nothing to do with Minecraft.
• Publishing the same thing in several sections to be seen more often.
• Using a publication as a placeholder — an empty page holding a name, or a link out to where the real thing lives.

The one link out that does belong here is a paid listing: a build or a map that is sold elsewhere, marked as paid, linking to its store and with pictures of its own on the page. That is a shop window, not a placeholder. A link out that is not marked, or that does not lead to the thing, is a placeholder again, and is reported as one.

What you publish should be the thing your page describes. Nobody is asking for polish — a first build is welcome — but the description, the images and the file have to agree with each other.

• The file opens, loads, and is the thing named.
• The images are of that thing, not of somebody else's.
• The version and edition are the ones it actually works on.
• Nothing is promised in the title that is not in the download.

A file that is simply broken gets removed, and that is not a punishment — republish it when it works. A description written to make people download something else is a different matter and is treated as one.

Publish what is yours to publish. If you built on somebody else’s work, you need their licence to allow it, and you credit them by name on the page.

• Do not upload someone else's build, map, skin or texture pack as your own.
• Do not re-upload work taken from another site to publish it here.
• Respect the licence attached to whatever you started from, including licences that forbid reuploading.
• Trademarks and characters belonging to other people can appear in fan work, and cannot be presented as official or sold as if licensed.

If your work is here without your permission, tell us through the notice form. It needs no account, because the person whose rights are affected usually does not have one.

One person, one account, linked to your own Minecraft account. Who you appear to be here has to be who you are.

• Do not present yourself as another creator, as a server or studio you have nothing to do with, or as Hotbar staff.
• Do not make a second account to get around a restriction, or to vote, comment or report as though you were more than one person.
• Do not link a Minecraft account that is not yours.

Disagreeing with somebody’s work is fine and saying so is fine. The line is at the person.

• No harassment, threats, or following someone around the site to keep at them.
• No attacks on people for who they are — origin, religion, sex, gender, orientation, disability, or anything of that kind.
• Nothing sexual involving minors, and nothing that sexualises them. This is reported to the authorities, not only removed.
• No sexual or graphically violent content, and no shock content.
• Nothing about another person that they did not publish themselves — real names, addresses, schools, photographs.
• No malware, and no file that does something other than what the page says it does.

Reporting is part of this too. Reports are read by a person, and sending a stream of reports you know to be unfounded — at a rival, at someone you argued with — takes that person away from real ones.

Tell people about your server, your Discord, your channel — on your profile, in your descriptions, where it belongs to what you made. What is not welcome is using the site as a billboard.

• No repeated posting of the same link, comment or publication.
• No comments that exist only to advertise something.
• No uploading in bulk to fill a section or push other people down a page.
• No selling accounts, votes, downloads, likes or follows.
• No automated uploading, scraping, or anything built to get around the limits.

The answer is meant to fit what happened. Most of the time it is the smallest one that works: a publication is removed and nothing else follows.

• The content comes down. It stops being visible; you are told which rule and why.
• A warning. On the record, visible on your account page.
• A restriction. One part of what you can do — publishing, commenting, taking part, reporting — is suspended, for a stated time or until it is lifted. The rest keeps working.
• The account is closed. For what is serious on its own, or for the same thing again after a warning.

Every one of those decisions is taken by a person looking at it — there is no filter making these calls and no automatic escalation — and every one names the rule it rests on, which is what the link that brought you here points at.

You can appeal any of them from your account page, free of charge, for six months from the day it was taken. An appeal is read by a person, and if we got it wrong we say so and put it back.

The rest of what you can do about a decision — the complaints procedure, out-of-court dispute settlement, and what to do if you think a rule was applied wrongly rather than broken — is in section 5 of the terms of use.

Every publication, comment, community and server has a report button. Use it for anything on this page: it reaches the same person who decides, with the page attached.

For content that is not merely against the rules but unlawful, use the notice form instead. It needs no account and it is handled as the law requires, which the report button is not.