You might want to change this to e-mail. Unless when you ban someone you plan to remove their work immediately.

This is also a little ambiguous wording about authorization of content holder. Because in packages such as Smaug is developed by multiple people and multiple people also hold copyrights. But otherwise that the rest of the rules seem alright except for the above mentioned stuff.

Changed rule 6.
6. Advertising your MUD, website, or other MUD service / product is permissible on MudBytes, but should be limited to a single post in an appropriate forum or in your personal signature.

Changed rule 12
12. Requests for content removal should be made via the PM ("Messenger") feature and made available to at least 2 Administrators or e-mail to MudBytes@MudBytes.net. Removal requests will ONLY be honored when made by the copyright holder / author. No exceptions.

You might also want to mention how long you should wait between posted adverts. Presumably it's okay to advertise for staff on one forum and for players (with a different advert) on another forum on the same day - but how long should people wait between posting adverts on the same forum?

So…If somebody uploads or posts a link to a copy of Diku with credits stripped out it won't be removed?

Such items uploaded to the code repository would be in violation of rule #10. If it's a forum link or sig or whatever else we can remove it at out discretion.

The rules are in conflict with each other and 'our discretion' basically means 'if we feel like it'.

I don't see the rules as in conflict with each other.

Rule #10 provides the mechanism by which license compliance is verified. Uploads don't just appear. They have to be approved first. Which should include checking to make sure it's not Medthievia or something.

Rule #12 keeps the person who submitted it from coming back later making wild claims that it can't be distributed anymore. Unless that person is also the copyright holder or someone they authorized. It all seems perfectly legit to me.

As far as sigs and other places for links to show up, that's entirely admin discretion. Which means if you post a bad link they don't catch, it's not tacit approval. It just means they can come back later and say "hey, look what he did *delete*".

People are just going to have to deal with the fact that most websites, especially ones driven by user-submitted content, are going to include an "at our discretion" clause. It would take too much time to think up every single possible reason we would ever need to moderate the site and provide our users with a big long list.

As far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty normal, to be expected part of most TOS.

Yeah, and apparently there ARE exceptions which is been my point from the beginning…

You can't have 'discretion' over removable content if there are 'no exceptions'.

I'm not sure I see your point. The 'no exceptions' statement seems pretty clear: if you request that something be removed, your request will not be honored unless you are the copyright holder.

Even so, it seems pretty obvious to me that what "no exceptions" means in that context is "you should not expect us to make exceptions but we always have discretion". (Every single rule is at the admins' discretion…) It also seems pretty obvious to me that "no exceptions" does not imply that things in violation of some other rule will never be removed.

When we say a "request for removal" we're talking about an item that has been uploaded and approved which isn't in violation of our rules or any license(s). It doesn't matter whether someone requests a take-down or not if an item isn't kosher; once we find out it's in violation of the rules we'll take it down without being asked.

There is a difference between somebody pointing out that something they saw in the repository is against the rules and something asking us to remove something they uploaded at the copyright holders behest or otherwise have no authority over. Rule 12 specifically regards people asking us to remove things because they are copyright holder and therefore have that right no matter what. If YOU ask me to remove rom24b6.tar.gz I'm going to say no. If you tell me rom24b6.tar.gz (somehow) doesn't have its Diku credits, then I am suddenly aware that it has been in violation of our other rules and will take actions to make it compliant with them (including removal, if necessary) but not because you asked, because that's the rules.

I don't see how they contradict each other. I think it's clear enough. If something is in violation of the rules, we'll handle it.