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Minitokyo Terms of Service

Acceptance of Terms

Welcome to Minitokyo.net. Minitokyo provides free membership services to registered members. Registered members must read and abide by the guidelines outlined in the Policy.

It is the responsibility of Minitokyo staff to enforce these guidelines. As a registered member, you reserve the right to appeal staff decisions, but agree that moderators' ultimate decisions are final.

Description of Services Provided

Minitokyo is a free, member-based online community focused on promoting member-made artwork of anime, manga, and other Asia-related materials. Minitokyo additionally offers users access to resources (such as scans of official artwork) to aid them in producing these materials.

As a registered member, you understand that our services may include third-party advertisements that are necessary for Minitokyo to continue providing these services. You also understand that you may receive communications from the Minitokyo staff, including but not limited to system notifications, private messages from the staff, official forum postings, and news announcements. You understand that you will not be able to opt out of receiving these official communications.

You understand that Minitokyo is a fan-made community and that while the Minitokyo staff will make all reasonable efforts to correct any errors, the Minitokyo staff cannot be held liable for the deletion, mis-delivery or failure to store any user-submitted contents, communications, or personalized settings.

Membership Obligations

Upon registering for membership of Minitokyo, you represent that you are not a person legally barred from receiving Member Services under the laws of any local or international jurisdiction. You agree to provide accurate and true information about yourself, including information marked as "Optional" on the Registration Form. You also understand that the personal photograph on your member user page must be an actual photograph of yourself and that any other image used will be deleted without warning.

Members are solely responsible for all materials submitted to Minitokyo. Although staff will make reasonable efforts to moderate content, staff is not responsible for any materials submitted by members. Members shall not post any material that:

  • encourages acts of criminal nature
  • incurs civil liability
  • violates local, state, provincial, national, or international law

By submitting work to Minitokyo, members grant Minitokyo the unlimited right to store, present, redistribute, republish or reformat for use of other Minitokyo members. Minitokyo does not claim ownership of any kind over these materials and will not be legally responsible for submitted materials.

Membership Accounts

Members are only allowed to create one membership account on Minitokyo. Minitokyo reserves the right to ban all of your accounts or issue an IP ban if you create multiple membership accounts.

Members are fully responsible for all activities that take place under their accounts. Minitokyo will not be liable for any damages that arise from any member activities occurring under your account.

Members are allowed one unique avatar icon and one unique signature image. These images must conform to community standards set forth in this Policy. These images must also adhere to the following rules:

  • Avatars must be 100x100pixels in size. The image must be formatted as a .gif file type, no larger than 100 KB.
  • The signature image has a maximum size of 468x60 pixels and must also be in .gif format. Signature images may not exceed this size. All signature images must be uploaded to Minitokyo. You may not use externally hosted images in your signature. Your signature must not exceed four (4) lines of text.

Minitokyo reserves the right to access and disclose your account, all content and materials you have submitted using this account if required to do so by the law or in the belief that such action will be necessary to comply with a legal process. Minitokyo also reserves this right when it believes such action will protect Minitokyo members, enforce the Policy or in response to your requests or claims.

Member Conduct

Minitokyo strives to be a family-friendly community. Minitokyo is concerned for the safety and well-being of all of its users, regardless of age, nationality, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Minitokyo is an open community and has members who are children under the age of 13. You therefore understand that in order to protect these members, Minitokyo prohibits all members from submitting or posting any material that is harmful, insulting, threatening, abusive, invasive, harassing, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, pornographic, hateful, racially or otherwise objectionable. You understand that submitting or posting any such material will result in a reduction of your membership privileges or a ban on your membership account.

Minitokyo is also an international community. In order to provide access to the widest population Minitokyo uses English as its official language in all public areas of the community. As a member, you must use English in these areas, which include the galleries, forums, and reviews. You may use a different language in private communications, such as personal messages (PMs) to other members or communication within groups.

As a member of Minitokyo, you agree not to use Membership Services to:

  • impersonate any person or organization, including but not limited to other Minitokyo members, the Minitokyo staff, and other recognized persons, groups, or organizations that are not yourself.
  • submit, post, or otherwise transmit any material that contains viruses or other computer code, files, or programs intended to interfere with or destroy the normal operations of any computer software or hardware.
  • submit, post, or otherwise transmit non-pertinent and non-requested messages constituting "spam."
  • disrupt or interfere with Minitokyo's Membership Services or servers, networks or any other equipment connected with the service, or disobey any guidelines, rules, or policies connected to Minitokyo and its Membership Services.
  • submit, post, or otherwise transmit any information in violation of any application law.
  • collect or store personal data of any member in a manner constituting a prohibited conduct outlined in the item above.
  • "stalk" or otherwise harass any member.

Failure to abide by the rules outlined in this Policy will result in the restriction of your member privileges.

  • First and second offense: Warning
  • Third offense: Restricted, Muted, or Banned

In severe cases, MT Staff reserve the right to restrict member privileges at any time.

Content Policy

The following sections shall outline the terms and policies applicable to each section of Minitokyo. These sections shall be:

  • Tags
  • Gallery
  • Forums and Gallery Comments
  • Reviews
  • Groups
  • Achievements

Decisions made by Minitokyo staff are final. However you may appeal by posting in the Deletion Appeals section of the Forum. Any other questions or requests can be handled by contacting the respective staff members.

Tag Policy

Minitokyo uses Tags as a method of categorization.

Any member can add and create Tags. The default type for a Tag is Theme. Only staff members (Administrators, Moderators, Elite Members) can alter Tag Types. Staff members and the owner of the Gallery Item can delete Tags or change the Primary Tag.

Tags can carry parent/children tags to aid in further organization. The Primary Tag typically denotes Series. In cases where the Series is unknown, ambiguous or otherwise unclear, Mangaka or Studio may be used as the Primary Tag. In the case where no information is known about the item, the Unidentified Tag may be used as the Primary Tag.

Cases of disambiguation will be left up to staff discretion. Official practices are published at Tag-licious

The Gallery

Minitokyo endeavors to present only artwork of the highest quality. To that end, the Minitokyo staff shall delete any materials that do not meet a certain minimum standard of quality, further explained below. Minitokyo moderators reserve the right to delete any submission of low quality, even if these submissions otherwise conform to the Policy. You may not resubmit any work that has been deleted by the Minitokyo staff without the express written approval of a Minitokyo moderator.

You must provide a relevant description of all gallery items you submit. Minitokyo moderators will delete any submission with a description that is incomplete, irrelevant, incomprehensible, or plagiarized.

You may not submit any image that is mature in nature. Mature content is characterized but not limited to the following:

  • explicit pornography
  • excessive blood/gore/violence
  • oversexualization of a minor
  • any imagery deemed unsuitable for a family audience

Borderline sexual content will be at the discretion of the Gallery Moderators using internal guidelines.

The Gallery is divided into two types: the Art Gallery and the Scans Gallery. The Art Gallery contains all member-created artwork; the Scans Gallery contain all scanned official images.

All submissions must be in .jpeg/.jpg format and must fulfill the pixel resolution sizes for their respective sections of the gallery.

Art Gallery

You must provide a relevant description of all art gallery items you submit. Minitokyo moderators will delete any submission with a description that is incomplete, irrelevant, incomprehensible, or plagiarized. Proper description may include but are not limited to: (1) reference to the original scan, (2) time spent, (3) goals or inspirations that went into the conception of the piece, (4) media/techniques used or (5) difficulties/challenges faced.

You may not submit any unmodified, partially modified, or otherwise unoriginal artwork to the Art Gallery. Such items will be considered "ripped" and will be immediately deleted upon discovery. You may not submit ripped artwork even if the original creator gave you express consent.

The following artwork is not to be submitted. Such items will be deleted without warning by an Administrator or a Moderator. You do, however, reserve the right to appeal the deletion in the Deletion Appeals forum if you feel that your submission does not fall into the following categories:

  • "Ripped"Artwork: Any unmodified, partially modified, or otherwise unoriginal artwork. You may not submit artwork that you did not make even if the original creator has given you express permission to submit the piece.
  • Multiple/Alternate Versions: These submissions are defined by but not limited to: (1) alternate resolutions, (2) alternate color schemes or (3) alternate backgrounds. In cases where multiple versions exist, you must choose only one (1) version to submit to Minitokyo as the main image. You may choose to upload multiple versions as alternates. This option is located on the submission's page after uploading the initial image. You may also choose to use a third-party image hosting service to upload the alternate versions and include a URL link in the description of your submission to Minitokyo.
  • Low Quality and Low Effort Artwork: Quality and effort are to be determined by staff. Examples of such artworks include but are not limited to pieces that feature:
    • poor extraction, including obvious and apparent scan extraction edges,
    • doodles, or other items exhibiting a lack of effort in planning and/or execution,
    • blurriness,
    • extreme pixelation,
    • enlarging of original scan image without demonstrated effort of proper cleaning,
    • no effort in integrating the background and foreground,
    • "brush-whore" or "filter-whore," depending on overall quality,
    • "ghosting," the use of a character image on low opacity in the background, or
    • collages of small scan images without visible effort at composition or incorporation.

The Art Gallery contains two classifications, the General and the Elite Gallery. The Elite Gallery contains submissions of notably high quality. Members have the option to view only the Elite Gallery or both. Inclusion of artwork in the Elite Gallery is the sole discretion of the Minitokyo staff. You may not request that your submissions be added to the Elite Gallery. The following criteria determine the inclusion of artwork in the Elite Gallery:

  • No apparent or significant technical or compositional weaknesses.
  • Demonstrates thoughtful incorporation of a variety of techniques, proper placement of focal point, balanced composition, and expression of concepts or emotions.
  • Has a proper description. Proper descriptions should generally include: number of layers, brushes/effects/techniques/<WBR>materials used, links to scans or stock images in the submission, proper credit to members for scans/scan websites/vectors, collaborating artists if relevant, difficulties and obstacles encountered in creating the artwork, time spent, and the artist's personal judgment on how effectively the piece achieved the original concepts.

The Art Gallery is divided into the following three types which each carry different specifications:

Wallpapers

Wallpapers are judged upon the following criteria. Administrators and Moderators reserve the right to delete submissions that violate one or more of these criteria. You may however appeal to the Deletion Appeals thread if you believe that your artwork has been falsely categorized.

Submissions must be in standard, fixed resolutions. Minitokyo currently supports the following list of common resolutions:

  • 4:3 and 5:4 Aspect Ratio
    • 1024x768
    • 1152x864
    • 1280x960
    • 1280x1024
    • 1400x1050
    • 1600x1200
    • 2048x1536
    • 2560x2048
  • 16:9 and 16:10 Aspect Ratio
    • 1280x720
    • 1280x768
    • 1280x800
    • 1366x768
    • 1440x900
    • 1600x900
    • 1680x1050
    • 1920x1080
    • 1920x1200
    • 2048x1080
    • 2048x1152
    • 2560x1440
    • 2560x1600
  • Dual-screen Resolutions
    • 2304x864
    • 2048x768
    • 2560x960
    • 2560x1024
    • 4096x1536
  • Phones and Tablets
    • 960x640
    • 640x960
    • 480x800
    • 800x480
    • 1024x1024

Wallpapers must feature a background that demonstrates effort and thought. Gradient or solid fill backgrounds do not fall under this category. Furthermore, you may not use unmodified stock images for background purposes. For the purposes of this policy, an image is "unmodified" if it has not undergone any editing or if it has undergone only basic editing, such as resizing, retouching, or cropping.

Indy Art

Member Art

This section includes all artwork drawn by Minitokyo members from scratch. A "Member Art" or "fanart" tag must be added to all submissions. Submissions must have a minimum of six-hundred-thousand (600,000) pixels. Member art must feature a manga, anime, or related character or be drawn in the style typically associated with manga and anime. For submissions featuring an original character (OC) the "Original" tag must be used. You may not submit drawings done on lined notebook paper or other unsuitable stationery. All artwork submissions must be properly scanned using a scanner. You may not submit digital photographs of your drawings.

Vector Art and Colorizations

Vector art must be created using appropriate vector graphics software. You may not submit works that use filters or other image editing tools which mimic vector graphics.

The "colorizations" tag should be used on all artwork that is just colored in line art. The colorization must be executed by someone who is not the original artist. In the case of coloring another artist's line art, you MUST have permission from the original artist.

Manga Colorization refers to a colored manga page/panel in which the original line art has been preserved (extracted or otherwise rendered).

Scans Gallery

Scans must have a minimum of one million (1,000,000) pixels. You may not enlarge scans to meet this requirement. All submissions may not exceed two (2) megabytes in file size or twenty-five (25) million total pixels in resolution.

Scans may be monochrome or in full color. You must add a "monochrome" tag such scans to distinguish them from other scans.

You may not submit scans which contain excessive artifacts, folds, noise, or which are blurred, over or under-saturated, too dark or too bright, or a screenshot. When appropriate, you may use image editing software to clean up scans and submit higher quality versions.

You must search in the Scans gallery for existing copies of your scan. You may not submit duplicate copies of the same scan unless your scan is of significantly higher quality. The Minitokyo staff reserve the right to determine whether new submissions are of significantly higher quality.

Artworks that were not scanned from material sources/goods such as artbooks, magazines, manga, posters etc, but were ripped from CD's, games or taken from official websites are considered as digital artwork.

Digital artworks are acceptable as scans if they are either:

  • Official Anime/Game/Manga Wallpapers (stamped with copyrights and logos)
  • Official Game/Visual Novel CG Rips
  • Commercial releases

Digital artworks that are not acceptable as scans are usually unofficial, doujinshi/fanart. The majority of these digital arts are artist's personal artworks and were never officially, commercially released/published to the outside retail market.

Digital artworks may not come from these sources:

  • PIXIV
  • DeviantArt
  • Artist/Mangaka's personal websites
  • Doujinshi/Fanart CG's
  • Screenshots

Only SCANNED, printed doujinshi/fanart are acceptable. Unpublished, unofficial, digital doujinshi/fanart are not acceptable. Digital western or non-Asian related artwork are also not acceptable. Scans which depict real life artists/idols may only be submitted if the artist has debuted in Japan. This means that they are signed to a Japanese label or represented by a Japanese company.

If you have not personally scanned the submission but just found it on the Internet, it is considered a third-party scan. By submitting third-party scans to Minitokyo, you understand that scans from certain image sites are not permitted for submission and that it is your responsibility to check the FAQ section for the most updated list of non-permissible sites.

The Forums and Gallery Comments

By posting in the forums, you understand that Minitokyo is not responsible for the posts made by its members and that the content of the forums does not reflect the views of Minitokyo or its staff. You agree not to hold Minitokyo or its staff liable for the accuracy of the information presented by members in the forums.

You must post all new forum threads in the appropriate forum section. You must make a reasonable effort to search the forums for existing threads on the same topic you wish to discuss. In cases where the existing thread has not had a new posting in over 4 weeks, you may open a new thread on the same topic. In most cases, you may not revive a thread which has not received posts in a substantial amount of time unless you have information that is of significant value to the discussion.

You may not submit any posts which are not relevant to the topic of the thread or of the artwork you are viewing. You may not respond to threads with knowingly false information.

You must provide references for all information which are not common knowledge. In cases where quotation of long passages of text is necessary, you must use the appropriate quotations tag mark in Minitokyo's supported BBCode. You may not submit posts consisting entirely of quoted passages; you must provide your own original input.

You may not inflate the character count of your posts with duplicate trains of meaningless characters. Such posts will be considered spam and will be deleted without warning.

Reviews

You must write your own original reviews. You may not use reviews found on third-party websites or online communities. All content in reviews must be your own work.

You may not submit reviews for unfinished series. Minitokyo aims to provide members with a holistic view of different series, and you must wait until a series finishes airing or serialization before submitting a review.

Additionally, please refrain from excessive spoilers or swearing. In such cases, your review may be edited or deleted by a Mod, depending on the severity of the infringement.

Groups

Minitokyo provides members the option to create groups and join others who share similar interests. Groups are a venue for members to exchange ideas, share artwork, discuss commonalities, and provide support for each other. To this purpose, Minitokyo allows groups some autonomy in determining their subject, membership criteria, language, and rules of conduct.

By joining or creating groups, you understand that groups and their content remain under the jurisdiction of the Minitokyo Policy and that the Minitokyo staff reserve the right to delete any groups deemed in violation of the Policy. You may not create groups with an exactly duplicate purpose as another, such as groups for fans of the same anime series or character. You understand that Minitokyo moderators will issue warnings to duplicate and inactive groups one week prior to deleting the duplicate group and that it is your responsibility to save any documents, non-gallery images, and contact information from the groups designated for deletion and to rejoin the existing group. You agree to not hold Minitokyo or its staff liable for any loss of data resulting from your group's deletion.

Achievements

Achievements are earned based on participation around Minitokyo. This is similar to certain games, in which achievements can be earned by accomplishing certain feats. Achievements are not necessary in order to download from Minitokyo.

On Minitokyo, most achievements have multiple levels, where a higher level indicates a harder version of its lower-level predecessor. For example, there is an achievement to post a certain number of forum posts, where level one could require ten posts and level two a hundred posts. The highest level is generally quite rare to achieve.

A few achievements only have one level.

All achievements at or above level three (or at maximum level) will be displayed on your userpage. A full list of available Achievements can be viewed by clicking on "My Achievements" from the drop-down menu. Achievements where you do not have any progression will be grayed out, and fully completed achievements where all levels have been attained are indicated as such as well.

Minitokyo Staff reserve the right to add or remove achievements at any time, especially if they incite unwanted behavior.

This document was written on September 3rd, 2011 by fireflywishes.