Rules

For the purposes of this site and the rule stating that all art content must contain at least one "shota" character, a shota is defined as:

a fictional character with the appearance of a male child (boy) and an assumed age no greater than 15 years.

The following do not count as a "shota":

• Any male character with an assumed age (based on appearance and physical development) greater than 15 years old.
• Any female character, regardless of age.
• Any real person or depiction of such, regardless of age.

In artwork, a character's age can be highly subjective. For the purposes of this site, a character's age and "shota-ness" is determined almost entirely based on appearance.

ShotaWorld staff reserve the right to remove any content they deem to not include a shota character based on this rule.

All users must be 18+ years of age to use this site.

If you are not at least 18 years old, please come back when you are.

Any registered member who is suspected or found to be under 18 years of age may be banned. The ban may be lifted once the user has turned 18.

Except when expressly permitted by an administrator:

• Each person may have 1 (one) user account on ShotaWorld.
• you may not create "alt" accounts or share your account with any other person, especially a person who is ineligible for their own account due to age restrictions, a suspension or ban, legal reasons, or any other reason.
• Usernames may not be gibberish.
• Usernames may not attempt to impersonate any other user, staff member, or role (e.g. moderator, admin, etc.)
• Usernames may not dox or impersonate any real person, including yourself.

You may not create an additional account to circumvent a ban, regardless of the length of the ban.

You may not use another user's account to access ShotaWorld while you are banned.

Attempting to circumvent a ban, or helping another user do so, may result in further disciplinary action against all involved, up to and including a permanent ban.

We intend to comply with data privacy laws, such as GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). To such ends, we will honor requests to delete personally identifiable information (PII). Contact an administrator to have your account and personally identifiable information removed from the site.

Note: personal information does not include your threads, posts, and uploaded attachments. To prevent destroying the context of, in some cases, entire threads, we may choose to leave your posts and content associated with a "deleted username".

We fully support our users' rights to express themselves and their interests using their avatar and signature, as well as customizations of their user profile page. However, we ask that all users be respectful of each other and refrain from using large, flashy, animated, distracting, distasteful, grotesque, religious, political, or otherwise potentially-offensive images or text.

Please remember that signatures and avatars are visible on every post you make, and if you post several times in a single page of a topic, you and other members will need to scroll past them that many times. Distracting visuals can break concentration and flow in the topic and may cause frustration.

ShotaWorld staff reserve the right to remove any content deemed inappropriate from avatars, signatures, and profile pages.

Do not post content you know or suspect to be illegal.

We realize that the legality of content can and does vary between jurisdictions, but we ask you to use common sense. Even if something is legal where you live, it may be illegal from our web host's perspective, or may be illegal for some or most other users.

ShotaWorld staff reserve full discretion and final say on what may and may not be posted on this website. We also reserve the right to remove anything we feel may pose a danger to our site or our users for any reason.

Child Pornography, Child Erotica, CSAM (Child Sex Abuse Material), and any content promoting or depicting child abuse of any kind is unequivocally and expressly prohibited. No user is permitted to upload, link to, or direct other users in accessing files or websites containing that kind of content.

Given that this site is called ShotaWorld, we expect all art posted in content sections to feature at least one shota character as the primary focus. Click Here to learn how "shota" is defined for the purposes of this rule and our site as a whole.

Series, sets, and comics that do not contain a shota in all frames are allowed, but a shota must be a primary character the overall series, set, or comic.

• Any content involving real minors. This includes photographs, videos, photoshopped media, and any links to such media on other website. This also includes social media pages and handles, YouTube channels, Twitch streams, etc.
• Any 2D, 3D, or AI-generated artwork modeled after or depicting a real child. This includes characters portrayed by child actors in live action movies and tv shows (e.g. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter).
• Any 2D, 3D, or AI-generated artwork modeled after or depicting a real person. This includes characters portrayed by actors in live action movies and tv shows.
• Any real pornography (even with fully legal adults).
• Any 2D, 3D, or AI-generated artwork featuring a shota with a woman in a sexual context.
• Written "true story" accounts of explicit sexual abuse of a real person, including yourself.
  • The exception would be, in the Gray Zone section, talking about sexual encounters between yourself as a child and an adult, but it should not be written in such a way that it is intended to arouse the reader nor encourage such behavior from others.
• Written fantasies of sexual behaviors involving any real person, even an adult.
• AI-generated content that is photorealistic, hyperealistic, indistinguishable from a photograph, or mistakable for a real person or scene at a glance.
• Yaoi, hentai, or lolicon art that does not feature a shota as a primary subject of the art.
• Any personal or private information of any person (including yourself). Do not dox any member of the community or any real life person. (Doxxing is the act of making private/personal information about another person public.) The only exception would be if you feel comfortable giving people your first name, age, or vague location. But absolutely no phone numbers, addresses, full names, dates of birth, social security numbers, bank information, etc.
• Asking for personal details of other members - In addition to the previous rule about not releasing such information, do not solicit that type of information (including pictures or videos of them).
• Fundraising - No GoFundMe or similar, no begging for money or using the site to raise funds for anyone else.
• Deep web links - No Tor/Onion links should be posted, even for legal hidden services. While Tor and Onion sites are not inherently illegal, given the nature of this website we do not allow instructing other users on usage of Tor or access of Onion addresses.

Members are encouraged and expected to use the "Report" feature to notify staff if they see content that they suspect is in violation of any site rules.

Interacting and engaging with rule-breaking content, rather than reporting it, may result in disciplinary action for you as well.

If a user reaches out to you and claims to be underage (and is not clearly 'RPing' being underage) please report them. Failing to do so may result in a ban.

If a user reaches out to you to try and share illegal content, please report them. Failing to do so may result in a ban.

That being said, members should not abuse the Report feature. A user who repeatedly reports non-offending content for the purpose of either harrassing another member or adding to the workload of staff may themselves become the subject of disciplinary action.

Users may not use the ShotaWorld website or any related services or channels of communication to discuss, plan, or implicate past, present, or potential future illegal activities, especially relating to child abuse. Depending on the severity of any such discussed activities, participants may be reported to appropriate parties, including your ISP, email provider, and law enforcement.

Users may not discuss or condone child abuse behaviors. In specific, expressly allowed sections (i.e. the Gray Zone), users are permitted to discuss pedophilia from both a personal and general perspective, as long as they do not admit to, encourage, or condone any crimes, past, present or future.

We no longer allow using our site to connect via Session, Telegram, Element, or other encrypted communication services. Check here for more information.

Aside from the above restriction, it is not inherently against the rules to share offsite contact information (e.g. Discord, ATF username, email address etc.), for instance to roleplay or to be able to stay in touch in case ShotaWorld is inaccessible. However, sharing such information may cause our automated monitoring to trigger a manual review of the conversation, and if the broader context and reasoning behind coordinating to meet outside of ShotaWorld appears to be so that you can circumvent our rules, or to facilitate the sharing of illegal content, at our discretion we may treat that as a rule violation.

Allowed offsite contact info includes links to other sites or chat services, usernames, email addresses, and similar. However, it does not include IRL address, phone number, name, etc. You may not share such personal information on ShotaWorld (see our rule about Disallowed Content, regarding personal information and doxing).

Members of this site may engage in "private" messages with other members by using the "Conversations" feature.

No communications on ShotaWorld should be considered truly private. ShotaWorld staff reserve the right and ability to view and monitor all communications made via the website, including "private" conversations. We do not actively monitor conversations day-to-day, but we do use automated (passive) monitoring for rule violations, and we may view specific conversations if we suspect a rule has been violated.

Any and all rule violations committed using the Conversations feature will incur punishment just like they would on public areas of the site. Punishment for rules broken in private may be harsher than it might be for breaking the same rule in open areas of the site.

By default, users are able to edit 5 posts across a rolling 2-hour period. Once that limit is reached the user will need to wait to edit again. This is done to combat what we call "malicious editing".

Malicious editing occurs when a user performs an edit to one or more of their posts in bad faith. This might be sneaking in an ad or spam, altering the content to violate a rule, altering content to attempt to hide previous violation of a rule or change the contents of a reported post to discredit someone who reported them, destroy the context of a thread, or other similar malicious activities.

If you are a trusted member and you need to edit posts more frequently or on a regular basis with good reason, this limit may be lifted for you by an administrator. Please reach out and we can assist you.

Users who are found to be abusing the edit feature maliciously may have their ability to edit their posts revoked entirely, or may be banned depending on the severity of the offense.

Our forum software stores a history of versions of posts, so when you make an edit staff members can still see the original version. Staff members also able to restore posts to a previous version if needed.

Our community is broken up into sections to organize the content our users post and to make it easy for other users to find and engage with content easily. Please make your best attempt to select the correct place when posting on our site.

ShotaWorld staff reserve the right to move any post or topic that is determined to be posted in the incorrect location. In some cases a temporary redirect link will show so that members know the content was moved, but this may not always be the case. If you post a thread and are later unable to find it, you may contact staff to see whether it may have been moved or deleted.

If you have suggestions for sections that do not yet exist, please leave a note in the Feedback and Suggestions forum. We will evaluate whether there is enough demand for a separate section or if the content you wish to post would fit well enough in an existing section.

Every person who accesses and uses our website and services is expected to participate in good faith to the benefit of themselves and the community. This includes all members and all staff.

It is inevitable that not everyone will get along. In the case of a disagreement or conflict, or if you feel another user is going against the spirit of our site, please first attempt to settle it with that user via Private Message. It is preferable to take such arguments out of public view so that other members are not impacted by the conflict. If you are unable to achieve a resolution in private, please contact a staff member to mediate.

If your issue is with a staff member (green username), and/or you feel this person is abusing their power or handling the situation unfairly, please contact an administrator (flashy, animated username).

The following behaviors are examples of what is not allowed:

• Spamming
• Ad hominem attacks (personal insults, name-calling, etc.)
• Harrassing
• Stalking
• Doxxing
• Acting in bad faith.

Discussion of political and religious topics, and debates of serious topics, are not allowed outside of the Debates section. The Debates section is restricted and requires an opt-in. Click here for more information on how to access it.

In the Debates section you must conduct yourself with respect and civility even when you disagree with another member's viewpoints. Staff reserve the right to permanently or temporarily restrict your access to the Debate section entirely if you are not debating respectfully and in good faith.

Please refrain from public discussion and commentary on moderation actions performed by ShotaWorld staff. If you disagree with an action taken by a staff member, you may reach out to that staff member via PM. If you wish to report an alleged misuse of power by a moderator (green username), please contact an administrator (flashy animated username).

It is generally inappropriate for staff members to publicly discuss a specific user's rule violations or subsequent punishments outside of dedicated channels (i.e. staff-only discussions or a private discussion with the affected user).

That being said, there have been instances where a user breaks a serious rule on our site and then goes to another site to complain about it publicly, trying to smear us and play the victim. In some such cases we may respond (with receipts) to show exactly what happened and defend our reputation.

ShotaWorld staff intends to response proportionately and fairly to rule violations. It is up to the staff member handling the rule violation to determine the appropriate consequence, based not only on the actual violation but also on the context of the overall situation, and the user's history of violating the same or other rules.

These are examples of actions a staff member may take in response to a rule violation:

• A warning may be posted in a thread to de-escalate a situation, diffuse a fight, or otherwise remind users of the rules.
• Offending posts or topics may be deleted
• Users may receive warnings via PM
• Users who continuously push the boundaries may be given additional restrictions to discourage further violations. In such a case, all additional restrictions will be clearly stated.
• Users may receive temporary or permanent bans. Bans are typically reserved for the most severe rule violations, such as posting CSAM, and when possible we will try to use less intense options first.

All punishments should be assumed to be final. We allow appeals if you feel that your punishment was too harsh, or if you disagree that a violation was committed in the first place.