While the Contest Week last year generally goes without much issues, unfortunately there was a particular problem relating to some contest entrants acting in a rather disrespectful and unprofessional way, very much the low point of what was a generally decent Contest Week overall. We will not have this happen again, therefore we have an Entrants' Code of Conduct this year, just like how we introduced a Judges' Code of Conduct last year.
These are a set of rules and guidelines to follow for this, and subsequent, years.
All entrants of the SHC (both the Contest and the Expo) will agree to the following as part of their submissions:
We encourage anyone who sees the above to report any issues to SHC Staff should submitters break these rules.
Do note we can't control what goes on in outside spaces (such as a non-SHC Discord server) but if brought to our attention we can look into it and discuss the issue raised with the affected parties (including the entrant themselves) and take action accordingly if required. We have moderator or above contacts in many community servers we can go to if needed should the issue occur there.
If the issues take place in SHC hosted spaces (the contest site, the Discord, any other SHC provided services) then SHC staff absolutely have a right to intervene. Public spaces such as Twitter are also something we can take into consideration as they are not private profiles. Everything else ultimately is a case by case basis.
Any action taken will depend on how severe the rule break is. For some cases a warning will suffice. At the most extreme, we can and will disqualify contest entries submitted, void any votes, and have it put in the expo, if these issues occur during the Contest Week.
We do not want to ban entries, but we must have respect from entrants, regardless if it's towards the public, our streamers, our staff, etc.
The SHC is the time of the year where hacks and mods get the highest exposure from the public.
Don't risk your entry getting bad attention because of you.
If anyone has an issue with these guidelines, please contact SHC Staff to discuss your case.