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1. Your site must be related to classic computing
It has to contain contents in relation to classic computer software or hardware, such as game reviews or walkthroughs, downloads of free or abandoned applications or operating system, manuals or even listings of hardware specifications.
2. Absolutely no 'warez' of any kind
This ring concentrates on promoting the idea of Abandonware. If your site is offering illegal downloads, only those of truly abandoned software are allowed here. We expect every webmaster to have informed himself about the meaning of this and thought about whether his/her site matches this definition of not.
3. No porn on your site
This is, of course, subject to our interpretation. Anything even remotely reminding of pornography is giving our scene a bad name, so we are quite strict about it.
4. No links to warez or porn sites
Your site shouldn't contain links to other websites which carry either since these things don't have a place in our scene.
5. You must have a TUOL-Button (linked to http://www.tuol.org/) on your main page
6. Do not copy contents from other sites
Stealing reviews, screenshots or any other contents another webmaster came up with is probably the lowest you can sink. Also, just mirroring another site and not adding anything unique isn't really productive and therefore not accepted.
7. No linkstealing
Linking directly to another site's files costs the respective webmasters money and steals credit for providing these files away from them.
8. No obstrusive ads
We are aware that server costs can easily go through the roof, but your website has to stay usable. Pop-ups are one of the most annoying forms of advertisements, so your site shouldn't contain too many of them. Also, if your site contains more 'conventional' banners than unique contents, it will be rejected. Forcing visitors to click banners isn't acceptable, either, since support from the visitors has to be purely voluntarily. How many ads are still acceptable for your site depends on its type, of course. Huge download archives spread over several dedicated servers certainly need more ads than a pure review site hosted on Geocities.
9. No commercialized sites
It's against the spirit of Abandonware to make money with the work of others. That means that sites with the obvious goal to make profit will not be accepted. Selling copied games, making some of your services paid or basically anything involving money (other than the option for voluntary donations, of course) isn't tolerated.
10. All contents of your site have to be freely accessable
Forced registration is only ok if it's totally free and if all contents are immediately accessable after that. It's not allowed to give out any contents to special restricted groups of people, like contributors, forum regulars or donators.
11. Do not lie to your visitors about legality
You don't have to explain all the possible legal consequences of Abandonware and warn your visitors of anything that might happen, but telling them that Abandonware is legal is not acceptable either. If you don't want to talk about Abandonware being illegal just don't tell anything else - after all you might WISH Abandonware was legal, but up to now it isn't! Same goes for other weird disclaimers about a '24-hour-rule' or the 'Internet Privacy Act' which are nothing but urban legends.
12. TUOL reserves the right to remove any site from our listing for any reason we see fit or for no reason at all
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