Half-Cover has created the follow editorial policies to help readers and contributors understand our editing and publishing process for submissions, blog posts, comments, and reviews. The Editorial Board will follow the policies listed below when publishing or editing content. Hence, think of this as Half-Cover’s constitution.

Contributors must agree to the following policies and conditions before submitting any work or content for publication to Half-Cover. Further policies can be found in the Contributor Guidelines.

Table of Contents

Editorial Board

  • The Editorial Board is responsible for administering Half-Cover. It is charged with scheduling, reviewing, and editing content in accordance with editorial standards (see below) and other site policies.  It is composed of Editors and led by the Editor-in-Chief.
  • The Editor-in-Chief is the owner and chief administrator of Half-Cover. He is ultimately responsible for the site’s operation, its content, and its finances. He is primarily concerned with the overall direction of the site. He has sole authority to approve or reject any published content. He also approves or rejects all contributor applications.
  • Editors are volunteers who work on the Editorial Board and assist the Editor-in-Chief. Their goal is to ensure that blog contributors can successfully turn their proposals into completed blogs. They supervise blog drafting, upkeep the blog schedule, provide feedback to contributors, and directly edit and review all submissions prior to publication.

Editorial Standards

  • Focused– Posts should be written about one particular topic or cover a specific story. Posts should attempt to make an explicit argument or take a stand on an issue whenever possible.
  • Readable – Posts must be easy to read and understand. They should not have excessive amounts of typos, grammatical mistakes, or stylistic errors that hinder reader comprehension.
  • Relevant – Posts should be pertinent to Dungeons and Dragons, roleplaying, or tabletop gaming. Posts concerning game mechanics or third-party materials should be focused on the Fifth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons.
  • Original – Posts should be original in terms of topic, argument, perspective or voice. Topics or arguments can be revisited by multiple authors as long as the content is being addressed in a different manner or style. Plagiarized content will not be tolerated.
  • Interesting – Post must have a topic that is interesting or engaging for readers. Post should also try to remain entertaining, insightful, or useful for readers. Redundant, poorly worded, or long-winded blog posts will be rejected.
  • Horizontal – Posts should attempt to engage with other blog authors and published blog posts on Half-Cover whenever possible. This can be accomplished through linking, referencing, challenging, supporting, or providing commentary on other published blog posts as well as co-authoring and collaborating with other contributors. Respectful  discourse between blog contributors is a mission of Half-Cover.
  • Categorized – Several blogs exist on Half-Cover and each one has a specific topic area it intends to cover. Post submitted to a blog should somehow connect to that blog’s topic area. If a post cannot be categorized within the existing blogs, a new blog may be created to accommodate it.
  • All content on Half-Cover is published with the permission of the author and is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • By submitting content for publication, the author confirms that he or she is the sole owner of the material and that he or she grants Half-Cover permission to publish, host, distribute, edit, archive, re-title, re-publish, and remove the content
  • Half-Cover only publishes content that fairly uses copyrighted materials in “transformative” ways such as using copyrighted content to provide commentary or criticism on a topic.
  • Outside of transformative works, Half-Cover does not knowingly publish official Dungeon and Dragons content or other copyrighted third-party content that is not under a Creative Commons License, Open Game License, or within the Standard Reference Document v5.1.
  • Authors are responsible for securing any publication or usage rights of artwork, images, graphs, and charts used within their blog posts.
  • Unauthorized usage of copyrighted materials can be reported to the Editorial Board.

Non-Exclusive Use and Publication

  • Half-Cover does not have or pursue exclusive usage rights or publication rights for any period of time.
  • All authors have the right to post, advertise, host, distribute or publish their content elsewhere without interference from Half-Cover.
  • Likewise, submissions can be already hosted, posted, or published elsewhere prior to publication on Half-Cover.

Plagiarism

  • Half-Cover does not knowingly publish plagiarized content. Individuals that believe content hosted on Half-Cover has been plagiarized should contact the Editorial Board about their complaint and provide proof of their complaint.

Opinions

  • The views expressed in any published content on Half-Cover are those of individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions or policies of Half-Cover or its Editorial Board.

Self-Promotion

  • Half-Cover allows for contributors to promote themselves within their published content and on their author profiles. However, this self-promotion should be limited within published content. It should not distract the reader, occupy a large portion of the content, or detract from the content’s readability, relevance, or focus.

Removing Content

  • Half-Cover strives for integrity, cohesiveness, and consistency within blogs and repository catalogs. For this reason, Half-Cover does not delete published content upon the request of authors or co-authors.
  • Published content on Half-Cover can only be deleted at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief or in compliance with the law.

Removing or Transferring Credit

  • Authors can request to remove their name from published content at any time. They can also transfer credit and authorship to co-authors or other blog contributors.
  • In the event where a primary author requests to remove themselves from their content, primary authorship will be transferred to Half-Cover or a co-author at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.
  • In the rare event where an author’s account is terminated due to misbehavior or a breach of site policies, primary authorship maybe transferred at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.
  • Authors can request that co-authors be removed from a published piece’s credits. The author must provide a sufficient explanation to the Editorial Board for removing a co-author. These request are subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief.

Reviews and Comments

  • All visitors, readers, contributors, and editors of Half-Cover are allowed to submit reviews on repository content and make comments on blog content. These individuals must agree to the following policies before submitting their review or comment for approval.
  • Both reviews and comments moderated and require approval from the Editorial Board before becoming public. Reviews and comments are judged based on their adherence to editorial standards and community guidelines. However, reviews and comments can be rejected or deleted for any reason, at any time, at the discretion of the Editorial Board.

Community Guidelines

  • Civility – Do not post reviews or comments that are disrespectful, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, homophobic or racially offensive.
  • Lawfulness – Do not post or submit reviews or comments that contain unlawful, copyrighted, or malicious materials. Do not incite people to commit any crime or violence.
  • No Spamming or Flooding – Do not post the same message or similar messages multiple times on the site.
  • No Advertising – Do not advertise or promote products or other websites without prior approval.
  • No Bypassing Safeguards – Do not attempt to bypass technical safeguards that limit the number of reviews or comments an individual can submit.
  • No Impersonation – Do not attempt to impersonate someone else/li>

Comment Standards

  • Relevant – Comments on a blog post must be somehow relevant to the blog post’s topic. Comments that are irrelevant or are not responding to the blog post, the author or another comment attached to the blog post will not be approved.
  • Written in English – Comments must be written entirely in English.
  • Respectful – Comments can express controversial or critical opinions. However, commenters should always follow community guidelines and remain respectful of the blog author(s) and other commenters.

Review Standards

  • Relevant – Reviews on any repository content must clearly be relevant to the material it is reviewing. Reviews that are vague or merely give unwarranted praise or detractions to content without citing any part of the reviewed content will not be approved.
  • Constructive – Reviews can be critical, but all reviews should provide some constructive feedback for the author(s) of the content. Constructive feedback can be used by authors to make revisions to content.
  • Content Focused – Reviews should be focused on the content or work itself. They should never be personal attacks aimed at the author(s) of the content.
  • Written in English – Reviews must be written entirely in English.
  • Respectful – Reviews can express critical opinions. However, comments should follow community guidelines and remain respectful of author(s) and other reviewers.

Misbehavior and Violations

  • Individuals violating community guidelines or other site policies may have their ability to post reviews or comments restricted. Contributors who violate these guidelines may also have their accounts terminated without notification or warning.

Review and Rating Authenticity

  • Half-Cover desires that reviews and ratings authentically and accurately represent the community’s evaluation of content. Hence, individuals are allowed to rate and write a review once per version of repository content.
  • Technical safeguards are in place to ensure that contributors or visitors do not post multiple reviews or ratings to artificially inflate or deflate content.
  • Contributor’s reviews and ratings are publicly linked to their account and appear on their profile page.
  • Any time a revision is published, individuals are allowed to rate the revised content and make another review of the content.
  • Reviews and ratings from any previous revision are archived and remain on the content’s page .

Changes or Amendments

  • Half-Cover reserves the right to change its editorial policies at any time. This page will contain the most up-to-date editorial policy information.
  • Contributors will be notified of any major changes or amendments made to the Editorial Policies.