GamingOnLinux.com User Safety Notice
Last updated: 24th December, 2024.
You can contact us any time using this email: [email protected]. This goes direct to the owner, Liam Dawe. Please do get in touch if you're concerned with anything, have complaints or if you feel we need to update this page.
We also suggest you read our Ethics policy, which also contains information on our affiliate programs. And also our Privacy Policy.
GamingOnLinux is a news blog dedicated to Linux Gaming, Open Source, Steam Deck and SteamOS. We are committed to fostering a safe and positive online environment for all our readers.
What is this page?
This page describes our focus on safety including for readers of any age that happen to get linked to the website including both adults and children.
What we do
User registration: we have clear rules on acceptable content and an age gate. We also check usernames for certain special words like "Staff" or "Moderator" to prevent people having potentially confusing and misleading names that could cause problems. User profiles are also private by default, registered users have to opt-in to have their profile public.
We have active moderation systems in place. Any time a new user registers their posts go through manual approval for a while before we're satisfied that they're a legimate account.
Available on every single article comment is a dedicated Report button, allowing registered users to submit a concern or complaint about any individual comment. This includes clear options for reporting anything harmful, illegal, spam and more.
We also have a dedicated report option on users profiles. So users can report a problem with a user profile directly.
We do not allow users to privately message each other. This is reserved only for moderators to do moderation and site admin.
We do not allow users to post in a forum. The current forum only allows staff to post website updates. This was allowed prior to December 18th, 2024. Older posts are kept up purely for historical reasons.
Normal users are not able to upload an avatar. Users start with a default we provide or they can pick one from our gallery, or our system will generate one (if users select the option) that's based on their username initials with a few minor customizations like background, font and border colour. Our system provides these options built-in, so we fully control it.
Our search systems do not search other websites, they're only internal searches. So we control the content from searches. Users can not search for other users, there's simply no feature for this on the website.
Uploaded Media / User Generated Content
Registered users can comment on published articles. This is to discuss the article subject. Inside article comments users can not directly upload any media, only text and plain links.
Registered users can submit an article, but this goes through completely manual approvals where we check over everything first and we don't always publish what's sent in. On this form, users can upload media to our servers, but again, we check it directly before anyone sees it. Any harmful content will not be published and will be promptly removed. If someone used this submissions form to upload harmful media (so it's hosted by us), but didn't submit the article (so the uploaded media remains on our server), the uploaded media is auto-deleted by our systems after 24 hours.
Registered users can upload a small 125x125 author photo. The author photo is only ever shown in public to readers / users below a manually approved and published article (see above) and so we moderate it and check it's okay before publishing. Our team also have their author photos displayed on the About Us page.
Registered users can block another user easily too, so they don't have to see any comments from specified users if they don't wish to. Users can do the same with our directly published article content too, they can block specific content tags if they don't wish to see them in the article list.
Registered users are able to fill out their PC (Personal Computer) information (example: Graphics Card model), which is then added to our Statistics page. This is entirely opt-in, and all options available to pick come from our own database so we control the content. They are not able to enter any custom "user generated" content here, it's all information they pick from our system.
If a registered user's profile has been reported to us, we will act accordingly and remove any harmful content.
We have a clear email address listed in many places for users to contact directly.