Overview
Malmal offers a fun and safe place for artists to connect with each other through the world of collaborative drawing. We encourage artists to collaborate, share, and communicate. Any behaviour that intentionally disturbs other’s enjoyment is not tolerated. To maintain a positive atmosphere, we expect everyone to treat each other with respect.
This page is a list of the site-wide rules and also contains a FAQ section to answer common questions.
Table of Contents
Rules
By using Malmal, you agree to uphold these rules and the Terms of Service. Failure to follow these rules can result in a warning, temporary ban or global ban. If you come across someone violating the rules, we encourage you to report them. Users who evade bans, enable ban evaders or encourage breaking of rules will also be subject to consequences.
For step by step instructions on how to make reports for different settings, please scroll to the “Reports” section.
Malmal Moderators are passionate about keeping the community safe and happy, and will investigate all rule violations or situations that otherwise disrupt the community and its members.
What the Moderation-Team is responsible for:
- Investigating all sides of a conflict and de-escalate
- Keeping a neutral and professional demeanor
- Making informed decisions as a team
Moderators will extend investigations to other websites or social media platforms should the need arise. This might happen in serious situations or when topics like art theft are on the table.
Moderators will not take sides or mediate a situation. Every artist themself is responsible for disengaging in a conflict situation and for showing behavior that deescalates conflicts.
§1. No Spamming in Chat
Intentionally interfering with the flow of conversation and repeatedly filling chat with disruptive messages is not allowed.
Examples of spam include: intentionally sending multiple messages without response, resending the same message multiple times, using unreadable fonts, begging for karma, as well as reposting links between multiple boards to garner attention.
§2. No “Not-Safe-For-Work” Art or Topics in Public Areas
Do not draw, share, or discuss implied or otherwise explicit material in any public or SFW 
Malmal drawing boards, this includes Malmal’s Discord server.
Implied explicitness and fully explicit drawings and conversations must be limited to drawing boards that are marked NSFW 
.
What is NSFW content?
“Implied”, “Explicit”, “Not Safe For Work” content includes but is not limited to:
- Exposed genitalia, this includes emphasis on these areas under clothing. In some cases: Stomach hair/body hair
- Explicit sexual poses/situations
- Fetish art
- Simulated or implied sexual acts
- Highly sexualized depictions of characters
- Using the terms “Mommy” or “Daddy” in a sexualized/NSFW way when depicting two consenting adults
- Extreme body horror
- Illegal subject matter, including drugs and criminal activity. The glorification of smoking and drinking is not allowed at all, same goes for abuse of alcohol, cigarettes and other drugs.
- Violence and use of weapons. (Just depicting weapons without their violent context is okay, for example a knight carrying a sword or a soldier holding a gun.)
- Horror elements that combine gore, shock, repulsion and would lead to a movie being rated “adults only”. (Just depicting characters from movies without their violent context is okay, for example a creepy clown.)
When in doubt about a drawing or conversation, use an NSFW drawing board. If you are a minor, don’t engage/draw/speak with and in any NSFW content at all. As an adult, never engage/draw/speak in or about NSFW content outside of NSFW boards at all.
The following types of NSFW-content are strictly prohibited and will be penalized:
- Beastiality, as any bestiality is non-consensual. This includes real animals, fantasy animals and animal-like fictional creatures. (Adult anthropomorphics like furries are okay on NSFW boards, as they imply the ability to consent due to their adult age).
- Depictions of Incest, as non-consensuality is always implied, even between adults.
- Necrophilia, as it is non-consensual in all cases.
- Extreme (sexual) violence (including CNC), as it is not clear if a situation is consensual. It is also very disturbing to other artists.
- Controversial political or religious statements, as they are very disruptive to the community.
- Minors, as it is non-consensual in all cases. Sexualisation or fetishisation of and involving minors is not allowed under any circumstances. This includes real people, fictional characters, original characters, fan art, and characters whose age is ambiguous or intentionally presented as young.
Any characters in popular media who are canonically considered minors will never be treated as an adult, even if their age has been changed or “aged up” by the artist.
What is gore?
Gore is the graphic depiction of severe injuries, bodily damage, or death. This includes artwork that contains exposed organs, dismemberment, mutilation, exposed bone or tissue, and extensive blood or blood pooling.
Minor injuries, limited amounts of blood, simple anatomical structures, and stylized/cartoon violence where there is little or no realistic injury detail, are not considered gore.
Context, severity, detail, and overall presentation will be taken into consideration when determining whether artwork or conversations fall under NSFW guidelines and the resulting actions thereafter.
What is NOT NSFW?
Context and presentation are what determine if something is “not safe for work”.
A character's body shape, including having a curvy, overweight, or developed figure, is not inherently NSFW.
Form-fitting, athletic, or revealing-but-non-explicit clothing does not automatically mean it is sexual content.
Mild depictions of blood in a cartoon style, as it would be found in media that is rated safe for children, is not encouraged but also not strictly prohibited.
Producing NSFW Content
You may only enable NSFW if you are at least 18 years of age.
If you enable NSFW and are found to be under 18, you will be banned from the site until you are of age.
This feature is not available on the iOS or Android apps.
Drawing and discussing NSFW content on boards that do not have an NSFW tag is strictly prohibited. The content will be removed and repeated violation of this rule will result in a global ban.
§3. Harassment
We do not tolerate harassment, this includes general and targeted harassment.
Racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist and all other discriminatory remarks and drawings will be viewed as harassment. Cursewords and acronyms for curses in board titles and gallery posts will be redacted.
In addition, verbal harassment includes slurs, death threats, doxxing, and repeated unwanted contact through private and public boards as well as comment threads in a user’s gallery.
Erasing or scribbling over others’ artwork is also considered harassment.
- Collaboration is encouraged, but please ask for permission before drawing with others.
In the event of verbal harassment, it is recommended to first ask the offender to stop.
If harassment continues, disengage and report the person/chat/conversation on the board via the report tool and block them. Engaging with the perpetrator may lead you to being part of rule breaking as well.
§4. Be Respectful and Avoid Controversial Subjects
To promote the safety of the malmal community and to stay in line with the main purpose of malmal, a strict ban on controversial discussions is enforced. Topics that are considered controversial often instigate heated arguments and debates; all political and religious discussion is restricted to private boards.
- Respectful, thoughtful discussion on controversial topics is allowed on private boards, but is not allowed on public boards.
Be aware if your comments are making users uncomfortable, please be more respectful and adjust your behaviour.
§5. Proper Gallery Posting
Gallery posts are a great place to show your creativity and art skills.
Images posted to your gallery should be created by you, even with permission from the original artist. In case of collaboration, a significant amount of prediscussed contribution has to come from you. Stolen art will be removed from your account and you will receive a warning.
It is expected that a reasonable amount of effort is put into content that is posted to the gallery. This means that posts limited to lines or scribbles, handwritten text, or other low-effort/personal content are subject to removal by the Moderation team. This is not a judgement of your skill, this is to give all artists the opportunity to showcase their best work.
It is acceptable to publish in-progress versions of your work to the gallery. However, please refrain from posting the same drawing multiple times with minimal change to the piece.
- These are referred to as “duplicate posts” and are subject to removal by the Moderation team. You can update a WIP-Post by clicking the three dots and choosing “Update Image”.
§6. Automated tools
Usage of automated drawing tools/bots is not permitted on Malmal.
Using such a tool will lead to an immediate ban.
§7. Additional rules
Malmal is not a dating app/site, so don’t post details about your status as a single in your bio or elsewhere.
Reports
1. How to create a report
You can report the following: Stroke on a board, single chat messages, whole chat, user profile, gallery posts, user activity.
- To report a stroke on a board, right-click or long press (hand tool) and click “Inspect”. Select the stroke, click the three dots and “Report”.
- To report a board, click the three dots and “report”.
- To report a chat message, click on the chat message and “Report”. You can also click on the three dots next to a username in chat, and “Report”.
- To report a user profile, go to the profile and click “report” in the three-dot-menu. For a better overview, please report the actions of a user themselves if you can, not just their profile. Unless their profile bio or name itself contains inappropriate content.
After reporting a user we recommend blocking them to prevent further interactions.
- To report a gallery post, click on the three dots and “report”.
- To report user activities, go to the activity section on their profile and “report” via the three-dot-menu.
2. Proper Use of Reports
We encourage you to report any users that are behaving in a disrespectful manner and in violation of our site Rules.
However, falsely reporting another user with the sole intent of restricting them is an abuse of the report system and will result in penalties to your account.
FAQ
How to report improper Moderator behaviour?
Please report any improper behaviour from a moderator on Malmal using this form. It will be reviewed by Lucas (Dev, Admin, Owner).
I was unjustly banned. What can I do?
The following links lead to google forms where you can appeal to have your account reinstated. Please supply as much information as possible for the Moderation and Admin team to review.
- Use this form to dispute a ban if you have evidence that the ban was mishandled or enforced without proper justification → Ban Dispute
How do I become a Moderator or volunteer my time to help Malmal?
Thank you for your interest in volunteering your time! If moderator positions are open, it will be announced via a banner on the Malmal home page. That said, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Lucas if you have other ideas or ways you’d like to help your community on Malmal.