KGS Terms of Service

KGS is intended to be a place where people can meet, talk, play go, review go games, study go, etc., in a friendly environment. People of all ages and from all countries are welcome at KGS. Always keep in mind that the other players on the server could be anybody - perhaps they are very young, or much older than you, and they may or may not even speak the same language as you. Try not to take offense too easily if somebody seems rude, but at the same time try to be as helpful and friendly as you can.

In addition to this general guideline, there are certain behaviors that are absolutely not tolerated at KGS:

• Discriminatory, offensive, or abusive speech of all kinds including racism, sexism, etc.
• Pornographic text (including URLs of pornographic web sites)
• Swearing
• Abuse directed at other KGS members
• "Flooding" (filling a chat area with text)
• Using KGS as an advertising medium. This includes setting up "ad games" (games where you don't want to play, but you just want the game's info line to appear in a room's game list) or using rooms, games, private chats, or messages to promote a business.
• Transferring copyrighted material to KGS (in particular it is not acceptable to do a live replay of a non-KGS game without the permission of the players and any organization that is hosting the game)
• Using modified or otherwise unauthorized clients
• Dishonest play during rated games. Rated games are meant to be serious games where player's strengths are tracked; if you want to just fool around and play, this is fine, but please make sure the game is "free" so that it won't affect the rating system. To be more specific, these are not allowed:
  • Intentionally losing rated games
  • Setting up rated games against yourself to boost an account's rank
  • Having other people play rated games for you

The KGS admins attempt to enforce these restrictions. Usually a warning will be given before any action is taken, but depending on the severity of the offense, the past history of the people involved, and the current situation, action may be taken with no warning.

When an admin makes a request, please comply even if you disagree with the admin. Ignoring the admin or arguing in public about it is likely to get you temporarily blocked from the server. If you disagree with the request the admin made, you can talk about it in private with the admin, or complain to admin@gokgs.com.

Please note that while the KGS admins try to enforce these rules, we cannot guarantee that they will always be evenly enforced. KGS is operated by volunteers, and at times there will be no admin present. If you see somebody behaving in a way that is inappropriate, please check for admins (their names will be marked by stars in user lists) and report the situation to them. If you cannot find an admin, please email a description of what happened to admin@gokgs.com.

Privacy Policy

KGS does not give email information to any outside company without explicitly getting permission from you. If your email address is non-private, then other people on the server may get your email address and use it, but even in that case KGS itself will not provide the information to outside organizations.

While you are on KGS, there is no guarantee of privacy. All conversations on KGS are logged. Admins may check these logs when there are accusations of improper behavior; in the process of checking these logs, they may see conversations that are unrelated to the accusations, so even when there is no reason to look at your conversations, an admin may read anything you write. As a rule, if something must be kept private, do not say it on KGS.