Rules
Most of this comes down to showing proof and playing fair.
What belongs here
Anything hidden on purpose by the people who made the thing: references, homages, jokes, secrets, hidden rooms and messages, bonus features, cheat codes, dev signatures, audio samples, parodies, deleted content, hidden tracks, real-life crossovers. Glitches and exploits count too (they have their own types, so they're labelled as what they are). Not sure? Post it. Moderators sort the edge cases.
What doesn't
- Normal content you find by playing normally. A boss is not an egg.
- Stuff added by mods, unless the basket is for the mod itself.
- Theories with nothing in the game to back them up.
- Anything you can't show. You need proof, every time.
- Nudity or sexual content, hate, harassment, doxxing, real-world gore. That goes for eggs, comments and names. It comes down right away and usually gets you banned.
One egg, one page
The earliest egg keeps the page. Post the same find again and moderators merge yours into the original. Your link redirects there and the 20 points come off. It's not a punishment. We just keep every egg at one address. If you found it first out in the world but someone else wrote it up here, don't repost it. Contest the Discovered by credit on the original with dated proof instead (or add the proof in its comments if the credit isn't verified yet).
Play fair
- One account each. Alts and vote rings get every account involved marked Unranked: your points stay logged, but you're off every leaderboard.
- Don't trade votes. (You can't upvote your own eggs anyway.)
- A discovery credit needs a dated public source: an old video, a forum post, an archived tweet. Claiming a find that isn't yours is the fastest way to Unranked.
- Report honestly. A report that's accepted earns you +3; one that's rejected costs one point (−1).
- Use your own evidence or say where it came from. Never strip someone's watermark.
How moderation works
- Who. Admins, site moderators and basket moderators. Basket mods are hunters who know that basket: once you have 10 eggs in a basket and 30 days on the site, an Apply to moderate box appears on the basket's About tab. A site moderator accepts or declines; if it's a yes, the moderator tools appear on the site. Admins and site moderators can also appoint directly.
- New eggs start unverified. That's normal and you still get your +20. A moderator marks it verified once the proof shows it's real and described right. We aim for 3 days.
- Thin proof gets a dispute, with a public note saying what's missing. You have 14 days to add better evidence before the egg is removed.
- Removed on sight. Things that aren't easter eggs, spam, stolen evidence and anything harmful.
- Duplicates merge into the earliest stamp. Always the earliest, even if the newer write-up is nicer. Add to the original in its comments instead.
- Illegal content (copyright, private information, threats, hate, fraud, a child at risk) can be reported by anyone, with or without an account, at /report-content. Site moderators read those first, and the person who reported it is told the decision.
- Reports never remove anything on their own. However many come in, a person looks and decides. Three from different hunters, or one from a moderator, put the egg at the front of the queue. The single automatic action on the site is a safety hold: three different hunters reporting harmful content takes the egg out of feeds and search until a moderator decides. The page stays up, marked "under review", and comes back the moment the reports are rejected. Nobody resolves reports on their own egg.
- Nobody moderates their own work. The site won't let a mod verify or feature their own egg, or verify a credit that names them.
- Sanctions go warning, then Unranked, then a ban. Alts, vote rings, fake credits, harassment, repeat spam.
- Everything a mod does is logged and shown in each egg's history. Think a call was wrong? Report the egg with your evidence, or email legal@wildwasteland.com.
- How moderators work, step by step, is public too: the moderating guide.