Terms of Service

The agreement

These terms are an agreement between you and NPolls covering your use of npolls.com. By visiting the site, voting, commenting or creating an account, you accept them. If you do not, please do not use the site.

They work alongside our Privacy Policy, which explains what we do with your information.

Who may use NPolls

You must be at least 13 years old to create an account. If the law where you live sets a higher age for agreeing to online services, that age applies to you instead.

Reading polls and voting are open to everyone. An account is only needed to comment, react, follow other members or take part in Monthly Gifts.

Your account

• Give an email address you actually control. It is how we reach you, and how we verify a recovery request.
• Keep your password to yourself. Anything done through your account is treated as done by you.
• One account per person. Additional accounts used to vote more than once, inflate a Monthly Gifts score, or evade a suspension will all be removed.
• Do not impersonate anyone, and do not pick a username designed to suggest you are someone you are not.

Tell us at once if you think someone else has got into your account.

Voting rules

The results are the only thing this site really produces, so this is the section we enforce most strictly. You agree not to:

• Vote more than once on the same poll, whether through extra accounts, cleared cookies, proxies, VPNs or anyone else's device;
• Use a script, bot or automated tool to vote;
• Pay, organise or otherwise coordinate people to skew a result;
• Interfere with the counting in any other way.

Votes are final once cast and cannot be changed or withdrawn. We may discard votes we believe to be manipulated, and where a result has clearly been targeted we may annotate or reset the poll and say publicly that we have done so.

Please also understand what a result is. NPolls polls are self-selecting: they show what the people who chose to vote think, which is not the same as what a country, a fandom or the public thinks. They are not scientific surveys and should not be cited as though they were.

How to behave

Much of what we publish is contested — politics, conflict, religion, sport. Strong disagreement is expected and welcome. The line is between attacking an argument and attacking a person.

Do not post:

• Harassment, threats, or content attacking people over race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability;
• Anyone's private information — address, phone number, workplace, documents — whether or not you found it elsewhere;
• Spam, repetitive posting, or unsolicited promotion;
• Sexual content involving minors, or content that sexualises them in any way. This is reported to the authorities, not merely deleted;
• Content that is unlawful where you are, or that infringes someone else's copyright or trademark;
• Malware, phishing links, or anything designed to compromise other visitors;
• Deliberate falsehoods presented as fact in order to swing a poll.

You also agree not to scrape the site at a volume that degrades it for other people, to probe or attack our infrastructure, or to attempt to reach accounts and data that are not yours.

Content you post

Your comments remain yours. We claim no ownership of what you write.

By posting, you grant NPolls a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store, display and distribute that content on the site and in material promoting it — which is simply the permission required to show your comment to other readers. The licence ends when the content is deleted, except for copies already made in backups or by third parties such as search engines, which we cannot recall.

You confirm that what you post is yours to post and does not infringe anyone else's rights.

Content we publish

Poll questions, articles, the NPolls name and the design of the site belong to us or to our licensors. You may quote and link to them with attribution — that is what they are for. Republishing an article in full, or copying the site's design, requires our permission.

Poll results are facts, and facts are not owned. Cite the figures freely; please link back so readers can see the sample and the date.

Monthly Gifts

Monthly Gifts recognise members who contribute constructively. Scoring, tie-breaks and prize ranges are set out on that page and in the FAQ.

• Deleted or moderated comments score nothing.
• Reactions to your own comments score nothing.
• Coordinated reacting, extra accounts, or posting filler to inflate a score disqualifies you.
• Gifts are discretionary. We may adjust the scoring or pause the programme, and will announce it if we do.

Our decision on a month's winner is final. Where a score was reached through manipulation, we will pass the prize to the next eligible member.

Moderation and enforcement

Comments can be reported by any signed-in member, and reports go to a moderation queue that is actually read. Where something breaks these terms we may remove it, hide a thread, suspend an account, or ban one outright. Serious cases — threats, child sexual content — go straight to a ban and, where appropriate, to law enforcement.

We aim to act proportionately, and a first minor breach usually means the comment goes and nothing else. We are not obliged to monitor everything posted, and not removing something is not endorsement of it.

If you think we got a decision wrong, say so through the contact form. We will look again, and we do sometimes reverse decisions.

Availability and changes

We work to keep NPolls available, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. The site may go down for maintenance, upgrades or reasons outside our control.

We may add, change or withdraw features, close polls, or retire articles. Where a change materially affects members — the Monthly Gifts rules, for instance — we will give notice on the site rather than making it silently.

These terms may change too. The date at the top will change with them, and continuing to use the site after that means accepting the new version.

Disclaimers and liability

NPolls is provided "as is". To the extent the law allows, we make no warranties about the site's availability, accuracy or fitness for a particular purpose.

Comments are written by members and express their views, not ours. Articles are written in good faith but may contain errors — tell us and we will correct them. Poll results describe the people who voted, nothing more, and should not be relied on for financial, medical, legal or safety decisions.

To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from your use of the site. Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected.

Ending the agreement

You may stop using NPolls whenever you like, and ask us to delete your account through the contact form. What deletion does and does not remove is set out in the Privacy Policy.

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms. Where it is not a serious case we will normally explain what happened and give you a chance to respond.

Sections that by their nature should outlive the agreement — content licence, disclaimers, liability, governing law — continue to apply after it ends.

Governing law

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. Our not enforcing a rule on one occasion does not waive it.

These terms are governed by the laws applicable at the operator's principal place of business, without displacing any mandatory consumer protections available to you where you live. If you are a consumer, you may bring proceedings in your local courts.

Contacting us

Questions about these terms, copyright complaints, or moderation appeals: use the contact form or write to contact@npolls.com.

See also the Privacy Policy and the FAQ.