Terms of Service
TropeWeaver • tropeweaver.co.uk • UK + COPPA
At a glance for parents
TropeWeaver is designed for wholesome discovery for younger readers and filtered discovery for teens.
- Anyone can have an account, but 12 and under need parent or guardian permission and supervision.
- 12 and under: sees only spice 0-1. Everything spicy 2+ is hidden everywhere — Popular, search, trope pages, TBR, Recommendations, shared links and Profile history. Cannot submit any 2+ ratings or tags.
- 13-15: sees only spice 0-2. Books averaging 3+ hidden everywhere. Cannot see or submit 3+.
- 16+: full access 1-5.
- Age is checked via a pop-up that cannot be skipped. If your child is 12 or under, by letting them create the account and enter their DOB you give consent under COPPA and UK GDPR for us to collect the minimal data needed to provide Tier 1 filtering.
- Filtering is based on community average spice ratings and is best effort — if a book has no ratings yet it may appear until rated. Please report mis-rated books via Contact.
Full tier details are in Section 3 below. This box is a quick summary, not the full legal text.
1. Introduction and acceptance
Welcome to TropeWeaver, a community-built archive for discovering books by tropes, moods, dynamics and spice level. These Terms of Service (Terms) govern your use of tropeweaver.co.uk, our accounts, and any tagging, rating, review or suggestion you submit.
By accessing the site, creating an account, or submitting content you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. The Privacy Policy explains how we handle your date of birth, age flags and COPPA compliance in detail. If you do not agree, please do not use TropeWeaver. We may update these Terms; continued use after changes means you accept the updated version. We will post the new last-updated date and highlight material changes where reasonable.
2. What TropeWeaver does
TropeWeaver lets readers tag books with tropes, star ratings, spice level (1-5), burn speed, pace, point of view and other patterns to help others find stories they will love. Book metadata and cover images come from Open Library, Google Books API, IsbnDB and community suggestions. We operate a three-tier age restriction system based on community average spice ratings to keep discovery age-appropriate. We do not sell books directly and our recommendations are driven by community data and your personal filters, not paid placement.
3. Eligibility, age requirements and three-tier system
Protecting younger readers is central to how TropeWeaver works. We enforce age via a mandatory date-of-birth gate and a three-tier restriction model based on the community average spice rating per book.
Who can have an account: anyone, with parent permission for 12 and under
Anyone can create an account on TropeWeaver. If you are 12 or under you may only create and use an account if your parent or guardian has given permission and supervises your use. By allowing you to create the account and enter your date of birth, they consent to our collection of the minimal data needed to provide age-appropriate filtering as described in our Privacy Policy. If parent permission is not given or is withdrawn, we will restrict the account to Tier 1 and delete it and all associated personal data within 30 days on request or if we learn no permission exists. For UK GDPR, 13 is the age of consent for information society services; for under-13 users in the US we rely on this parental permission as COPPA verifiable parental consent for this limited, age-gated service.
- Spice levels are community-averaged. A book’s average is the mean of all spice_ratings submitted for that book. If not yet rated, it remains visible until rated by the community.
- We make best efforts to filter correctly, but filtering depends on community accuracy. We do not guarantee perfect filtering. Report mis-rated books via Contact.
- Shared links enforce the viewer’s tier, not the sharer’s. If you share a list containing spice 3 books, a 14-year-old opening it will see those books hidden with a banner explaining why.
4. Age verification process
Mandatory AgeGateDialog for all ages including 12 and under
After your first login you must complete the AgeGateDialog. You provide date of birth in YYYY-MM-DD format. The dialog cannot be dismissed, skipped or bypassed without providing a valid date. If you close the browser and return, it will re-appear until completed. This applies to all users, including those aged 12 and under with parent permission.
Parental consent for 12 and under
If you are 12 or under, your parent or guardian must supervise account creation and give permission before you enter your DOB and use the site. By allowing you to do so, they consent to our collection of minimal age data and account data for the purpose of providing Tier 1 (spice 0-1 only) age-filtered access. For US COPPA purposes, this permission counts as verifiable parental consent for our limited collection.
Validation
We validate that DOB is not in the future, is after 1900-01-01, and forms a valid calendar date. We calculate age, is_13_plus, is_16_plus and max_allowed_spice from it and save those to your private UserProfile. For 12 and under max_allowed_spice is 1, so everything spicy 2+ is hidden.
Local cache
After successful verification we cache tw_dob, tw_age, tw_is13plus, tw_is16plus in your browser localStorage for performance. This cache is cleared on logout and never sent to third parties. It allows us to filter content client-side without an extra server fetch each time.
What if you refuse
You cannot use TropeWeaver beyond the age gate without providing DOB. If you refuse, or if you are 12 or under and your parent does not give permission, you should not create or use an account.
False DOB
Providing a false DOB to bypass tier restrictions is a breach of these Terms. It will result in account suspension or deletion and removal of ratings. We reserve the right to reset your DOB to force re-entry, or to request additional verification if we suspect abuse, though we do not collect government ID or documents by default — only self-declared DOB.
Admin reset
Administrators can delete your stored DOB (for example if you request correction via the Contact Form — select "Data / Privacy Request"). On next login the age gate re-appears so you can re-enter your correct DOB. Parents can also request deletion for their child via the same contact.
5. Accounts and responsibilities
- You are responsible for keeping your login secure and for all activity under your account. If you are a parent who has allowed a child 12 or under to use TropeWeaver, you are responsible for supervising that account.
- You must provide accurate information and keep it updated, including your date of birth where requested for age verification. One person, one account. Parents must not falsify a child’s age to access higher tiers.
- You must not share accounts, use automated tools to scrape book data, mass-create tags, or attempt to bypass age gates, rate limits or RLS protections.
- If you provide false age information or attempt to view content above your tier via manipulation, we may suspend or remove your account and delete offending tags or ratings.
- If you believe a child 12 or under is using TropeWeaver without parent permission, or a user under 16 is accessing 16+ content, report it via Contact so we can investigate, restrict to Tier 1, and delete if permission is not confirmed.
6. Community content — your tagging licence
When you submit trope tags, star ratings, spice / burn / pace / point-of-view ratings, reviews, TBR interactions or book suggestions, you keep ownership of your personal expression, but you grant TropeWeaver a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide licence to store, display, aggregate, adapt and distribute that content on TropeWeaver and in aggregated trope statistics, for as long as it remains on the service.
You confirm your contribution is your own work based on books you have read, and does not infringe intellectual property. We may edit for consistency (for example standardising spelling to British English) and remove or merge tags at our discretion to keep the archive usable. If you delete your account, we will remove or anonymise your personal contributions within 30 days where feasible; anonymised aggregates may remain.
7. Tagging rules and content restrictions by age
To keep tagging safe and age-appropriate:
- Spice ratings are numeric only: you rate 1-5 (or allowed subset for your tier). You must not write explicit sexual detail in trope names, tag text or reviews. Keep descriptions focused on story patterns (e.g. slow burn, enemies to lovers) not explicit acts.
- 12 and under (Tier 1 — parent permission): can have an account with parent permission but can only view spice 0-1, cannot see anything spicy 2+ — it is hidden everywhere. Cannot submit spice 2+ ratings or tags that describe romantic or sexual content beyond wholesome patterns. Any 2+ ratings attempted will be blocked and removed. Accounts are for wholesome discovery only.
- 13-15: cannot submit spice 3+ ratings. Attempts to rate 3-5 will be blocked in UI and rejected server-side if attempted via manipulation.
- 16+: can submit all spice levels, but must remain within acceptable use — no pornographic detail, no sexual content involving minors (zero tolerance), no gratuitous explicit language.
- Tag text rules for all ages: no hate speech, no harassment, no personal data about real people, no large copyrighted extracts, no spam or self-promotion.
- We moderate community tags and reserve the right to edit, hide or remove any content and to limit tagging privileges. Abuse of age gates (e.g. attempting to submit disallowed ratings via API) is treated as a breach of acceptable use.
8. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- Bypass, attempt to bypass, or encourage others to bypass age gates or spice filters.
- Provide false DOB, use another person’s DOB, or create multiple accounts to evade tier restrictions.
- Submit ratings or tags above your allowed tier, or submit explicit detail when only a numeric rating is allowed.
- Post or submit content that includes hate speech, harassment, bullying, threats or discrimination.
- Post or submit sexual content involving minors, sexual descriptions of minors, or any attempt to sexualise minors — zero tolerance, immediate deletion and reporting where required by law.
- Post pornographic imagery, gore, or gratuitous explicit detail. Spice ratings are numeric or short label only.
- Include large verbatim extracts from copyrighted books (short titles and brief fair-dealing quotes of a sentence or two are acceptable).
- Submit spam, self-promotion, affiliate spam, misleading information, or attempt to impersonate authors, other readers, or staff.
- Scrape, crawl, or use automated scripts beyond normal personal browsing, or attempt to access UserProfile data of other users via RLS bypass.
We moderate and may edit, hide or remove any content, limit tagging privileges, or suspend accounts that breach these rules. Report breaches via the Contact form.
9. Intellectual property and book covers
- The TropeWeaver name, design, layout and custom code are owned by TropeWeaver.
- Book cover images, titles and author names remain the property of their respective publishers and authors and are shown for identification and review under fair dealing / fair use.
- Book metadata from Open Library and Google Books is used under their respective terms and may include community-contributed data. We do not claim ownership.
- If you are a rights holder and believe an image or description should be removed, contact us and we will review promptly.
10. Affiliate disclosure — UK ASA compliance
TropeWeaver participates in UK affiliate programmes: Waterstones via AWIN (Publisher ID 2990225, Advertiser 3787), Bookshop.org UK (ID 17793) and Amazon UK Associates (ID tropeweaver0c-21). When you click a Buy link we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Links are marked with disclosure in the footer and open in a new tab with rel="sponsored noopener". Affiliate status does not influence which books are shown, how tropes are ranked, or how age filtering works. We comply with UK Advertising Standards Authority and CMA guidance on affiliate disclosure. Your DOB is never shared with affiliate partners.
11. No guarantee of availability or pricing
Book availability, pricing, stock status and editions change constantly and are controlled by retailers and external APIs. TropeWeaver does not guarantee that any linked book will be in stock, at a particular price, or in a specific format. Descriptions, publication years and genres are aggregated from external sources and community input and may include errors. Spice average filtering is based on community submissions and we do not guarantee complete filtering accuracy.
12. Disclaimers and limitation of liability
TropeWeaver is provided on an as-is and as-available basis. We make no warranties about accuracy, completeness or suitability of trope tags, spice averages or book data, which are community opinions and third-party data. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential losses arising from your use of the service, third-party retailer transactions, or reliance on community tags or age filtering. Nothing limits liability that cannot be limited under UK law, including for personal injury caused by negligence or fraud. Age filtering is a best-effort safety feature, not a guarantee of blocking all mature content, especially for books not yet community-rated.
13. COPPA compliance and children’s safety
We take children’s safety seriously and comply with COPPA even though we are UK-focused, and we now explicitly allow 12 and under to have accounts with parent permission on a restricted basis:
- 12 and under allowed with parent permission: TropeWeaver allows readers 12 and under to create an account if a parent or guardian has given permission and supervises use. The account is restricted to Tier 1 — spice 0-1 only. Everything spicy 2+ is hidden everywhere and cannot be submitted. This is designed so younger readers can discover wholesome books without seeing anything spicy.
- Parental consent under COPPA: by allowing a child 12 or under to create the account and enter DOB in the mandatory AgeGateDialog, the parent provides verifiable parental consent under COPPA to our collection of the limited personal data needed to run the restricted account (email, display name, DOB, age flags, TBR, read history, challenge progress, Tier 1 tags and ratings). We collect no more than is necessary for age filtering and core reading-list features. We do not collect government ID.
- No sale of child data, no behavioural advertising to children: DOB and age tier data are never sold, never used for advertising, and never shared with book-data providers (Open Library, Google Books, IsbnDB) or affiliate partners (AWIN, Amazon, Bookshop.org). We show no personalised ads to anyone, including children.
- Parental rights and withdrawal: a parent or guardian can submit a request via our Contact Form — select Child Data Request / Parental Request — at any time to review what personal information we have collected from their child, direct us to delete it, and refuse to allow further collection or use. We verify parental status before disclosing data and delete within 30 days. If permission is not given or is withdrawn, we will delete the child’s account and data within 30 days.
- 13-15 and 16+: 13-15 are Tier 2 (spice 0-2 only), 16+ are Tier 3 full access. Same minimal collection. Spice ratings are numeric only, no explicit detail.
- Further information: for FTC COPPA guidance see ftc.gov. See our Privacy Policy Section 8 for retention, security and international transfer details for children’s data.
14. Governing law
These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any disputes will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales, although you may also have rights to bring proceedings in your local courts if you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland.
15. Changes
We may update these Terms as TropeWeaver evolves, for example if we change age tiers, filtering logic, or tagging rules. We will post the updated version here with a new last-updated date. Material changes, especially to age requirements or COPPA handling, will be highlighted on the site where reasonable and, if you have an account, via email.
16. Contact
Questions about these Terms? Contact us via the Contact form — select "Data / Privacy Request", "Child Data Request / Parental Request" or "General Inquiry". For child data, use Child Data Request. We aim to respond within a few working days (faster for child-safety reports).